A look inside the school finance and education savings account bills
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — After a two-day delay, the Texas House Committee on Public Education is set to vote on two bills on Thursday. HB 2 will increase funding for public schools, while SB 2 will establish an education savings account (ESA) program — allowing parents to help pay for private school using tax dollars.
Here's the latest version of these bills as of Wednesday evening.
First heard on March 4, the initial version of HB 2 raised the amount of the basic per student allotment from $6,160 to $6,380 — an increase of $220. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to reach the purchasing power of $6,160 in June 2019 — when the last school finance bill was passed — it would require an extra $1,513 per student.
The new version of HB 2 gets closer to inflation, but not too much closer, raising the base allotment by $340 to $6,500 per student. In addition, the new version adds a 'guaranteed yield increment adjustment,' increasing the basic allotment every two years. The increase is tied to property values in the respective districts. The bill also requires 40 percent of the allotment to go towards teacher salaries.
After spending over 22 hours discussing HB 3, the House Committee shelved it for SB 2 — which achieves the same goal of establishing an ESA program but with a highly different implementation.
The most significant change between the version of SB 2 that passed the Senate and the version the committee will discuss is the prioritization of applications. The passed version of SB 2 earmarks 80% of available funds to go towards students with disabilities or families making below five times the federal poverty threshold. The other 20% would be distributed randomly.
The version of SB 2 the committee will discuss is a sharp departure, following the priority system they initially came up with in HB 3.
Priority would be granted to students in the following order:
Students with disabilities whose families make less than five times the federal poverty guidelines (currently $160,750 for a family of four).
Students whose families make less than twice the federal poverty guidelines (currently $64,300 for a family of four).
Students whose families make more than twice the federal poverty guidelines, but less than five times the federal poverty guidelines (currently between $64,300-$160,750 for a family of four).
Students whose families make more than five times the federal poverty guidelines (currently $160,750 for a family of four).
In the first two years of the program, the new SB 2 would cap those in the last category from making up more than 20% of the total enrollment, while also placing a priority on students who spent at least 90% of the previous school year in public or charter school.
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