As school funding in Austin is stretched paper-thin, officials say they’ll push to secure more dollars.
Elected leaders from Travis County and the city of Austin pledged at a joint meeting with Austin ISD late last month to help the school district confront its recurrent budgetary shortfalls. That inevitably means talking about" law that requires property-wealthy districts to send their"excess" tax revenues to the state, in theory to redistribute to the poorest school districts. In practice,"so much of it is not going into education," said AISD Trustee.
Minimum per-student funding is guaranteed by the state; each school district currently receives $6,160 per student. As Texas School Coalition Executive Directorexplained, those dollars are being stretched further in districts like AISD due to rising property values and declining enrollment, both of which increase those districts' share of the recapture total.
Others on the joint committee stressed that while Austin is the site of a lot of expensive property, 52% of students in AISD are economically disadvantaged. In a city like Austin, Rome said, those students"have less opportunities and less access to resources that might help to bolster their education. A family in poverty is not taking a trip to Boston to study the Freedom Trail before they study the American Revolution in history ...
Under the current recapture formula, Austin's share will continue to rise along with property values in Central Texas, where the median home sales price now hovers around $500,000. Next year, AISD expects to transfer $798 million to the state's coffers, and may see annual recapture top $1 billion by the 2025-26 school year.
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