Public Education Dollars              should go to Public Education                      Support HB 2877 Texas school children deserve to have public education dollars actually fund public education.  Teachers have the right to teach and make a living wage.   Taxpayers have the right to know that their money is being spent on classroom instruction and not taj mahal school buildings, top heavy bureaucracy, and frills that taxpayers can’t afford for themselves. Texas provides plenty of money for public education but on only 52 cents of every dollar spent on public education goes to the classroom according to the TEA.   Additionally, according to the Texas Education Agency (TEA), there are nearly 290,000 teachers in Texas and almost 230,000 non-teaching employees. This is unacceptable. And to make matters worse, the financing is so fuzzy, that taxpayers can’t really know where that other 48 cents is really going. What we do know is that it is not going to instruction and it’s not going to students and teachers. It’s time to define taxpayer responsibility for public education and open the books to the people who pay the bills – taxpayers. The Texas Legislature has provided taxpayer dollars for public education by adding 7.1 billion new dollars since 1999. Texas has tripled real per pupil spending in the last 30 years; and in the 2004-2005 state budget, legislators dedicated 58.4 percent of all general revenue dollars to Texas public and higher education. Yet this doesn’t seem to be enough! HB 2877 directs education state funding to the classroom where it should be spent. The bill specifies that the state is responsible for funding the classroom, and local dollars would fund activities outside the classroom.  This is not a new idea.  Other states including California, Oregon, and Massachusetts have established entities to raise local dollars for local priorities. The bill would also provide for administrative freedom which would relieve inflexible mandates, something the education lobbyists begged for several sessions ago.    Today, educators, students and taxpayers are being shortchanged. Under the current system of funding, critical resources are diverted from teaching and learning. Parents and taxpayers deserve to know: •        How much of the education dollars are getting to the classroom and what is considered classroom expenditure.   •        The taxpayers writing the check should be able to look at every debit on the ledger...after all, education dollars are taxpayer dollars. As education lobbyists demand more money for education, Texans should be able to expect more education for our money and reforms that bring transparency, accountability, freedom and fairness to the system. Back to Legislation