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September 22, 2021 3:07 PM
New budget limits for school districts squeeze $7.5 billion for tax compression
But any savings may not be immediately apparent to the taxpayer as limits on budget growth have been in place for two years for school districts and only a year for other jurisdictions
House Bill 3 – the 86th
session’s school finance spending bill that also limited growth in school
district budgets – has saved taxpayers $7.5 billion over the last two years,
according to calculations out of the Texas Taxpayers and Research
Association.
The Texas school finance formula is a seesaw between
local and state funds: the more a local school district can kick into the
finance bucket, the less the state has push out to the school district. This is
the way public education funding is smoothed and equalized across the state’s
school districts and charter schools.
The consequence, intended or not, was that the state’s
overall portion of the public education budget eventually fell below 40
percent.
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright September 22, 2021, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved 