May 14, 2025      4:41 PM

Speaker Burrows praises Patrick version of school finance plan gutting the House approved increase in the basic allotment

During an afternoon news conference, Burrows pointed to other key components of the legislation and said it’s not wise to focus on “just one number”

Seemingly very out of step with his membership on his top priority legislation of the session, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows on Wednesday afternoon praised the Texas Senate’s version of school finance which drastically pulls back on the proposed increase in the basic allotment.

As Quorum Report first told you last night, the Senate’s plan would boost the basic allotment by $55 – an amount that many districts won’t even see under the proposal because of the way it’s structured, according to numbe crunchers at ISDs around the state who have been studying the plan. It’s drastically different from what the House passed on a vote of 142 to 5: An increase of $395.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Burrows, along with the state’s chief budget writers and the governor, have worked to negotiate the details of the Senate plan scheduled for a hearing in Chairman Brandon Creighton’s committee tomorrow morning.

In response to a question from a journalist about the differences in the plans, Burrows focused on the overall price tag of $8 billion and pointed to the other key components of the legislation including special education funding, teacher pay, full day funding for pre-k, and school safety.

“Looking at just one number and not what the entire bill does, I don’t think is what we need to be doing,” Burrows said. “When you look at the things it does, it’s the things we identified are very important.”

Developing…

Copyright May 14, 2025, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved