David Hamilton does not speak for either Fort Bend ISD or the FBISD Board of Trustees. He writes here only on his own behalf.
It is likely that your school district has sent administrators and school board members to Austin this month telling legislators that public education is significantly underfunded here in the Lone Star State.
But is that true?
Let’s look at Fort Bend Independent School District, where I serve as a school board member and board officer.
Fort Bend ISD in 2013-14 and 2023-24
Fort Bend ISD is the sixth-largest district in Texas with almost 80,000 students.
Each year, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) sends each school district what some call the school districts’ report cards: the Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR). School districts submit the required data to the TEA, and the TEA provides the TAPR to districts in December. Districts are required to provide a TAPR presentation during a subsequent board meeting.
The TAPR for each school year does not provide historical context, so I decided to compare the 2023-24 TAPR with the same report from the 2013-14 school year in order to gain a wider perspective.
I also compared the district budget for each of these school years.
The results were shocking, and I realized that I needed to adjust the 2013-14 dollars for both inflation and enrollment growth in order to get as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible.
Even then what I found flew in the face of the narrative that public education is underfunded in Texas.
The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has an inflation calculator based on the Consumer Price Index, so I used that to get a cumulative inflation rate over the 10-year period of 34 percent. Fort Bend ISD’s enrollment increased by 13.5 percent over that time period.
The FBISD operating budget grew from $497,159,194 in 2013-14 to $766,638,983 in 2023-24.
Adjusting the 2013-14 budget for the 34-percent cumulative inflation and the 13.5-percent enrollment increase gets us to $756,129,418.
The actual 2023-24 budget is about $10.5 million higher than the inflation-adjusted and enrollment-adjusted 2013-14 budget. In other words, the 2023-24 budget was about $10.5 million overfunded relative to a decade prior.
After the board approved the 2023-24 budget, the board voted 6-1 to put a tax increase (aka Voter-Approved Tax Ratification Election or VATRE) on the November 2023 ballot. I was the only dissenting vote. The voter-approved tax increase passed, which adds $35 million per year annually to the FBISD property tax base.
Then, in September 2024, the tax rate approved by the Board of Trustees increased local property tax revenue by $44.8 million more than FBISD would collect with the “no new revenue” tax rate.
The combined impact of the $10.5 million initial overfunding, the $35 million from the VATRE, and the $44.8 million increase from the tax rate set in September 2024 means we are now more than $90 million overfunded relative to 2013-14, after adjusting for both inflation and enrollment.
One way to answer the question of whether or not public education in Texas today is underfunded is to compare today’s funding to the funding from a decade ago. By that standard, we are clearly not underfunded. We are overfunded to the tune of $90 million relative to the inflation-adjusted and enrollment-adjusted 2013-14 budget.
If FBISD is representative of overfunding throughout public education in Texas, then public education is overfunded somewhere in the ballpark of $6.1 billion for the entire state.
Basic Allotment
Activists, administrators, and school board members who are making the “underfunded” argument often reference the basic allotment and the fact that the legislature has not increased it during the last three legislative sessions.
What is the basic allotment, and is it proof that public education is underfunded in Texas?
The basic allotment is simply the amount of state funding each school district gets that is tied to enrollment. Higher enrollment obviously means higher costs, so a portion of state funding is tied to enrollment and that portion is called the basic allotment. The basic allotment is supplemented for special education, gifted and talented, and other student categories for which districts receive additional state funding.
It is true that the basic allotment has not changed the last three legislative sessions, but this is intentionally misleading. It is typically stated in such a way that people who do not understand education finance hear “education funding has not increased,” when in reality what is said is “the basic allotment has not increased.”
School districts want the basic allotment to increase because they want discretion over how that money is spent.
But activists and districts are criticizing the state for unfunded mandates, and the legislature is responding by increasing designated funding for items like teacher pay, special education, and school safety rather than giving districts a blank check funding increase.
Unfunded Mandates
Another part of the “underfunded” narrative focuses on what are claimed to be unfunded mandates, specifically for special education funding and for school safety.
This claim is silly, in my opinion. Texas has a balanced model where school districts are funded in a blended manner from both local property taxes and state tax funding.
The legislature has historically increased education funding by increasing the basic allotment, which allows each school district discretion over how to allocate the increased funding. An urban district may have a greater need to increase teacher pay due to the higher cost of living and more competition for teachers, while a rural district may need to allocate those funds toward other priorities.
But the unfunded mandate narrative boils down to criticizing the state for giving districts discretion. It assumes that neither local funds nor non-designated state funds can be counted toward special education, school safety, etc.
In my opinion, the people crafting these talking points are taking advantage of the fact that most people do not understand education funding or public school finance.
The legislature is likely going to respond by giving districts less (or no) discretion over how any increased funding will be spent going forward. The state will designate that most if not all increased funding must be spent on certain categories such as special education, school safety, etc.
Is Public Education Underfunded?
Fort Bend ISD is not underfunded. In fact, compared to the 2013-14 school year, FBISD is more than $90 million overfunded after adjusting for both inflation and enrollment.
If this overfunding in FBISD is representative for the state on a per-student basis, then public education is overfunded by $6.1 billion in Texas.
The basic allotment and unfunded mandate talking points, which are crafted by activists and vendors who benefit from increases to education funding, fall apart under scrutiny.
The “underfunded” chorus chooses to focus on the basic allotment rather than total funding because the total funding has consistently increased while the basic allotment has not—largely because the legislature is responding to the unfunded mandate criticisms by keeping discretionary funding steady and increasing directed funding to categories like special education, school safety, and teacher pay.
The “underfunded” narrative in Texas education is consistently used to justify local tax increases and calls for increased state funding while also being used to excuse low performance.
Texas taxpayers need to know the truth about whether public education is underfunded in the Lone Star State.
This is a commentary published with the author’s permission. If you wish to submit a commentary to Texas Scorecard, please submit your article to submission@texasscorecard.com.
