Texas School Districts Facing Fiscal Disaster

Teachers have historically complained about poor pay and terrible health benefits. Now many of them point to the life threatening environment of the classroom. “I can’t teach in a Death Chamber” is the message to school district officials and taxpayers. So parents remove their children from the public classroom leading to reduced tax revenues for education, continued crappy health benefits and less pay………….

School districts worry a fiscal cliff could await them in January

Across the Houston region and Texas, school districts that lost enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic are facing a drop in state funds starting in January if the Texas Education Agency or state lawmakers do not act.

Since the virus began sweeping across the state and nation last March, forcing schools to close, the TEA has given districts several grace periods in which it provided them the same funding they would have received in normal times. To date, that has provided a lifeline to districts that otherwise would have seen their state revenues plunge due to lower-than-expected student enrollments.

The current grace period, which the TEA calls a “hold harmless guarantee,” ends Dec. 31.  The Texas Legislature in 2019 allocated enough money to fund schools at their current levels until the end of the school year, but the TEA has remained mum on whether it will extend the hold harmless guarantee until then.

Without another extension for the remainder of the 2020-21 school year, some local district finance officials worry they will be faced with two bad options: dip into and potentially deplete their reserve funds to keep their districts operating through spring, or lay off teachers and staff to make ends meet.    view article  arw

 

FROM D. M. 

This is happening all across the country…..the Kansas school district where my grandchildren attend high school lost 1000 students…..my son in law is a senior level administrator in the 3rd largest school district in Colorado….they have lost about 7% of their student enrollment….to home schooling, private schools, rural schools….and circumstances unknown….they expect state and federal funding to be cut at least 15% partially because of lower enrollments but also because of the reduction in state sales and property tax collections.

Lost sales tax revenues that fund public entities, just on professional sporting venues alone in Denver (Rockies 80 home games, Broncos 8 home games, Nuggets 40+ home games, Avalanche 40+ home games) cost the City of Denver and the State of Colorado $400-$500M in tax revenue……all public entities in Colorado will be impacted….all of this is repeating itself across the country…..