Governor Perry recently made the statement that, in essence, was that the local school districts are to blame for teacher layoffs. Technically, he's telling the truth. He or other representatives at the state level will not be coming to school districts to make that decision, but the decisions about teachers and educators are being made because of the decisions that have been made in Austin.
The governor has also stated that the ratio of staff to teachers has increased dramatically over the last decade. This is absolutely not correct. The fact is that this ratio has actually had a slight decrease. Yes, there are many employees of school districts who are not teachers. It takes a lot of people (i.e., bus drivers, custodians, maintenance, administrators, and instructional support staff) as well as teachers to run an effective school district. Many of these employees are hired in an attempt by the districts to fulfill mandates that have been sent to the districts by the state without the funding that is required to implement the mandates. The fact is that a little over a decade ago the state funded about 50% of education funding. That number is now approximately 37%. The difference has been shifted to the local taxpayer.
The reality is that the legislature, at Gov. Perry's direction, made a conscious decision to "buy down" the property tax rate of $1.50 to $1.00 per $100 of valuation and replace it with a margins tax that they were told by experts would never made the difference in revenues. They decided to do it anyway. Schools have also essentially had their funding tied to 2005-2006 levels. School districts could fire all non-teaching staff and still not provide enough revenue to cover the deficit created by this decision (according to TEA).
No, the state legislature will not come to your district and fire anyone. That terrible decision is left to the school districts, but can we honestly believe that these decisions are not being forced on districts from the state level?
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