Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Every time lawmakers promise to improve equity between property rich and property poor school districts, school finance expert Paul Colbert thinks back to a famous sketch from the Charlie Brown cartoon series.

"Every time you think Charlie Brown is going to run up there and finally kick the football, Lucy pulls the football away," said Colbert, who represents El Paso ISD and Houston ISD.

"That is what the Legislature has repeatedly done over the years. It says, 'If you'll just accept less than equity now, we'll promise we'll phase it in over time.' It does not happen. The Legislature ends up pulling the football away."

Colbert should know. During the great school finance reforms of 1984, Colbert, then a state representative from Houston, drafted the initial House and Senate versions of the finance part of House Bill 72 and sat on its conference committee. Before entering the House, Colbert was research director for the Senate Education Committee. Later, he spent eight years as CBO on the House Public Education Committee.

Colbert was reminded of Charlie Brown and his football on Friday when the Senate Education Committee voted out a school finance plan that eliminates recapture between rich and poor school districts, in return for a promise to improve equity in the out years.

The plan increases equity to 90 percent - meaning 90 percent of school students would, in theory, be inside a fully equalized funding system. The 'in theory' part has to be inserted because of the way the 'hold harmless' provisions work.

However, concerned about the funding levels for property poor schools in his East Texas district, Sen. Todd Staples (R-Palestine) offered an amendment that would have brought equity up to the 98th percentile. Senate Republican leaders balked at a $125 million price tag over the next two years and, instead, agreed to improve equity over time, thereby halving the cost. Under the revised Staples amendment approved by the panel, equity would be increased from 90 percent to 98 percent by 2013.

"Hopefully, that will be accomplished but, in the meanwhile, we repeal recapture so the gap between the wealthiest and everybody else grows immediately and continues to grow as additional pennies are phased in," Colbert told QR, immediately after the revised Staples amendment was added. "It's nice that there have been promises that we will get there sometime in the future. However, the legislative experience has not been reassuring in that regard."

Colbert said lawmakers could learn lessons from the past. The trouble was, he said, there were so few survivors around today from those previous school finance battles. "There's a lot of people who do not understand what mistakes were made previously," Colbert said.
Colbert took QR on a school finance history lesson. In 1984, studies showed that the cost of cost of a minimally accredited program was $1,750 a student. The Legislature funded the program at $1,290 for the 1984-85 school year and at $1,350 the next. It promised to continue to phase in additional monies to bring the system up to $1,750. What happened? "Nothing," Colbert said. "We left it there until basically we were ordered to change by the courts in the Edgewood I decision. We finally changed it in 1990."
Colbert recalled that under HB 72, two-thirds of the funding gap between property rich and poor districts was closed inside a year. "It was by far the biggest level of equalization ever achieved in Texas, and probably in any state," Colbert remembers.

Two things happened to undermine the legislation, Colbert said. Firstly, the Legislature did not guarantee additional phase-ins beyond that - it merely promised to do so. Secondly, because wealthy districts had unlimited access to additional tax revenues, more than sufficient to meet their needs, they did not vote for any more money for anybody else in the ensuing years.

"The rich districts continued to raise their tax rates and generate all the uncapped money they could," Colbert said. "Within five years, by 1989, the gap between rich and poor was as big as it had been before we adopted HB 72.
That huge closing gap had totally disappeared, which is why the state lost the Edgewood I lawsuit."

In 1990, Colbert recalled, the Legislature said 95 percent of school students would be in a fully equalized system. "We repealed that provision before we ever got to there," Colbert said.
In 1992, Colbert recalled, the Legislature established a $2,800 basic allotment, with the promise of phasing its way to a $28 guaranteed yield, which would have meant 95 percent equity by 1995. "Again, we repealed it before we got to that level," Colbert said. "And here we are, 2005, and we are still not at $28 for the guaranteed yield."

Colbert said if the lessons of the past are not learned, the gap between rich and poor districts could grow again.
"We are now going to give wealthy districts the ability to take care of their own needs, without having to worry about whether or not everybody else has sufficient resources," Colbert said. "Without recapture, we will allow some of the wealthy districts the ability to do whatever they need to do, without their legislators having to worry about whether or not everybody else is getting enough."