Late last night (Thursday, May 22), the Texas Senate voted to advance HB 2, the major public school funding bill, to third reading. The Senate must vote on it one more time before sending it to the House, where members may agree with the Senate’s changes or call for a conference committee to be formed to further negotiate on the bill. Due to the negotiations between the chambers that occurred in the weeks leading up to the announcement of the compromise bill, we expect the House to concur and send the bill to the governor. See a statement released by the lieutenant governor’s office yesterday.
As amended on the Senate floor, HB 2 provides $8.5 billion in new funding to public schools, including:
- $4.2 billion for teacher compensation through a new teacher retention allotment that provides, in districts with more than 5,000 students, $2,500 for teachers with 3-4 years of experience and $5,000 for teachers with 5+ years of experience. For districts with 5,000 or fewer students, the allotment would provide $4,000 for teachers with 3-4 years of experience and $8,000 for teachers with 5+ years of experience.
- $500 million for non-administrative staff pay raises provided through a $45 per student in adjusted average attendance for teachers not eligible for the retention allotment, counselors, librarians, nurses, teacher assistants, custodians, food service staff, bus drivers, administrative assistants, and other support staff.
- $1.3 billion for a new fixed cost allotment provided on a $106 per-enrolled-student basis to help pay for utilities, transportation, fees for hiring retired teachers, health insurance premiums and other employee benefits, etc.
- $677 million for early learning programs.
- $430 million in additional school safety funding to increase the per-student allotment from $10 to $20 and to increase the per-campus allotment from $15,000 to $33,540.
- $850 million increase for special education to include a move to an intensity-based model of funding.
- $200 million for charter facilities.
- $300 million for an increase to the small- and mid-size school allotment.
- $153 million for career and technical education.
- $135 million for teacher preparation and certification initiatives, as the bill requires that all teachers in foundation courses will need to be certified by the 2029-30 school year.
Funding that would otherwise go toward future golden penny yield increases will be redirected to provide a $55 increase to the basic allotment. HB 2 also ties the basic allotment to property value growth going forward.
District runs are not yet available.
Review/download the bill (prior to Senate floor amendments).
See our prior Capitol Watch Alert, which includes a link to a one-page summary of the bill distributed at the Capitol late Wednesday (prior to Senate floor amendments).
Watch video of the discussion on the Senate floor (starting at the 1:36:00 time stamp.
