Texas Senate tentatively approves sweeping school finance, teacher pay bill

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports that public schools will get a record-breaking amount of new funding and many teachers will get thousands more dollars of pay under a bill tentatively passed by the Texas Senate late Thursday. The unanimous passage of House Bill 2 by the Capitol’s upper chamber will send the second major education measure to the governor conceived during a legislative session that has been defined by public school policy. A final vote is expected Friday. The bill would add $8.5 billion to public schools, earmarking $4.2 billion for teachers and roughly $1.3 billion for school districts to pay for operating costs such as utilities, buses and insurance that have increased substantially in recent years. “House Bill Two is the most transformative education package in Texas history,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said during debate. “I call it that because we have policies within this bill that will change public education forever.”

The bill, as passed, strikes a compromise between the House and Senate by keeping a prescriptive model of how school districts will spend the infusion of state funds, as the Senate preferred, while also addressing increasingly expensive fixed costs of running public schools that the House hoped to achieve. Under the bill, teachers will see pay raises designed to encourage teacher retention through experience-related bonuses. Those pay raises are doubled for teachers in small, typically rural, districts and could lift teachers’ salaries as much as $8,000 after they reach 5 years of experience and $5,000 for teachers in larger districts. The effect on North Texas schools was not immediately clear as lawmakers rushed to approve the bill with major changes made on the Senate floor before districts were able to perform their own analysis on how it will alter their bottom line. The bill has remained a closely watched piece of legislation for public school officials, many of which are in the process of drafting their budgets for the next school year.