On an educational content front, Texas has had a remarkable couple of years.  The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has done an incredible job by bringing some sanity back to our text books and curriculums.  In the face of unrelenting pressure and criticism, the SBOE passed curriculum standards for history and social studies that will impact the education of millions of Texas school children.  Texas now has the best English / Language Arts / Reading,  Science, and Social Studies standards in the United States.  Math standards are on the way.  However, no good deed goes unpunished in Austin.  Redistricting in the Texas Legislature made it much harder for the conservative board members to win re-election. Funny, how a super majority of Republicans couldn’t protect the SBOE conservative majority.  We need true conservatives in the Texas House to protect the conservative work being done in the SBOE and to ensure that our kids are taught the truth in our schools.

During the 82^nd legislative session as the legislature struggled to balance the budget without raising taxes or raiding the Rainy Day Fund (not too much), the high drama of the budget battles were focused on education.  As a citizen lobbyist in the last session, I saw this first hand.  Pressure from the media was quite spectacular.  You would have thought that education was being gutted and our kids were going to uneducated and ignorant.  Indeed, every teacher that was let go over the summer was blamed on budget cuts by the Republican led legislature.  Never mind that the one year Federal stimulus grants went away sticking Texas with a higher educational baseline than it could afford.   At the end of the day, conservatives were being blamed for slashing educational spending.  Well, I will let you in on a few facts:

• Education accounts for almost 60% of the Texas State Budget ($172.3 billion)
• Education appropriations under Article III increased educational spending by $200 million or a .02 percent increase in overall spending for the 2012-2013 State Budget
• What used to be a 10:1 ratio of teachers to administrators has now reached a 1:1 teacher to administrator ratio
• School districts in Texas carry a combined total of $101.6 billion in outstanding debt
• Nineteen Texas districts carry more than $1 billion in debt individually (Clear Creek is one of those ISDs carrying a billion dollar debt)
• Teachers on average earn less than administrative staff (Avg. School Administrative Staff earns $77,068 while the avg. teacher earns $49,655) [Clear Creek ISD]
• Of the 69.2% of students who take the SAT/ACT, only 46.4% meet the minimum criteria [CCISD]
• Total revenue per student is $9,777 [CCISD]
• Total instructional expenditures per student is $4,808 [CCISD]
• The result of the previous two bullets mean that only 49.2% of school funding is spent on classroom instruction for the students [CCISD]
• Total revenues for CCISD was approximately $362 million and the total expenditures were approximately $467 million indicating over $100 million in deficit spending in 2010
• And finally, the Clear Creek ISD Superintendent makes a base pay of $238,007 without perks and bonuses included in the base compensation.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these numbers are greatly out of step with the fiscal realities that this Country, this State, and our local communities face.  For instance, with the Clear Creek ISD being a billion dollars in debt, paying its Superintendent almost a quarter million dollars base pay, they have joined five other ISDs in a lawsuit against the State of Texas because they are not getting the levels of state funding they were “promised”.  Over the past decade education funding has increased 63%.   However, have the people of Texas experienced any additional increase in academic performance, reduced dropout rates, or any other measure of success from all the money confiscated from property taxes and from the State?  The answer is no.

Texas ISDs are probably the biggest problem when it comes to balancing the budget, reducing property taxes, and providing a robust economic climate for business in Texas.  My solutions to these issues would be to link sensible school finance reform with education reform.  If elected, I would champion the following solutions for education reform:

• For any proposed tax increase by a school district, a VOTE OF THE PEOPLE should be required to raise taxes
• Require transparency for ISD finances including the posting of financial information on the internet in a timely fashion for public scrutiny
• Require that 70% of education funding go to classroom instruction
• Move school board elections from May to the general elections in November to allow the average citizen more insight into upcoming school board issues and elections thereby increasing voter participation (also a savings to the community).
• I will explore options that can save CCISD more than a million dollars in the cost of collections.
• And finally, put forward a school-based reporting program in addition to district-wide reporting for academic accountability to identify failing schools and either fix them or close them.

With education consuming so much of the Texas budget and the property tax burden placed on businesses and property owners, it should be one,  if not the highest, priority issues in the State legislature.  The upcoming budget shortfall will require State Representatives who can face educational reform and make the hard decisions necessary to right-size our school districts, force them to pay off their outstanding debts, and limit their ability to work their mischief under the radar with respect to raising taxes and school board elections.  I will stand firm for education reform in Austin.