Historic public education funding for Texas? Inflation tempers school finance plan
Texas House lawmakers approved a nearly $400 increase in the base amount public schools get per student as part of a nearly $8 billion school funding bill, but some seeking more money for education caution that the funds aren’t enough to keep up with inflation.
State representatives on April 16 advanced a $7.7 billion public education funding bill, House Bill 2. The bill includes money for teacher pay raises, special education and other school funding initiatives.
The move has been praised by Republican leadership, with House Speaker Dustin Burrows calling it a “historic investment” and Gov. Greg Abbott’s office celebrating “record public education funding.”
The bill received near unanimous approval in the House, though some Democrats expressed a desire to see more money go toward Texas’ public schools.
“House Bill 2 lays the foundation for a modernized, responsive school finance system that will grow with the needs of Texas students while targeting taxpayer dollars where they’ll make the greatest impact for students and teachers,” Burrows said in a statement.
The proposal is part of the House’s $9 billion package of public education proposals, according to the House speaker’s office.
Discussions around public school funding comes as a $1 billion voucher bill is poised to head to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. The bill would allow parents to use state dollars for their child’s private education. It prioritizes the funds for students with disabilities and by household income.
Texas lags behind other states in per student funding, and the school finance proposal in the House doesn’t do enough to close the gap, Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina said in an April 17 statement.
“Many public schools already are cutting programs and increasing class sizes, and the school finance bill also approved by the House will not come close to ending the state’s financial neglect of public education,” Molina said. “The House’s $395 increase in the basic allotment, which hasn’t been increased in six years, will provide only a third of what is needed to cover districts’ losses from inflation alone.”
The bill’s final version could look different or the bill could fail altogether between now and the end of the Legislative session on June 2. The proposal is now pending in the Senate, where it must pass in a committee and on the floor.
School funding vs. Inflation
If signed into law as passed in the House, the school finance bill would mark the first time base per student funding has gone up since 2019. The House proposal increases the basic allotment by $395, from $6,160 to $6,555. The bill also ties the basic allotment to property value increases.
But when factoring in inflation, the basic allotment lags behind the levels established in 2019, when lawmakers passed another sweeping school finance bill into law.
That year, lawmakers increased the basic allotment from $5,140 to $6,160, a $1,020 increase. The basic allotment funding was part of an $11.6 billion school finance bill that allocated $6.5 billion for public education and $5.1 billion to cut school district taxes.
To meet that same funding level, the basic allotment would need to be roughly $1,500 more than what lawmakers have allocated.
Looking at the bills as a whole, $7.7 billion in the proposal before lawmakers is more than the $6.5 billion from 2019, but inflation tempers the spending.
The $6.5 billion in school funding from 2019 is worth about $8.2 billion today. The proposed state budget also includes more than $11 billion for property tax relief, according to the speaker’s office.
“Is it true that this bill doesn’t catch our schools up to 2019 funding levels?” Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat, asked the bill’s author during floor debate on the legislation.
Rep. Brad Buckley, a Salado Republican, replied, “This bill and other pieces of legislation — some that have passed this body already — will provide more than $10 billion in public education funding.”
The back and forth continued, with Buckely at one point calling the bill the “largest investment in public education in the history of our state.”
According to the Texas Comptroller, Talarico said, it would take $15 billion to catch schools up to 2019 funding levels.
“So my interpretation of this bill, even linked with other bills, would not catch us up to those 2019 funding levels,” Talarico said.
Buckey didn’t directly answer Talarico’s question.
“I believe that this is a bipartisan effort to close the gap,” Buckley said.
Talarico responded: “I’m going to take that as a ‘no’ until I get a ‘yes.’”
A spokesperson for the speaker’s office in an email noted that the full package of education bills this session exceeds the 2019 spending, even when adjusted for inflation.
Burrows, the Texas House Speaker, said the bill accounts for inflation in a statement to the Star-Telegram.
“Adjustments to the basic allotment are just one component of how schools are funded, and HB 2 was deliberately designed to go beyond it,” Burrows said. “On top of increasing the basic allotment to $6,555 and providing future automatic increases tied to growth in property values, HB 2 accounts for inflation in a more targeted, responsive way by directing funding toward areas where rising costs are having the biggest real-world impact on school budgets — things like special education, transportation, teacher recruitment and retention, high-cost insurance premiums, and more.”
The 2019 basic allotment increase was significant but a “large portion of that money was swallowed up almost immediately” by fixed costs “rather than translating to flexible dollars that districts can use to improve the classroom,” Burrows said.
“HB 2’s targeted and sustainable approach responds to both inflation and the actual needs schools are facing today, changing how the system as a whole is resourced and rebalanced and getting more dollars where they’re most needed,” he said.
What about other funding sources for schools?
Schools get more money than just the basic allotment, a point Abbott and his office have made in recent months. According to a Texas Education Agency report, public education funding has increased by 23% in the state since 2014, when factoring in state, local and federal dollars and adjusting for inflation.
The combined funding has hovered around $66 billion since fiscal year 2020, adjusted for inflation.
Since 2019, total per student funding from the local, state and federal government has remained around $12,000 when adjusted for inflation, according to the TEA report.
Not accounting for inflation, the combined funding has jumped by $2,806 — from $12,697 in 2019 to $15,503 in 2023.
“The basic allotment is just that, basic,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement. “Per-student funding comes from multiple different sources and is up 22 percent from 2019, at over $15,000 per student.”
Mahaleris defended the governor’s record on public education funding in another statement, touting his work to fund public schools in Texas.
“This session, Texas will invest a record of more than $8 billion in additional funding into public education,” he said. “Texas will continue to fully fund public education while we work with the Legislature to pass school choice for all Texas families.”
A spokesperson for Buckley, one of the bill’s authors who also chairs the House Public Education Committee, did not return emailed requests for comment.
This story was originally published April 22, 2025 at 1:43 PM.
