If Texas wants to bolster school choice, it needs fair funding for charters | Opinion
Texas has a choice to make. Will we fund the public schools that are delivering results for underserved students, or will we let outdated policies hold them back?
The Legislature has a chance now to finally address one of the biggest inequities in Texas public education: facilities funding for public charter schools.
Sen. Angela Paxton’s Senate Bill 1750 would close half of the $1,600 per-student gap between charters and traditional school districts, a bold, necessary fix to a broken system put in place nearly 30 years ago to protect districts from additional competition. But current drafts in the House and Senate scaled back the funding levels in Senate Bill 1750 significantly, closing just a quarter of the gap.
That’s not enough. Not even close.
Public charter schools receive very little dedicated funding for facilities — pennies on the dollar to build classrooms, maintain buildings or pay off construction debt. Everything comes from their general operating budgets, the same pool that pays for teachers, supplies and student support.
At Uplift Education, we spent $40 million on facilities last year across 45 schools, which accounts for 12% of our entire budget. The state provided just $3.2 million in facilities funding. If we were funded like school districts, we would receive $35 million, a game-changer for our students and staff.
As good stewards of public dollars, we’ve addressed this gap by making the right but difficult choices that no school wants to make:
Increasing class sizes in primary grades to 28-32 students, with limited numbers of teaching assistants.
Offering starting teacher salaries $3,000 below traditional school districts, hurting our ability to compete for talent.
Reducing the number of teaching assistants and interventionists, just as student needs are increasing.
This isn’t just unsustainable. It’s unjust.
We hear a lot about school choice. But charter schools, public schools that serve mostly low-income, first-generation students, are being shortchanged. Parents and students are being penalized by making a choice within their public-school ecosystem.
Budgets reflect values. If Texas values student achievement, college and career readiness, and innovation in education, then it’s time to fund the schools that deliver those outcomes.
Charters were once a pilot program. That was 30 years ago. Today, they serve more than 400,000 Texas students, nearly 23,000 at Uplift alone. The system has scaled, but the funding model hasn’t. It’s time to fix that.
Uplift students consistently outperform state and local averages for various outcomes. Our alumni earn $20,000 more annually than their Dallas County peers. Everything lawmakers say they want — career pathways, personalized learning, data-driven instruction — is already happening here.
Yet we’re being asked to do more with less. Every single year.
There’s still time to fix this. Lawmakers must restore the original language in SB 1750 and close at least half the facilities funding gap. Anything less continues a pattern of inequity that hurts the very students Texas says it wants to support.
There is already precedent to draw on this session to address funding formulas that no longer work. Senate Bill 568 would amend the way special education funding is calculated, and it has widespread support. If the state can revise funding formulas in some areas, why can’t it do the same for facilities funding for public charter schools?
This isn’t about politics. It’s about priorities.
Texas doesn’t have a “budget” problem — it has a “will” problem. The question isn’t whether we can afford to invest in public charter schools like Uplift.
The question is: Will we?
