I stand corrected: The Texas Legislature IS making a top priority of fixing public school finance.
All right now, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work here. Everything’s on the table, that’s our motto (for now anyway). Let’s get this thing fixed here and now. After all, funding our public schools is pretty much required of the state. Besides, how hard can it be? It’s just numbers.
So a quick look-see across the internet reveals Texas ranks rather low in funding our public schools compared to big shots like New York and Connecticut and Oregon and Nebraska and dozens more of these United States. The national average for per-pupil spending is somewhere around $10,700 to $11,841. Texas ranks 38th as we spend $8,075 to $8,299 per student. Dallas spends $9,559 per pupil while Brownsville spends $9,815, and out in Sulphur Springs each kiddo is allotted $9,262.
Seems all we need do is get the big picture. The Texas education budget is $37.4 billion—a whoppin’ fourth of the state’s whole budget pie! Now, the other thing we need to know is the number of public schools kids. That’s close to five million, give or take.
Why don’t we just divide the school budget by the number of kids (still) going to our public schools? No, this can’t be right? That ends up being $7,480. Blasted online calculator! Let’s take these two enormous figures to paper and pencil: 5,000,000 into 37,400,000,000. Owww, these zeros are making us see crazy! Brain hurts! Can’t think! Let’s just condense this: 5 into 37.4. We can tack on all those zeros later. OK, this can’t be right neither: still near $7,000 per little Texan?
Time’s a-wastin’
Texas public school finance has been made up of lots of convoluted mathematical formulas, which for decades ensured kids living in wealthy districts got a better education than kids in poverty. But that was supposed to have been fixed long ago by the Robin Hood plan to even out per-pupil spending in all Texas school districts. (Remember the rich districts were to give to the poor, until the biggest cities in the state ended up being on the list of the state’s poorest districts?) While figuring the figure, federal and local tax dollars kick in, and that might explain how our per-pupil spending is more than $7,000 allotted by our state education budget. Maybe we’re going about this all the wrong way. Instead of starting with a pile of money, maybe we should analyze exactly how much it costs to provide a quality education to a kid nowadays—ahem, these days being the 21st century and not the 1900s.
A kid needs highly-educated teachers, and in Texas we are proud to proclaim we still insist our public school teachers be college educated and degreed. A kid needs to learn reading, writing, math, science, history, computers, health and physical education, and it would be nice to give ’em some arts like music, art, drama, and dance. A kid needs to eat while spending all day in school, but breakfast and lunch should be covered by federal programs, right? A kid needs textbooks [as we continue to witness the transformation to online texts, meaning eventually laptops with internet access for every Texas student] for at least twelve years. And a kid needs quality equipment in science and computer labs as well as gyms and sports and art and music rooms. And a kid needs a comfortable schoolhouse with heat and air within a consistently maintained and modernized building.
A kid learns best in a clean decent size classroom with subdued wall colors, more blues and off whites, no reds or orange. Kids learn best in small groups; the Texas elementary school standard of 20 per class is just too many kids. Kids need to see a nurse about assorted childhood scrapes and illnesses. Many kids need counseling. Yes, they do. Kids need recess or a couple of breaks during the day like any employee in the workforce. They need clean restrooms with toilet paper, soap and hot water to wash their hands, and operable water fountains. They need coats in the winter. They need parents who ensure their kids are at school on time and promptly picked up at the end of the day. Many kids need tutoring after or before school; they need one-on-one instruction to fully master each lesson less they fall behind.
Kids in school need to learn at their own pace, so that means more staff and teachers instead of less. They need to have their eyes and ears examined every year as well as checks on their emotional health and physical development. More health care assistants, nurses and counselors are needed.
Now getting down to brass tacks, Texas students learning English need a lot more assistance especially seeing how we consider this a big problem in need of immediate solving. Before any learning can take place, we all must agree that classroom discipline is a must. Student discipline and self control must be the first priority and teachers supported instead of criticized and politicized. And poor kids—who make up a great deal of our public school student population, if we’re being honest—will always need a leg up. They need to start school earlier than age 4 or 5. They need parents who know how to raise kids. We’re talking even more social programs to gain parental support and trust. Public schools should be run like private schools where there is no question about the final product: a well-educated student.
So given all it takes to educate a kid in Texas, in the 21st century, to ensure he and she have a chance for a viable future as a productive citizen and by age 18 are ready for college or the workforce, $7,000 or even $10,000 or $11,000 per pupil doesn’t seem near enough, now does it? It’s an illogical equation in our fast-paced technological evolution where now the year is 2017. When it comes to spending on a kid’s education, there’s no time to waste.