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Capacity, adequacy and equity were the buzzwords in the House Public Education committee today, where legislators heard testimony on two school finance bills (HB 1555 and HB 3646) which would address the serious flaws in Texas school finance.

Simply put, the current funding system for Texas public schools is totally static and promotes inequity. The funding mechanism, adopted in a 2006 special session to correct a constitutional issue with the previous funding system, decreased school property taxes by about one-third. To keep schools from experiencing a drop in funding because of the lower property taxes, the legislation also guaranteed the state would fund schools up to a “target revenue.”

The major issue, however, was that the the law was supposed to be a temporary fix ... and it hasn’t been temporary. The “target revenue” for each school district was set in 2006 and hasn’t been updated to keep up with inflation, rising energy and transportation costs, new education requirements from the state or program expansions.

Rep. Diane Patrick

What’s more, districts with similar property tax rates have very different levels of revenue to spend on students. HB 1555 author Rep. Diane Patrick says per-pupil expenditures range from $4000 to $12,000 among different districts.

Of the two school finance reform bills heard in today’s committee meeting, the bill receiving the most attention by education advocacy groups is HB 1555. (The Senate version is Leticia Van de Putte’s SB 982.) The bill makes school funding changes over three years so that the amount of funding districts receive changes in function of their needs.

Naturally, it’s more complicated than that. If you want to take a crack at understanding the bill, try the two-pager Van de Putte’s office put together. (Warning: It’s a two-pager with a page-and-a-half of glossary which, in my opinion, needs its own glossary.)

David Thompson, lobbying for the Texas Association of School Administrators, described the bill as “dynamic.” And Lynn Moak, a school finance expert, said “HB 1555 would make a significant improvement to where we find ourselves today.”

And Rep. Scott Hochberg, who authored HB 3646, said it just the way I would have: “This is not the most exciting topic we’ll ever take up, but it’s a very important one.”

The trick, of course, is getting one of these bills out of committee … onto the floors of both chambers ... off of the floors of both chambers … into the budget ... and so on … all before sine die.