September 19, 2014 10:34 AM

KR: Road to school finance solution looks bleak

Booming oil & gas revenue unlikely to be enough to close gaps left by massive margins tax shortfall or student population growth

The State Board of Education will send over a flush $2 billion to pay for schools and textbooks this fall, but that windfall hardly begins to address the structural gaps in the school finance system created back in 2006.

The economic picture in Texas is the best it has looked in years. But the picture for finding a school finance solution has never looked so bleak. Not even burgeoning oil & gas revenue will be enough to fix the $10 billion structural hole in a system that requires a baseline $26 billion a year to fund public schools.

And that’s where we start: the structural hole created by the margins tax. Forget what the Texas Supreme Court might decide. Texas created a tax to drive $14.2 billion through the school finance system every two years. Last biennium, it was projected to produce $4.5 billion. If funding formulas hold, with or without a court decision, state lawmakers still are obligated to make up the balance of that gap.

Session after session, lawmakers have avoided adding new money to the school finance system and even limited school district tax increases. Now the hole is so huge that it is impossible to find a solution in the state’s typical bag of tricks. The proceeds from the tobacco settlement or additional vice taxes won’t be enough.

The target revenue solution of 2006 was a temporary agreement between state leaders and education leaders, but District Judge John Dietz noted in his opinion it has done nothing but widen revenue gaps between districts. The excess of the state’s Rainy Day Fund would barely prop up the system for a year. And Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, continues his drum beat during hearings in which he insists that Texas cannot bond its way to economic prosperity. Bonding is finite, not infinite.