Speaker 1: 0:00

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Speaker 2: 1:10

Yes, Hi, Martha. I'm Mary Jane Bonfield and I am the president of the Highland Park Independent School District School Board, and I am in my fourth year.

Speaker 3: 1:20

And I'm Blythe Koch, and this is my second year as a trustee.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Well, I just want to say thank you both for all the time and your talents that you put into this. I know this is not an easy job, but I really appreciate everything that you do for our school.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Well, we appreciate our community. It takes a village for all of us to do our parts, and it's our honor to get to serve in this way. Well, we have a lot to talk about today. There's a lot going on. Let's start with what legislative issues are top priorities for HPISD school board. We have shared those with our representatives. If I had to say our highest priority, there are four that revolve around one idea, and the idea is that we would ensure that we receive the adequate funding needed to provide a quality education to our students, and so, of those, we've asked for an increase in our basic allotment, which is our per-student funding. And I can go. We'll go into detail on all these, but very high level, we've asked for one an increase to our basic allotment, which is our per student funding. We've also asked for the reinstatement of a early payment discount on our recapture payments. And then we've also asked for accountability and transparency for our public ed dollars.

Speaker 3: 2:51

Well, can you tell me more about the basic allotment, how we compare to other states? Yeah, so, as Mary Jane mentioned, the basic allotment is the base level of funding that is provided per student for basic operations of schools. That includes paying teachers, keeping the lights on, buying supplies, and then districts do receive additional money for programs like ESL or special education, talented and gifted, fine arts, things like that. So when you add all of those allotments together, in Texas right now, the average per student is about $12,000. If you look nationwide, the average is about $15,000. So, in fact, texas is right now in the bottom 10 out of the 50 states in terms of per student funding. So that's despite the fact that Texas has the second largest economy in the country and I think we're now about the eighth largest economy in the world.

Speaker 3: 3:36

So, and we've had our government has had significant budget surpluses over the last several years, and yet we still are in this position with our per-student funding. So you know, what's considered adequate is obviously subjective, but if we just look at what the legislature decided in 2019 that they thought was adequate, if we look at inflation that's happened since then in the last six years, we would need that per-student funding to increase by about $1,340 per student. So far, the only bill that's been considered that would increase the basic allotment has been proposed in the House, and it is just increasing it by $200 per student. The Senate has also put forth a bill that would increase teacher pay, which is a huge need, but we would prefer for increases to come through the basic allotment so that local districts can decide how to best allocate that money, because every district's needs are a little bit different, and being able to decide locally what strategically will work the best is what we think is most helpful.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Do you mind going back to? You said ESL, just to define what that means for anyone that may not know.

Speaker 3: 4:44

Yes, sorry, there's a lot of acronyms Education, for sure, esl stands for English as a Second Language, so districts do receive additional funding for students who need additional instruction in English as it's their second language.

Speaker 1: 4:58

So the second thing you were talking about is the early payment discount you'd like to see, and has there been any movement on that front so far?

Speaker 2: 5:06

I'll take that one, I'll jump in there. Yes, we've definitely seen movement on that front, but let me, before I go into that, I'll start and just give a little bit of context. So reCAPTCHA is a state policy that requires school districts with a high property value to pay locally raised tax dollars back to the state so that the state can redistribute them and allocate them to school districts with a lower tax base, and until 2019, the state offered a discount to districts when they made those recapture payments back to the state if they made them early. We believe that reinstating this discount would actually help reduce the impact of recapture on HBISD, and it would also allow the state to collect revenue sooner, and so the state will benefit from that early receipt of revenue. They can earn investment earnings.

Speaker 2: 5:59

While we get the benefit of the discount Right now, we keep those dollars longer. We don't pay them back early because there's no discount incentive. We get the investment earnings, which is great. However, investment earnings fluctuate, interest rates fluctuate, so it's very difficult to budget on an unknown number that moves from month to month, year to year, and so we believe that having the discount versus the investment earnings actually benefits us in a better way, because we can rely on it and we can budget around it, which will have a greater impact on our bottom line in achieving our goal of increasing teacher salaries.

Speaker 2: 6:37

So, in terms of where movement is as of today, there could be other bills, but I am aware of a bill that Morgan Meyer has filed with the House I believe it's House Bill 1939, where it would offer a 4% discount to any school district paying back their recapture dollars. Early I will pause and say it's very early, I believe a bill, the stages for a bill to go from a bill to a law are there seven stages and so we're only in the first stage. So we're very early, but we're excited and hopeful and we'll be watching it and we're appreciative of Morgan Meyer putting forth that bill in honoring what is a priority for HBISD.

Speaker 1: 7:20

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Speaker 2: 8:19

Okay, so those are big kind of buzzwords accountability and transparency. So what we really mean by that is two things. And one we want to ensure that our recapture dollars are used in a way that aligns with the original intention and goals of the recapture program that began in 1993. Locally raised recapture dollars should not be used by the state to supplant their own investment in public education, and locally raised recapture dollars should stay in public schools, and historically, as our property values have increased in HBISD, so have our recapture dollars increased that are being sent back to the state, and that's happening across the state with other districts like ours. And what that's allowed the state to do is, as the recapture dollars coming into the state have increased, they've been able to decrease, in some cases, their investment in public education and move those dollars to other projects, and so we are asking for an end to this. We are advocating for a transparency fund for all the recapture dollars to go into, so that we can hopefully prevent the state from using those recapture dollars to supplant their own investment and prevent them from using recapture dollars for private schools, home schools, if, for instance, if a voucher program were to be passed, or other projects.

Speaker 2: 9:51

The second part of the idea that we want accountability and transparency for public education dollars is really an accountability piece.

Speaker 2: 10:00

We want to ensure that any school or educational entity that receives public funds even a private school or a home school participating in a possible voucher program is held to the same accountability standards that public schools are. So, for instance, we as a public school district, have accountability standards that we have to abide by that deal with student outcomes, physical performance, open records and meetings providing certain student services, specifically around special education. And we know that right now, governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick and other leaders in Austin are considering putting public funds into private education providers, and so, if they do so, we're asking that public accountability standards follow those public funds. We believe taxpayers deserve to know how all publicly funded schools, whether they're private or public, are spending their dollars and how well they're actually educating the students. So if some schools receive public funds and they're not held to the same accountability standards as others, we believe that student performance and physical responsibility and, honestly, public trust are put at risk.

Speaker 1: 11:14

So wait, are you telling me that private schools don't have the same accountability that public schools do?

Speaker 2: 11:20

Martha, that's a great question. Private schools are not subject to the same public accountability accountability that public schools do. Martha, that's a great question. Private schools are not subject to the same public accountability measures that public schools are. Our HPISD and all the public schools in Texas are subject to school board elections. They're subject to financial reporting requirements. They're subject to student outcome requirements. We must administer the STAR test. We must teach a certain set of state-mandated curriculum. We're subject to open meetings and records laws that require everything we do to be public. We're also subject to certain standards of providing certain services to students that private schools are not subject to. So it's a very different set of public accountability measures that a public school is held to versus a private school.

Speaker 1: 12:05

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Speaker 1: 12:53

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Speaker 2: 13:30

Absolutely. I'm going to turn that one to Blythe.

Speaker 3: 13:34

So the Texas legislature right now is really calling them ESAs, which stands for Educational Savings Accounts, but colloquially most people refer to them as vouchers. But basically what they are whether you want to call them ESAs or vouchers is they essentially give parents the ability to use taxpayer money to go and educate their students somewhere other than a public school, whether that's a private school or a homeschool or a private tutor. So it's taking the public tax dollars that would go into the public school for that student and allowing the parent to go and use that money somewhere else.

Speaker 1: 14:08

Okay, so tell me what the status of legislation for that is.

Speaker 3: 14:13

So the Senate has actually already passed an ESA bill it's Senate Bill 2, and the House has proposed their own bill, but they haven't voted on it yet, so theirs is House Bill 3.

Speaker 3: 14:23

And their bills are a little different, so there's probably going to be some back and forth between the Senate and the House before something is agreed upon and finalized. But the Senate's proposal allows $10,000 per student. The House's proposal is 85% of current per student funding and again, that would allow whatever that amount is for parents to use that money somewhere else. Both the bills do prioritize some of the vouchers to go to students with special needs or students who have a financial need. They're from a lower income household. But both the Senate and the House's proposals right now actually do also allow vouchers to be used by anyone, regardless of financial need. Many people have pointed out that the amount per student that they're proposing may not really be enough for a family that really has a financial need to be able to go to a private school and so that money may end up in the hands of wealthier families, and that is something that's been seen in other states that have implemented some of this legislation.

Speaker 1: 15:23

So you mentioned that private schools don't currently have the same accountability as public schools. Would they if they had school vouchers?

Speaker 2: 15:31

I cannot speak definitively, obviously, without having seen what bill gets passed, but as of today, looking at the language of the bills currently being considered, I don't see evidence that gives me confidence that the private schools and the home schools are going to be subject to the same type of accountability public accountability standards. I do know that the private schools are required to administer a nationally normed assessment, would be required to administer a nationally normed assessment, but they don't necessarily have to publish the results from those assessments. I do know that the program as a whole would have an annual audit to ensure legal compliance, and I know that there would be an annual report that would, as a whole, look at costs of the program and overall impact of the program. But that's at a holistic level and not at the level of the actual school provider, the education provider. And so if the purpose of vouchers really is to improve educational outcomes for students who are using them, then accountability measures really do need to be in place to determine whether those efforts are successful or not at the actual provider level.

Speaker 1: 16:40

So how exactly do you see this impacting us here in HPISD?

Speaker 3: 16:45

Well, the main thing is, we want to make sure that public education continues to receive adequate funding.

Speaker 3: 16:51

So right now the legislature has been saying they're planning to allocate a billion dollars towards the ESA program, but the House bill, for example, is currently written in a way that it would allow for that funding to expand to include anyone who's on the wait list the next go-round.

Speaker 3: 17:06

So, by my estimation, if every student in Texas were to apply for the program, including those who are already going to private school, that could necessitate about $6 billion in additional funding, because the state right now doesn't pay for anything for students who go to private school, and that could change. So it's unclear to us where those additional dollars would come from, and there's nothing in the proposed legislation right now that we've seen that would prevent those new dollars from coming from our recapture money or from competing with the funding for public education in general. So there are about six million students in the state of Texas and 90% of them go to public school and the vast majority will continue to go to public school. So we just want to make sure that any ESA program doesn't compete with adequate funding for the public school system.

Speaker 1: 17:57

Okay, so are you saying that recapture could potentially be going back into private schools to help them?

Speaker 3: 18:05

The way the legislation is currently written, there's nothing to prevent that from happening. So we would like, as Mary Jane said, one of our priorities that we adopted as a board is to ensure that there's public accountability for where our recapture dollars are going. So we would like to see that there's a guarantee that our recapture dollars are going to other public schools and not to private schools through vouchers.

Speaker 1: 18:28

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Speaker 2: 19:11

Yes, representatives from the board have met with both Morgan Meyer and Tan Parker to personally share our board's adopted legislative priorities and we continue to have ongoing conversations with both of them as we monitor and watch the various bills that are being brought forth and considered in both the Senate and the House. We've also been working with the Texas School Coalition, which is a collective of public school districts with similar legislative priorities that together we advocate in Austin for the necessary resources to provide really all Texas public school students an excellent education.

Speaker 1: 19:47

Well, guys, thank you so much. You've shared so much information with us and really has helped educate our public here. But what can us, as parents, and the community, do to stay informed and be more involved in these issues?

Speaker 3: 20:01

Yeah, so if you go to the district website issues yeah, so if you go to the district website, hpisdorg, and under the board tab, you can click on legislative priorities and there you can read more about the priorities we've talked about today, and you can also find contact information for our state legislators.

Speaker 3: 20:17

As Mary Jane said, morgan Meyer is our state representative and Tan Parker is our state senator, and so we would encourage all of your listeners to reach out to them and share your thoughts, because it really helps when they know what their community is thinking. Also, I would encourage people just to stay up to date on education related news. The Dallas Morning News usually writes about what's going on in Austin, and so you can go to their website and under the news tab, if you click on education, that's usually where you'll find their articles about the latest stories with regard to education. Right now, a lot of them really are about legislation, and they also actually even have a special newsletter that's just education related that you can subscribe to if you're interested in kind of following these sorts of topics.

Speaker 1: 20:58

Well, good to know. As always, I will share those links for you so you don't have to look anything up. Well, what final thoughts do you have for our community about the future of education in Highland Park?

Speaker 2: 21:08

Well, I appreciate that concluding question because it's really optimistic. I feel like we're in a really strong position. Our board has just adopted a set of five-year goals with very defined specific metrics and we're excited to see how these goals can help prioritize the work of the district and allow us to be able to report back to the community in kind of real, tangible ways how the progress that we've been able to achieve. And then I really do believe that we have really strong leaders in place that are doing the hard work of setting systems in place so that we can obtain these district goals. Academically, we've spent the last several years developing and begun the implementation of a set of frameworks in our core subject areas and while this is just beginning and we did this to ensure academic excellence across grades, across schools, and have consistency, and we are beginning to see early fruits from these labors who are excited to see how that progresses in the coming years.

Speaker 2: 22:05

And then financially, obviously we cannot control what the legislature does, but I am excited, and our board is excited, about some steps that have taken both as a district and as a community over the last several years to help put us in a much better position today than we would be otherwise. In 2021, we passed and approved eight golden pennies that allows us to keep 100% of the tax dollars that come from those golden pennies, which is huge. Most recently, our community voted to approve a bond that allows us to capitalize some expenses and free up operating budget dollars that we wouldn't have had otherwise. And then, most exciting in my mind is the efforts of our Highland Park Education Foundation towards building a Lead for Tomorrow endowment, the future and independent, so that we're not as tied to what's happening in Austin to maintain financial stability and be able to meet the needs of our students. So I think we're. I'm excited about where we are today, but even more excited about being set up for where we're going to be in several years from now.

Speaker 3: 23:16

And I would just underscore what Mary Jane said. You know this is a tough time for public schools financially in the state of Texas, but because of the support of our community and the hard work that we've been doing, I really think we are in such a better position than most districts in the state. And that would not be possible without the hours of volunteering that so many of our parents do, as well as the generosity of all of the contributions that they make through our PTAs and our Dad's Club and the Education Foundation. So we are just so grateful for the support of our community with their time, their talents, their money and, just you know, also supporting their own students in educating them as best as we can.

Speaker 1: 23:58

Well, again, I can't thank you both enough and the entire school board for all that you do, all your time, your commitments, that you give to us. I really appreciate it and I also appreciate you being here today and just helping educate the listeners of what's going on right now. I really think it helps to hear a conversation versus reading things, to hear you all talk and hear what's going on. Thank you so much for being here, thank you for having us, thank you for having us.

Speaker 1: 24:27

That's been another episode of the Bub Lounge. I'm Martha Jackson and I'll see you next time.