The Dumb Zone FREE - Business Friday - Jake with Chris Robey

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Jake sits down with Chris Robey, a regional director for education advocacy group, Raise Your Hand Texas, to ask, “Hey, what’s going on with these schools?”Chris Robey is a Regional Advocacy Director for the Greater Fort Worth region. He’s 1 of 13 regional advocacy directors across Texas. Raise Your Hand social links:Raise Your Hand Texas // our url: www.raiseyourhandtexas.orgFB/IG/YouTube: /RaiseYourHandTexasX: /ryhTexasLinkedIn: /raise-your-hand-texasBlueSky: /raiseyourhandtexas.bsky.social ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Welcome to Business Wednesday on a Friday, continuing our critically acclaimed series. What's going on with these schools? I'm joined today by a dumb zone listener named Chris Roby. He's with an organization called Raise Your Hand, Texas. He's the regional advocacy director for the Greater Fort Worth region. He reached out after the episode where I talked with a few grapevine, Collieville parents about some school closings. And basically this serves as a primer, at least for me, for how all,

this works. Two main areas of focus here are funding and testing. Again, this is what I would call the educational piece, shoddy. As Chris explains how these things work now and how in the view of the organization he represents, they could work better. One quick note, the candidate forum that Chris mentions here actually has not happened yet. It's February 24th. More info at raise your hand, Texas.org on the events page. Here you go. Thanks, Jake. After that podcast you released back in December on your home district listening

you talk to you talk to your advocates and kind of work through what's happening locally when I listen to it it occurred to me that it deserved a statewide conversation because you know everything that's happening in your local district

it's not isolated it's not it's not happening in a vacuum as a reason for it and it's happening across the state. So, yeah, I think this is going to be a great conversation. Yeah, so you sort of, I think it probably just has to do with the age that I am and the spot in life that I am in, but I've sort of heard the alarm bells about school funding in Texas for a decade or more. And honestly, never really paid that close of attention as to

what was happening, what made Texas different, what various factions. were pitching as far as changes. So what is the basic issue when it comes to why we have schools in a state where, you know, we hear about the business environment in the state of Texas. We know about tax revenue in the state of Texas. Why are we in this situation where school districts are saying that they don't have enough money to operate? Well, to start with what you notated on our economy and the business environment that we live in,

we're the eighth largest economy on the planet when it comes to per capita, a $2.6 trillion economy that's larger than Russia and Canada and Italy, number one in all these different areas of industry. you know, oil and gas and when power production, cotton, wool, all the different things that our own governor would put on his website, right? This is stuff that we brag about. But we are, in light of all that, in the bottom 10% of what we would call per pupil funding. And so it's basically the funding that the state allots for each individual student,

then that's the basic number that goes through from the state. to the local school districts to be able to spend on their students on MNO, maintenance operations, and that number has been stagnant for a long time now. So the last meaningful increase to that number was back in 2019, where it was raised meaningfully, and we had several sessions where it was not active upon at all for various political reasons, but it just wasn't raised. And so you get a couple of legislative sessions where the legislature decides not to touch it,

and you start to really fall behind as a state on where we spend our money or how much we spend on our schools and on our kids. And so at the beginning of last session, which would have been the 89th legislature in 2025, we were 46 in the nation per people spending, which is pretty unacceptable. Yeah. And I know that you'll get people who want to, I guess, sort of cherry pick points and say things like that the per pupil spending is not necessarily predictive or indicative of positive results. And they'll quote something like, well, look how much like Highland Park doesn't have to spend per pupil to obtain these outcomes. But there's obviously a million other reasons why.

In a case like that, you would see results like that. The fact is you'd rather not be bottom five in anything if your business and your economic environment didn't dictate that you had to be. So that's the first thing. The second thing I've also heard people say that they'll get a little bit funny with the math and not account for inflation, not account for some other. I think the governor himself will take the overall number, right? and try to put that forward. But the fact is, and I wish that they would just say this so we could have an honest conversation about it.

The fact is that the money is not increasing, right? Correct. Cost is increasing. The money is not increasing. Right, yeah. So just like our budgets have been hit by inflation over the last six or seven years, that's not any different than the school district.

They have fixed costs just like we do. I was speaking to a trustee today that that was what he loved. lamented was, you know, we, we have unfunded mandates, we have all these different expenses. We have, we have to keep the lights on. We have co-ops in the rural counties who will double their rates because of something that was put on them. And they sought to pay those bills with that per people funding that is that basic, that basic foundation. And when you start to compare school district to school district, it really ends up being apples to oranges when you compare like

Highland Park to a rural Texas school that maybe don't have as many rooftops to tax or properties that would actually be a revenue generating instrument for them to actually be able to have those programs. And then it doesn't take into account also your demographics and your economics. The socioeconomic status of a given neighborhood school is significantly predictive. And what talked about with outcomes. That is, that's, that's absolutely correlated, uh, all the way through with, uh, the successes of schools and, and how, how they're, how they're judged. Now, when you talk about the governor and, you know, officials who use the big numbers,

um, what you're seeing is the all in. So, um, you're $6,200 of that basic allowance plus federal funds, plus, uh, plus money that goes to the TEA. per administration, basically all in. That's the numbers that they like to trump it. But the money that gets to the schools that they can use for what they need to use is still at that very low $6,200 a student. And that's really where you start to get this real tension with local school boards

and superintendents to have to figure out how to make that money stretch, despite the pressures they're under. And I want to go into the emergency fund, and I definitely want to get into the accountability system, the star testing thing. But I think we first have to at least provide some context to that idea that in those subsequent legislative sessions, this was something that didn't move. And you said for various political reasons, rather than just try to make it just. I guess a political reason. What is the educational outcome desired by the people who are keeping this funding stagnant? What is the what is their pitch? What if I were if you were debating someone right now and they were saying well this is why the funding has stayed at 6250

here's the goal that I'm looking to achieve what how would they explain that? Well I don't know if I could get into the head of someone who would be arguing against this, but I would assume it has a whole lot to do with, you know, education is, public education is the largest line item in the Texas budget. It's massive. It's because our system's massive. We have 5.5 million students in our system and only California has more. And so it's really expensive to educate a group of children that large and everything that has to go into that and so when you look at the sheer numbers if you are more physically conservative you might say we're funding it pretty well but when you break those numbers out and you start to break those

numbers over 5.5 million students and everything it requires to you know keep your schools open keep your kids in special education keep your kid you know that make sure they have all the services that they need that a public school provides that can get really expensive. So you will see in those subsequent sessions that there wasn't a lot of increase. Now, other things that were at play that was historically relevant during those time were federal funds for COVID were really flowing in during that time. And so, you know, I don't know that most legislatures are the most far-sided entities. They're not thinking about, you know, how are we going to make this sustainable? They were getting a lot of federal funding.

So when you get a lot of federal funding, you don't have to pay as a state. Well, you can make that option, right? We choose that option. And so those ESER funds were really strong in that 2021 and 20203 session, but they're gone now. They're done. And so no meaningful increase was made during those times, those years. And so when you don't increase that, you fall behind all these other states that are making those increases. And then you get to the point where we are today, I don't know if you've ever gotten behind on your finances or behind on bills or whatever that looks like.

When you get really, really behind, it's really, really hard to catch up. And that's where that's kind of where we're facing right now. And so I would imagine that lawmakers during that time had those things in mind of like, you know, we have this federal money coming in. We have other priorities we're going to spend on that. And, you know, Texas goals are pretty well funded. We have a big bump of 2019. but you really take a couple legislative sessions off that on top of the voucher fight that was present in the last few sessions

really has been present in the last 20 years in Texas politics. It's been around a long long time. And really just within the last couple sessions hasn't been prevalent and really a leveraging tool when it comes to funding schools. And obviously that's something that has exacerbated this situation, little bit. I know that we've talked a little bit about the difference between the way that the charter schools are graded, I suppose, evaluated, and the public schools, and I think that's an

interesting way to kind of bridge the conversation here. So where is this situation right now? We're about to have far more voucher schools. I know that people can apply for the funds now, but how is this going to change the funds that do go to the rest of the public schools? How's this going to, how's this just going to change the landscape in the immediate future and then maybe in the medium future? Yeah, so raise your hand, Texas, definitely lobbied and advocated against the voucher system that was in play. And now, now that it's the law of the land, we are moving forward towards securing better school funding. And so it's not one of our policy lanes currently.

What we really will say about it is we don't feel like it's good policy. We think it's bad policy. It's bad for public schools in the state. Right now it's funded at a billion dollars. And there's about, I believe, about 30,000 to 40,000 applications that will go and play. your average voucher student will, or Texas Freedom account student will get about $10,000 a student. And so compare that to the $6,000 that a public school kid gets. And students with special needs can get up to $30,000.

Your homeschooled students can get about $2,000 a student in reimbursements. And so as a line item on the budget, we're about a billion dollars on that, which compared to what we spend overall is a quite a bit smaller, but what concerns a lot of people is it's a billion dollars for a half of the budget cycle so that you can go ahead and double that for a two year cycle. And there are already talks about how do we expand and grow this thing because it has gotten such a wide adoption.

So this, the advocates are concerned about this because inevitably this will grow and this will get to you look to other states like Florida and Arizona, whose systems are pretty huge now and have really hurt public schools. So right now, it's one of those we're going to have to wait and see, but it is how do we monitor this thing going forward as what the real concern is? It's not taking a significant amount away right now, but it definitely, you know, that's how it trends in every other state. And so you can assume that a state the side of the Texas with all of our number of funds, we might be number one in vouchers too at some point if we don't pay attention to it.

And what is what, in those other states, and I guess it would depend, you know, socioeconomic-wise geographically, but is it, is homeschool highly represented in the people that break away, or is it primarily people that go to tuition-based charter schools? I don't, I don't know. And just to be clear, you're. charter school and private school are kind of unique in Texas public schools because charter schools are public schools. Yeah, public schools.

And so they do not receive voucher money unless they choose to go private, which is a lot of charter schools that are seeing this and like, maybe that's what we should do. Because it's tough to be a charter school in Texas because you can't collect local revenue. Local ISCs have the taxing authority to bring extra revenue.

charter schools can't. All their funds come from the state. And so they just, they have a lot more risk involved and can be financially a little bit more volatile. So you'll see that some of those start to go private. I will, I'll admit that the breakdown of homeschool and private school, I'm not sure quite how that breaks down. The percentage is overall quite a bit less, but they do, they are able to expense quite a bit for educational expenses. And you'll see that in other states as well where they can say, you know, they can they can basically get reimbursed for their educational expenses at home and their homeschool. So, yeah, it definitely makes provisions for that. So the way that it affects the students that remain in the public school system is just there's either I imagine that there's a general lack of resources that just being poured into those schools.

There's no real interest in improving them and in growing. them and in probably doing anything more than maintaining them. I would imagine the schools would be and the students would be more spread out, which would make certain special ed programs more difficult. When you say that it's hurt schools and systems in places like Florida, what does that look like? So just like every other conversation is localized on how they'll impact, but your biggest concern in Texas is that it pulls kids out of public school.

And that's how public schools get funding. And so the more you dilute the system where there's more choice, so to speak, then that's less, more households who are not sending kids to school, who are not getting funded because they're not actually attending that school. And so you have a problem where you'll see a lot of times

where a kid will be a public school, either go to private school or homeschool, And then you will see a family do that for a couple of years and realize, oh, we're not getting, we're not having the experience we want. And so we're going to re-enroll them in the public school. Public schools don't have a choice on that. They're going to, they're going to accept every kid that gets enrolled. And that's why I love public schools is for every kid.

And that student comes in regardless of the education level they've attained, is coming back into that public school and that public schools held accountable for that kid. And so it creates a myriad of problems for local ISD where not only are they losing the revenue for those two years, but when that student comes back, they're having to use extra resources to catch them up, assuming that they need to be caught up,

or if they've not had the appropriate services that they need to get them caught up there and get them enrolled in different programs. And so it really becomes a significant disruption for a local ISD. And if you want to sit down and talk to a, superintendent about that, they can really get in the weeds on the challenges that poses to them, especially in rural areas where you'll get a lot of, a lot more

homeschool students in your urban areas, you get a lot more private schools because there's just not many private schools in rural areas. But it really does come down to, it's not only the money that's being taken out of public funding, that billion dollars that could go to public school funding, but it also takes the enrollment numbers away from public schools. and basically that's where you start to see school closures and consolidations and disruptions of theater patterns and all the things that happen.

That's a contributing factor to all those things that you hear about which you guys talked about on the Great Blind podcast a couple months ago. That not only being the only reason, but it's definitely a huge factor. So that makes sense how the public funding is one thing, but it's also the head count that they don't get to to pull in funds for. Yeah, it makes sense. And I know that part of the political cell

of the voucher system and of choice is that property taxes will be eliminated. I know that that's one that's like a carrot at the ballot box. So how does that factor into the formula? So there's the 6,200 or whatever that comes from the state. How do property taxes figure into this? Yeah, so that's where school funding, man, if you really want to take a real good long nap,

find the TEH funding formulas and how they fund schools and all the percentages and compounders and all the math that most of us don't understand. But essentially you have your biggest buckets or your state and local taxes, state funding and local taxes that are going to pour into a local ISD with some other small factors that they call it the foundation school program. It's basically all the methods of finance that fund a local public school. And so essentially, if your local school district can raise enough taxes and their tax revenues, then the state puts in less. And if you have a local IST that has a low tax base where they don't have a lot of rooftops

to tax or they don't have a lot of property to tax, then the state, will make up for those funds. And so that $6,200 is allocated. If you have a state that has a high tax revenue, then the state does not have to put in as much or sometimes nothing at all. And so that money that's appropriated does not get spent. That $6,200 is still the same,

whether or not, no matter who is putting that money in. And so that's where you get a lot of debate around Recapture or the Robin Hood, so to speak, where districts are paying back to the state excess tax revenues. So the majority of that the money that's coming, that school district is generating is from local or local tax base. Yeah, so that's actually like, I mean, it's a surprisingly progressive program, really. It is, it is. And it's, it's, you know, we get rated on as an F score on so many things in the state of Texas, you know, with our school funding.

with our accountability system, but our equity is a C, believe it or not. And so, yeah, so go Texas, right? But yeah, it is a surprisingly, it attempts to be equitable. There's a lot of flaws in the system. And there's, you know, when you talk about property taxes, I'm saying we're going to eliminate all property taxes. Raise your hand. There's something we're going to wait and see what the proposals are.

I mean, we're in primary season now, so everyone's saying everything. So the actual reality of can Texas eliminate property taxes and still fully fund our schools? It does not seem to be, it's hard to understand how that would happen. But as of now, your major ISDs generate a majority of theirs locally, And that's going to have to be readjusted somewhere in the formula. And so for the state of Texas to take on the full burden of funding local schools would be something completely new. And really doesn't have a whole lot of basis in our current tax code. And I wanted to just get back real quick to the there is the recapture,

the redistribution that gets a school district to that 60. $200, but there is still the case where you can have because of the buckets of money, you've got schools districts like a South Lake or something like that that can build a new fill in the blank stadium. But the money that they raised for that stadium, it's not like that could actually be used to pay teachers. It's not the money that is raised through, I believe, through bonds. that you can use on projects like that.

And I don't know that a lot of people understand that necessarily. Just why, you know, there's some baseline things that are equitable, but then the things that go above and beyond that, and there are strings attached to how that can be spit. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up, because I think that's a, that's a, talk about a messaging problem that schools have, is you'll see a school building a brand-new football stadium

right across from a school where the kindergarten teacher is asking for donations to Buck Phoenix. Like, that's a really tough look, right? And districts acknowledge and understand that. But when you see a new capital project

like, you know, a brand new high school or a football stadium, that's a totally separate bucket of money. That's what's called INS, interest in sinking that a school district is uses to pay back bond debt. And so anytime there's something new building

or money that's raised for physical structures generally or technology, that goes to the voters. So the voters approve that. And that money is completely voter approves. You also have what's called a baiter that's a voter approved tax rate increase that essentially allows the district

to, I don't want to get too deep enough people to get really bored by it, but there are certain mechanisms that the district can raise their tax rate marginally to be able to have more money for teacher raises, but they'd be really careful with it because that side of it can be subject to recapture. And so there's a lot of problems there. But the way I like to explain the problem with like your bond debt and when you have voter approved, physical structure like a stadium. It's like you can't take out a car alone and go buy groceries with it. I guess you could.

But it's kind of that same thing. Like there's an actual asset attached to that. And so yeah, districts can struggle with that messaging around that when there's so many financial needs if there's something being approved. And Jake, one of the things you've got to think about too, I was talking to a local superintendent where the voters approved, this massive building campaign two years before all of these financial things started hitting. So these things are approved years in advance.

They go into construction and because of changing financial, you know, these are hoping where the legislature will actually fund our schools and they don't. And now they have budget deficits and they've got a million dollar statement going out next door. And so there's a lot of complications with that where, you know, it's understandable where the public would be like, you know, what's going on? Like you guys are being so irresponsible, but it's much more complicated than someone would think on that. So I want to make sure we get to some possible solutions here for the funding, but related to the funding is the testing system. And how evaluation works in the state.

This is an issue that I guess probably heard a lot less about. but it seems pretty important. And I'd like to get a little bit of an understanding of how the testing works in conjunction with the funding. But just for those of us who have young kids or maybe your kids are out of the game, how does testing and accountability work in Texas right now? And how is that working or not working for us? Yeah, so anytime you have public funds associated with something you want to keep it accountable, right? You just don't want to just throw a much of money at a system and not be evaluated.

So it's understandable that, you know, an education that you want to have some kind of standard in which your schools were judged by. And no child left behind 20 years ago kind of started a lot of this where it really kind of put districts in schools in competition with one another. And in 2015, that was ratified a little bit more to the current system that we have. And what people don't really realize is when you're, let's just say you're looking at a new home on Zillow and you always look at the neighborhood schools, what are they rating, right? Well, I don't think people ever ask, like, well, what is that based on, right? Is it just like someone goes and gives them an A because they like what they see? You know, I mean, it could be anything, right? But in the state of Texas, your third through eighth grade students are measured completely on one test on one day.

And so your star tests that everyone stresses out about in the months of April and May, and all of the preparation and all the benchmark testing that happened before that, the reason why there's so much stress on that is that literally is the only thing that's going to rate that campus in A through F. which I just, I mean, if you just let that settle in for a second, like those are kids who are determining that, right? And then on the high school level, it breaks out a little bit where you have about 40% your start test, 40% CCMR, your college career military readiness,

and 20% graduation rate. Those are the three factors that go in there. And so it's a problematic system that really, really falls the hardest on your lower socioeconomic schools. And even within a large district, large urban district, you will find the schools that end up taking a whole system down are your schools that have the lowest socioeconomic conditions and chronic absenteeism, which are kind of hand in hand.

So if the kids not at school, they're not going to love. learn. And so you see people who really look at this where those things just really travel together. And so raise your hand, we've long advocated for a better system. There's so many other ways that you can measure the effectiveness of a local school other than a one test on one day. That could be part of it. That's okay. If we need to have some kind of accountability to the standards of the state of Texas. But what if we measured you know, student engagement or teacher retention or extracurricular activities. Any of the things that like really make a good school, right? If you think about the schools that you guys love that are close to you, is because of all these great things. No one's like, I love that at school because they make good grades in the Sarr.

Like no one ever says that, right? And so that's where there's so much. work to be done. There was some movement on it in what we call HV8 and special session, but they essentially they eliminated the star. You'll actually see the headlines. The star test

is no more, but what they ended up doing was replacing it with three smaller tests and the only one that counts is the last one. Yeah, so there's no progress based. Yeah, there's no growth. Yeah, there's no growth measure. There's some

part of the legislation that points towards it. They're going to make a committee to study it. Right, yeah. And so that's what all great organizations do is we're not going to commit to, we'll form a committee and see what happens, right? And so, but at the end of the day, it's still one test on one day. Nothing has actually changed. Tests are a little bit shorter.

There are some other elements that have changed on that. It has not meaningfully changed the system. And what's really startling, unless you really do, dug into the data, you wouldn't know this. But there's about 45 ISDs. Well, let me back up. In the last 10 years, there have been seven schools that have been eligible for take over the last 10 years. In the next two years, there's 45. Yeah, I've been seeing it in the news a lot. And if you look at another year after that, the number rose significantly. And what exactly does that mean?

That means they are on what's called a district improvement plan where they have stated goals for the TEA of how are they going to improve their overall test scores. And here's the actions we're going to take. And so they're evaluated on that plan. And so if they don't make it in those next two years, then they are eligible, the potential TEA takeover is triggered.

And so the commissioner has the authority to close the to jail. Send them to jail. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You're out. A little third graders. Or they can close down to school or do a takeover of the district where they wipe out the local control of the board of trustees,

hire a conservator, higher board of managers. That's happening, as we know locally here with a couple of our ISDs. So it can be, and there's so many things that come from that too. Just the difficulties that brings on the school district. It can be pretty traumatic for all involved. So the testing and the accountability system sounds like, certainly it sets up a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a cyclical situation. How do you happen to know roughly, is Texas in the majority, minority as far as the one-shot criteria system? How does most of the country do this?

That's a really good question. Because I know we're unique on the property tax part, right? Yeah, definitely unique on that and unique on some other elements of how we fund our schools on because we have fund on attendance, not enrollment. That's actually a very unique. There's only a handful of states that do that, and Texas is one of them. But as for how other states structure their system uniquely, I would say there's a lot to do this,

but I would have to get back to you on percentage-wise, I don't know. And the private schools, the voucher private schools, they would be taking a different test? Yes, so there's something called a criterion reference test and a normative test. The star test is based upon what's called the TEAPS, and that's a criterion reference to those standards. A norm reference test is like your maps test, and your kids probably take both of them in most of your schools.

The norm reference test doesn't count, but schools tend to use that to measure growth. You see, you know, when your child starts second grade, are they kind of meeting those national standards compared to their peers across the country? And you'll get these fancy charts that come back from it. That's that. Those is the norm reference test. And yes, that is the standard in which your ESA money is. So, yes, they are, as of now, two different tests. Okay, and what's the reasoning for that?

That's a great question, Jake. You know, in some ways, the star or the TEEC's based testing has been just the standard for Texas schools for a really long time. And to make that change is pretty disruptive for your big bureaucracies. So there's probably part of that. and, you know, raise your hand, we really did advocate more for that norm reference test. It is a better indicator of growth. And so we know through HB8 there is some movement towards growth indicators and growth reference tests. I don't know if that.

I think people can really interpret that how they want to of like, you know, is this a two-tiered system? is this, you know, some kids get the good test and some don't. I can't really judge how the lawmakers judged that, or, you know, made those decisions, but they, you know, it definitely does, it does set up two different systems for sure. And it kind of remains to be seen what that's going to look like in the long term. And also note, too, that these systems aren't going to be in place for a couple more years. it won't start like the new testing system what's called it's called the student success tool just so you know that that won't start until the 2027 years so they're still in rulemaking and trying to create the new standards for that

and how quickly could we get into this rainy day fund because uh i feel like this is something that every single Texas citizen should know about. Yeah. That we're just sitting on $27 billion. Yeah. Well, and when we first talked to, one of the reasons I brought this up was, you know, raise your hand.

You know, we advocate for better school funding. And so, you know, every session you hear about these budget surpluses, right? So I think in 2023, there was like $33 billion budget surplus. And in our last session, we had in the mid-20s, like $2527 billion, so surplus money that was generated. So what the rainy day fund is something completely different. You'll hear them use interchangeably, but understanding that the rainy day fund is a,

essentially as a reserve for the state of Texas. So it's cleaned off of oil and gas royalties, not to get too deep in the weeds on that. So basically, when the oil and gas, industry is really booming in Texas, which it is. That fund gleaned the certain royalties off of that. So for a lot that, it was set up in the, I think the late 80, or sorry, the, the, the, the, sometime of the 90s.

It didn't really have a lot of money in it for a while, but it's called the economic stabilization fund. But actually it serves as like the state of Texas emergency fund. If there's a disaster or there's a budget shortfall, it's somewhere that the legislature can draw from. Well, it's statutorily set at a certain amount where you can only have, you can have so, the lower, lower side is a certain amount of the budget and the higher side is the peak. Like you can't put anything else in it, excuse me. And so now, since oil and gas has been doing so well, next at the end of this budget cycle, at the end of 2027, it is statutorily capped at $27 billion.

you can't take any it actually legally can't hold any more money like I like to say scrooge McDuck's pool is full you can't you can't put anything else out of it right and so that money just spills over into general back into the general fund and so when you when you kind of look at it that way it's it's essentially a checking account that doesn't draw any interest because any interest that it does draw it's just going to spill back into the general fund is capped. And so that's important because when we're talking about these huge deficits in public school funding,

we have this massive amount sitting over here that's not being used, then we really, it opens up a conversation of what could we actually do with this instead of this being like an asset that's literally a drag on our economy, because I mean, you think about that much money just sitting there doing nothing. It can hurt a safe credit rating.

It can cause all kinds of issues. It's the largest reserve of any state in the country right now. And so raise your hand where we consider what could we actually do with that. Do you want to talk about that a little bit about kind of? Well, yeah. I mean, I guess the first thing, just as a political opportunity, to me, it would seem that you have a shot at some level of a compromise. where if privatization is happening at and they're sort of getting what they want in that regard that some of that money, which even if it's not tax money, it is public money.

It's money that's being made with public land. Maybe that that, maybe you're able to pry some of that money away from there. And yes, interested in what it would look like if they wrote you a $10 billion check. tomorrow. Yeah, it'd be great when it's solve all our problems, right? So the reality is just for, in the last budget cycle, for us to get back to the purchasing power of 2019, it would have been a $20 billion check to just get us back to that purchasing power.

We were that far behind. And to get us to the 25th percentile, basically the 25th and per people funding, the state of Texas would have to spend about $30,000. $40 billion just to get to 25%. So that's just to kind of illustrate how far behind we are. Yeah. And so while we will always advocate and continue to advocate for increase per pupil spending, the increase of that basic allotment,

we didn't really get into all the wise that's so important, which we can't in a second, but understanding that there needs to be a solution that is, more long term. Like we talked about with during COVID, how our lawmakers were really kind of thinking about that session and how that money is just not gonna last forever. Well, in the state of Texas, we don't really have anything that's a growing asset

for public schools. And that's really what we're advocating for in the 90th legislative session, which is our next one. I'll start 2027 is how do we create a fund that would take something like a $10 billion out of some kind of fund? and put it to work for our schools. And so we are, we're proposing what we're calling

the Legacy Education Fund. We feel like you talked about kind of the political moment. This could be a real moment where folks are looking at our public school and saying we need to have a longer term solution. And so we are advocating for and working with our legislature and working with local advocates on what would it look like to take to draw from something like the Rain Day Fund

or budget. surplus a large, meaningful amount of money and actually put it into an endowment that would be, that would go to work for a public school instead of just sitting there doing nothing. And, you know, what people don't realize is these public school endowments are a method of finance that work in lots of other states, conservative and, you know, blue and red states, both. This is not a new thing. This is just new in Texas. The state of Michigan essentially funds this basic allotment with its endowment. It's that large and that meaningful. And so this is, we feel like this is the time to be able to do something like this.

It's not going to solve every one of our problems to start with, but you know, an additional $500 million coming off of a $10 billion endowment that grows year over year could be a very, very meaningful addition to the future of public schools. Yeah, it's very interesting. And on that basic allotment, yeah, I mean, it's just something we throw around. Here's the number. What actually goes into that? Why is that so important? It's the multiplier for everything in the school funding formula. So the higher that number is, the higher the special education allotments are. The more tax or the less tax revenue has to be paid by a local entity. So in theory, a higher basic allotment would be a lower recapture rate for a local ISD. And that's a big topic here in the Metroplex is, you know, a lot of ISTs don't want to send money back to recapture. They want to use it for their local schools.

So a higher basic allotment. And, you know, today I spent a lot of time on the phone and text conversations with local ISDs with their superintendents, with their leadership with trustees, and just kind of ask them the question. like what would be the big thing that would help your local school really have what they need? So basically, you know, what's going to impact it. And across the board, it is that basic allotment increase because it affects everything. It's just it's kind of like that. It brings the level up for everything else to be funded at a higher percentage.

And so that's, you know, and this legacy education that I'm talking about, it will be, we will be advocated for both of these strongly in the 90th legislature. But, you know, that political moment exists to establish something like a permanent fund for public ed while also advocating for the higher, that higher basic allotment. Does that make sense? Yeah, it definitely does. Some of its optics. If you're in a district, you say, I don't want my money going there. If they raise the basic allotment, it is still your money. It's just coming from a different pull of taxes.

But however you look at it, either way. Yeah, I was looking at just thinking about some of the responses that you got today. I've heard a little bit about the, the strings attached to funding that, hey, we are going to increase in this one area or that. Security comes up a lot, that there are, that there's, like, hey, well, actually, we did give you money,

but it's not for filling in budget shortfalls. It comes with, and actually the money we're giving you is for this. You just spend it for this. Is that something that has picked up in recent years? Is that always been part of the game? that seems a little bit underhanded. It's, and it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, for my understanding, kind of a newer way of, of writing these bills. And, you know, with the basic allotment, it's a multiplier and that's

what goes to public, that's what goes to your local schools to spend discretionarily on what they need, right? And so you have, they have freedom to use that basic allotment for teacher raises for, um, repairs for any number of things, right? But recently, there was $8.38 billion that was invested in public schools through what's called HVE2, House Bill 2 and regular session. One of the largest single increases in school funding in Texas history. And it sounds great. Like, I don't think anyone's going to shake a stick at $8.38 billion. And when you talk to local school districts, they're thankful for it because it's,

It increases teachers' wages. It increases teacher training. It increases special education allotments, school safety. Small marginal increase to that basic allotment is like $55, I think, that was added to the basic allotment. But it is, like you said, and the feedback we got was from superintendents. It is tied and it's tied to certain. budget line items and they can't do anything else with it.

And so, so for instance, if you're a third, fourth, or fifth year teacher, you will get a pretty significant raise. And no one's gonna, everyone's gonna love that. But if you're a first or second year teacher, if you're a counselor, if you are support staff, if you're a bus driver, if you work in the lunchroom, custodial staff, there's nothing there for school districts to actually make those, give those meaningful raises

to those employees, to be able to retain quality employees in that level. And so to be able to recruit really good entry level teachers, which a lot of school districts, that's what they can afford, right? Is that level? They cannot offer anything more than that really base rate of pay. There's nothing from the state that helps them boost that. And then to be able to hang on to interventionists and mental health professionals and special programs, you know, your, you know, your,

your fine arts, all of that. You know, like in my home district where we are, you know, my students, my own kids lost like band directors and, you know, orchestra directors. And, you know, they're operating a skeleton staff because HP2 did not fund that. And so, you know, you have superintendent's trustees that have all this money, but it is so targeted.

and it puts all of us who advocate for public schools in kind of a tough spot because, like, you don't want to, you don't want to be ungrateful for that increased funding, but you really can't, by the way the laws are written, you were very limited to how you can do that. And so it creates an optics problem for local ISCs because you see the $8.38 billion, right? biggest single funding in Texas history or one of them. Big headlines. Big headline. But schools are closing.

Budget or deficit. Schools are still in financial peril. So if you weren't really keen on public schools or you were just kind of taking a look at that, you might assume that that money was being misbandaged, right? too much administrative bloke. You know, the schools are spending money on wrong things. And so, you know, it does put schools in a tough spot where when that basic allotment isn't touched, so I keep harping on it, then school districts have so much less discretionary funding

to spend on what they really need to spend their money on. And so it just puts them at a place where they're having to cut programs just to be able to keep their district solvent and be able to plan for the future for future session. And I'll also throw this in here. One of the real struggles for Texas public schools is, you know, Texas budgets based on a two-year cycle, called a biennium. And so they have to forecast what they think the legislature is going to do. And so you see school districts who are making plans, then all of a sudden they change their plans. and a lot of times is when they realize the cavalry is not coming to help. When they realize the legislature's not going to fund them to the extent that they thought they were,

that's when they have to start adopting these budget deficits. I cannot imagine having to make a budget in that kind of environment to be able to forecast multiples of millions of dollars to keep your schools open and fully funded, not really knowing if you're going to get the funding that you need because you cannot depend on that legislature to come through for you. That's why I think that the endowment idea is a very novel one because it would always ostensibly be there as a backstop.

And it would be being reinvested. So is this an idea? Like has this been pushed before? Is this a raise your hand, Texas original joint? Like what are? Yeah, kind of. Yeah, it's kind of exciting. That is.

So let's talk about your role, the organization's role. How does this work? What do you guys do? Yeah, so my organization is a statewide advocacy organization for public education. We're unique in the sense that we have presence in Austin. Actually, our office looks at the Capitol. It's really kind of cool. What do you go there?

We were there because we want advocates to come and feel like to have a home there in Austin where you have a home base, especially during session, that they can come. and rally and go to the capital and talk to their lawmakers. My position is called a regional advocacy director. There's 13 of the knee across the state. We're in these geographically unique regions. So I'm Greater Fort Worth, which is Tarrant County, Ellis Johnson, and Somerville County is that covers 13 Texas House districts.

And so that's what's called my delegation. And so my responsibility is to build, or part of my responsibility is to build relationships with our delegation, which is your state representatives. And your state representative is kind of the closest thing you have as a citizen to your state government. They represent about 180 to 200,000 people. And so over heavily gerrymandered districts like every district seems to be. But you are in a house district. And my job is to help connect you with that legislator.

and for that legislator to be able to hear from the advocacy base, the grassroots base of public education to know how important it is that they fund public schools. And I didn't really stress this earlier. I felt like I should have led with this, but it is not the school board or superintendent's responsibility to fund public schools. That is solely the legislature's responsibility. that is their job constitutionally they appropriate the money and so if our local legislators do not hear from their constituents about how important it is to fund their schools about the stories about how their schools are struggling um sometimes you know our our

representatives our legislators are part-time legislators like they have jobs this is not you know Public school finance is not a lot times their expertise. And so being able to help them and their staff understand how it works. What is a public school endowment? What would that even look like? What is the basic alignment? So that's the best part of what we do is help our state reps know what's happening and then bring the local advocacy base to them,

help empower and enable our local advocate to be able to speak up. It's kind of the clever raise your hand idea is how do you, how do you as a normal person speak to power about public education? How do you do so effectively? That's a big part of what I do is I'll do like what we're doing right now is sit down and talk about the mechanics of Texas school finance and a way we can understand and be able to articulate. We advocate in what we call us two-year advocacy cycle. We're about halfway through it right now. We're heading to the primaries in Texas on March 3rd. And so, you know, we're doing things like candidate forums.

I'll be hosting one, I think a little bit before this episode drops, where we're actually gathering all the candidates from a district to ask them questions about public education. Where do they stand on it? And what do they plan to do should they get elected and go to Austin in 2027? So our job is to build the local advocacy base to help empower people. If they want to just send a note to the representative or they want to rally around a cause with public education or if they want to go and testify to the Committee on Education in Austin, if they want to go walk the halls of the Capitol and advocate for public education,

And that's why we're here. So they can feel empowered to do that. And I know whenever I was younger, I would have loved to have someone kind of walk alongside me and kind of say, hey, this, you know, here's how you actually do this. Like, and you actually can. You actually can have access to this level of local, of statewide government. And so it's a really exciting role to play. I can't believe I get to do it. Can't believe I get to talk to you about it.

um it's it's it's pretty cool no it's very uh it's very interesting to me and it's something that's always like i think i said at the start it's always seemed very opaque um and the the formulas for the the funding might be complicated but i think you do a good job of explaining uh it's not that complicated um and and the idea that people actually can get their voice heard yeah i think you're doing a great thing how can people how can people how could people how could people learn more about what you do and reach out to you. Yeah, I appreciate that. So raise your hand, Texas.org is our website.

And there's a little tab there that says, who represents me. And that's where I encourage you to start. And when you click on that, you just enter your home address. And that's not for us to mail anything. We don't do that. What it does is that places you in your state house district. And I'll let you know, here's, you'll get a picture of me. sweating on the Capitol. It was a really hot day when I took my picture. And you will see your

state representative, your state senator, your school board of education representative, those will all pop up and it will give you a chance to sign up with your email. And that, that we, especially during session, we set up updates. Like, hey, here's what's happening. And it gives you a chance to know more about what's happening with your, with your state representative. to public education, but what's really pretty cool is we have the capability of connecting you directly with your state rep. And so we do what's called calls to action. And it's a really basic idea where we, what are the right times, we'll send out basically an all call to everyone who has signed up with us or anyone who cares about public education. and it gives you an opportunity to send an email, a text,

email or a text directly to your state representative. And what's interesting this time around is that we've included candidates for office as well. And so we've done a, we did a call to action back in December that was a basic, hey, fund our schools in the 90th legislature. And this call went out to all of the candidates. And you talk about some startled candidates. So what's going on? We start starting to get hundreds of emails and texts from people. And that's where it doesn't take as much as you think it does to get the attention of a candidate

or your local representative. And so we will do another call to action towards the end of the month. It's around assessment accountability reforming that system. And then as we head into the general election, we will do more of those. So I just really encourage you if you're interested and want to take action, this is like a really direct way you can do that. And what we found this time around especially as candidates, especially they'll email you back and say, yeah, I want to hear more.

Some won't, a lot will, because this is a chance for them to directly interact with their voters and their constituents. And, you know, we try to do so in a way that is humane. We're not trying to scream and yell at people. We're trying to be effective in this space. Sometimes screaming and yelling is incredibly effective. But as for introducing voters to their lawmakers, we want to try to build some kind of relationship, some kind of a way that we can get some things done.

Because we, and I didn't talk about this either. We are a bipartisan organization. We work on both sides of the aisle because public education is one of those really rare spots where both sides can kind of throw in the same direction. So you won't ever find us endorsing candidates or taking political sides. We are, you know, rabidly bipartisan in this realm. And so it helps us be effective in this work.

So I encourage people to look that up who represents me. And, you know, sign up with the email on your text. We do not blast. We just don't do that. We really only send it out when it's important because otherwise people will ignore it. Well, anything else you'd like to add before we get out of here? Yeah, last thing is March 3rd is the primaries, the primary vote for the state of Texas. And so this is where your different parties will choose their candidates who will run in the November election.

It's a very low turnout election as most of these are. but we highly encourage you if you're listening to this to like do a quick search with your with any of these candidates and just kind of look at the platform and see where do they stand on public education try not to like get past the R and the DEP can and just kind of see where where do they stand on public ed where are they looking to fund public education how they look into support look into the specifics you get questions like email the campaign or if you don't know how to do that just reached out to me, say, hey, I got this candidate's here. I don't know how to get in touch with it because you help me.

I will help you connect with that candidate. Because that's what we do. And we are really well known in the state of Texas with public education. That's part of when you partner with us, you're going to partner with our reputation in Austin. And so most of the time, especially our established lawmakers, will know who we are. And so if you want to connect with that lawmaker, and I'm not saying that just to say, like, that's to your advantage as a local stakeholder

to be able to get into contact with those candidates. So we really highly encourage you to go vote, even if you don't normally vote in primary elections. This is your chance to be able to do that and support public education. All right, good deal, man. We'll keep in touch. Appreciate the work you're doing.

Thanks for talking to me. Thanks, Jake.