Gov. Abbott signs $8.5 billion school funding bill

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Gov. Greg Abbott signed a landmark school funding package into law Wednesday in Salado.

“Texas is number one in so many categories. Texas should be number one in educating our children,” Abbott said before signing the bill. He spoke at an afternoon news conference at Salado Middle School.

The $8.5 billion bill, known as House Bill 2, creates new buckets of money for public schools to spend on specific initiatives. This includes $1.3 billion for an Allotment for Basic Costs — to fund insurance premiums and teacher retirement pensions — $4.2 billion for teacher pay raises, over $2.2 billion for special education, childcare and school safety and more than $800 million for rural school districts.

Essential to education is high quality educators,” Abbott told the audience at the school. “We want to be able to attract and to keep the very best teachers. Toward that goal, this law provides a record pay raise for our teachers in the state of Texas,” he continued, drawing applause from the audience.

While the bill marks one of the largest increases to education funding in state history, some school leaders say they would have preferred a larger increase to the basic allotment, the amount of funding schools receive per student.

The new funds for schools are designated for specific items, like teacher pay raises, meaning they can only be used for their stated purpose. A mere increase to the basic allotment would have given schools more flexibility to use funds at their own discretion.

Three school district leaders previously told KXAN that they appreciate any increase in funding, but wish the basic allotment had been increased to give them more discretion on how to use the funds based on district needs.

Still, the funding included in the bill gives teachers a pay raise of a few thousand dollars, especially those in smaller school districts. For the districts that cannot afford to increase teacher salaries on their own, the bill provides needed relief.

The bill also ties the basic allotment to increases in property values, so the figure will continue to increase even without additional legislation.

The legislation was signed in the home district of State Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, the lead author of HB 2.