Less than $7.5k to go!!
Posted on 08/28/2014 6:06:11 PM PDT by NYTexan
AUSTIN — Nearly three years after more than 600 Texas school districts sued the state challenging the school finance system, a Travis County judge has ruled in their favor.
In an almost 400-page opinion released Thursday, state District Judge John Dietz said that the state’s school finance system is unconstitutional not only because of inadequate funding and flaws in the way it distributes money to districts, but also because it imposes a de facto state property tax.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office, which had argued that the system was flawed but nonetheless constitutional, said Thursday that the state “will appeal and will defend this law, just as it defends all laws enacted by the Legislature when they are challenged in court.”
That means the suit, filed after lawmakers cut roughly $5.4 billion from state public education funding in 2011, will now continue to the Texas Supreme Court. Though Dietz made no public remarks on Thursday, his decision is a reprise of an oral ruling in February 2013. From the bench at the time, Dietz discussed what he called the “civic, altruistic and economic” reasons for supporting public education.
“We realize that others provided for us when we were children. We realize that children are without means to secure their education. Just as others provided for us when we were in school, now is the time when we provide for others,” he said, going on to describe the societal benefits of a well-educated population: lower crime rates, fewer people who need public assistance and a greater state income.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
Personally, I would love to see an end to education funding through property taxes. A better distribution of responsibility would be through sales tax adjustments.
Counties should have to pay their own way!
Ping! (your TX ping list...)
Yay, boo, whatever.
Not sure what this means for me, personally, except that I’m sure that they’ll find a way to claw even more dough out of me than the obscene amounts they get now.
THAT much is a given.
“.. a Travis County judge...”
Or a trained monkey ...
Ok!
Ping!!
That sounds like a good plan to me! Redistribution sux!
Thanks LS!
When will free or nearly free education on the internet make the brick and mortar schools obsolete?
Re: de facto state property tax
The only reason it could be considered a state property tax is because some other judge previously decided that local property taxes should be redistributed to the poorer school districts.
CORRECT!!!
You betcha, BB. Always ready to help spread the word about all things Texas.
I can see “helping” with the responsibility of running the state government, so we ARE independent to a point, but they just keep trying to wring more and more out of this dried up turnip!...and others like me!
If they try to install Common Core, all bets are off. Period!!
Not that crap again
Yep...same song, 32nd verse....sounds just as bad as the first.
| Texas School Districts: | 1,265 |
| Total Students Pre Kindergarten - 12 Grade: | 4,331,751 |
| Total Males: | 2,226,129 |
| Total Females: | 2,103,712 |
| American Indian Students: | 13,797 |
| Asian/Pacific Islanders : | 127,077 |
| African Americans: | 617,152 |
| Hispanic: | 1,894,489 |
| White: | 1,677,326 |
| Total Staff: | 596,335 |
| Fulltime Teachers: | 289,480 |
| Ungraded Teachers: | 33,630 |
| Texas Pre Kindergarten Teachers: | 6,368 |
| Texas Kindergarten Teachers: | 17,347 |
| Texas Elementary Teachers: | 119,710 |
| Texas Secondary Teachers: | 112,426 |
| Elementary Guidance Counselors: | 3,831 |
| Secondary Guidance Counselors: | 6,109 |
| Total Guidance Counselors: | 9,939 |
| LEA Administrators: | 7,833 |
| School Administrators: | 29,621 |
| LEA Admin Support Staff: | 3,446 |
| School Admin Support Staff: | 26,179 |
| Student Support Services Staff: | 5,312 |
| Other Support Staff: | 159,681 |
| Library Media Support Staff: | 0 |
| Librarians Media Specialists: | 4,864 |
The Tax Foundation found that homeowners in these states paid the most in property taxes compared to home value.
The percentages represent the percentage of home value that homeowners pay in property taxes.
1.New Jersey - 1.89%
2.New Hampshire - 1.86%
3.Texas - 1.81%
4.Wisconsin - 1.76%
5.Nebraska - 1.70%
6.Illinois - 1.73%
7.Connecticut - 1.63%
8.Michigan - 1.62%
9.Vermont - 1.59%
10.North Dakota - 1.42%
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