At The Sound Of The Tone, The Destruction Of Public Education In Texas Will Commence…

Beeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Cribbing from Phillip a bit, here are the wrecking balls that will start the destruction from the Senate version of HB 1:

First, the Senate takes $350 million from public schools:

In the Regular Session, $1.8 billion was appropriated in Rider 97 (page 24) of the Appropriations Bill to be spent on public education. The Senate has now officially broken the promise made by the Legislature, taking at least $350 million of that money to pay for an unnecessarily large and impossible to afford property tax cut instead of spending that money on textbooks, teacher aides, a health care stipend for school support staff, transportation costs, bilingual education, gifted and talented programs, or any other number of education programs that the money was originally appropriated for.

And, though you can bet your bottom dollar Republicans will be chirping about the $2,000 pay raise, they won’t tell you that they eleminated the healthcare stipend for all school support staff personnel:

Earlier versions of the bill said nonteachers, such as bus drivers, secretaries and cafeteria workers, would not receive $250 or $500 per year to help pay for health insurance after 2007. But senators stripped that language from the bill Wednesday, so the health stipend will remain in place indefinitely for those school employees.

But, the Statesman may have that wrong.

Plus, they’re going to take the tax rate down to $1.00 for M&O school taxes in 2008. As Phillip notes, that means the 80th Legislature will basically have to make drastic, to-the-bone cuts in nearly area of state government. The CCCP has more on this here.
The bill also: sets a uniform school start date (4th Monday in August); allows for public schools to be privitized (another step toward vouchers), moves school board elections to a partisan election date (November), and these, also cribbed from Phillip, who is the authority on this version of HB 1:

Sets a September election date for the first year that local districts try to raise the tax rate in their district. Anytime you don’t want anyone to care about what’s going on, set a September election date (re: tort reform, 2003).

and

Allows for three teachers of a school to decide for the ENTIRE school whether or not an incentives program should be set in place. Senator Barrientos – the one Democratic Senator who showed any semblance of understanding of how terrible this bill was – tried to amend it so that at least a majority of teachers had to approve the incentives plan. His amendment was, of course, tabled.

Phillip talks a bit more about some of the good things in the bill, but I could care less. If this bill included a free Mercedes Benz for every Texan over 18 compliments of James Leininger and Bob Perry, it still wouldn’t be dressed up enough to be any good.

Oh, and about that business of going down to a dollar. Via the Statesman, here’s what it does for Texans (aside from putting all government programs in line for the chopping block):

The bill would allow the state to dip into its $8.2 billion surplus to cut school property tax rates that are now at $1.50 per $100 in property value to $1.33 this fall, and $1 in fall 2007. That cut would save the owner of a $100,000 home $425 per year, once the tax cuts are phased in.

FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS? How can this be considered tax relief? How, how, how is this tax relief? On what planet is this real tax relief?  When I think “tax relief,” I think of bigger numbers. That’s not an electric bill in some areas. It’s not a car payment for many families. It’s not a house payment for many families.
Which makes me wonder about the fallacy of “tax relief” anyway. Let’s examine a scinario, because I want to see if I’m right or not. Just for my own amusement.

Let’s say you own a $100,000 home. School taxes are on a a per-$100-valuation basis. So, divide $100,000 by $1,000 and you get  1,000. Now, let’s assume your current tax rate is $1.50. Multiply that 1,000 by $1.50 and you get $1,500. Now, to see what you’d get at $1.33 and a dollar, do the same thing and sub $1.50 for $1.33 and then $1.00. At $1.33 it’s $1,330. At $1.00 it’s $1,000.

Now, consider that, aside from public schools, all Texans are taxed by a county. Probably more than half are also taxed by a municipality. Maybe one eighth are taxed by a junior or community college district, still others by water districts, solid waste disposal districts, etc: the list goes on and on.

What am I getting at? I’ll tell you: school taxes aren’t the entire picture. Real property tax relief has to address all taxing units and the structure of government at its most basic level. Using schools to generate “property tax relief” is  done simply because it’s the only one of the entities the Lege can get its hands around because they control the part of the purse strings that don’t come from local taxes; they exercise very little jurisdiction over the counties and cities. If they went that route, you’d be talking about complete rewrites of the state constitution, the government code, the local government code and…you get the idea. It’s impossible, truly.

So, to give conservative voters something they can grasp, the Republican dominated Texas Legislature puts its hands around the throats Texas public schools—and squeezed.

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