(C) Texas Tribune This story was originally published by Texas Tribune and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Blast - May 21, 2025 [1] ['The Texas Tribune'] Date: 2025-05 2 days until the House’s local bill deadline 6 days until the House’s Senate bill deadline 7 days until the Senate bill deadline 12 days until sine die NOT EVERYONE LIKES THE SCHOOL FUNDING DEAL Lawmakers have reached an $8.5 billion deal on public school funding that satisfies the demands from rural members, but urban Democrats feel like they were left out to dry. Instead of making a meaningful addition to the basic allotment, the deal includes a new $1.3 billion “allotment for basic costs,” or ABC. House Republican negotiators, led by Public Education Committee Chair Brad Buckley, R-Salado, say the ABC will provide schools the flexibility to spend more on basically everything but pay raises. Teacher pay is handled in a separate $4.2 billion component, which includes $500 million in raises for non-administrative staff. “We were sitting in a room with school leaders yesterday [who] said these are the things that are driving the cost of education, and this bill speaks particularly to that, and creates an allotment mechanism to help them pay things like utilities and transportation and health care costs and sort of the cost of employment that they have,” Buckley told reporters this afternoon. “I think it meets that moment.” But Democrats are skeptical about the “ABC” mechanism. House Democratic Leader Gene Wu of Houston told The Blast he hadn’t seen the text of the bill, but from what he’s heard, it sounds like the Senate got everything that it wanted, from the education savings account bill (SB 2) earlier this session till now. “I'm not sure why we passed vouchers, because we passed vouchers, and HB 2 was the hostage for vouchers,” Wu said. “All we did was ask for a hostage to be released unharmed, and they sent the hostage back in pieces. What was the point of holding it hostage for the voucher bill if you're gonna slice it up and do what we've specifically said not to do?” Republicans push back against Wu’s assertions that the Senate is getting everything it wanted. The House drove the funding increases, one member said. Asked about school leaders who share Democrats’ skepticism about the fixed-cost allotment, Buckley said school leaders “need to wait till they see what we have.” “This is a flexible allotment that gives them the freedom that they need to really run their districts,” he continued. Temple ISD Superintendent Bobby Ott, in Buckley’s home county, was one of those leaders who met with Buckley and others yesterday. Ott told The Blast he was grateful for the House and Senate’s work and believed the fix-cost allotment provides schools the funding they need, along with the pay raises. He was also surprised to see the final number up to $8.5 billion, up from the previously agreed $8 billion. “At this point in time, [school finance is] a lot brighter than it was 72 hours ago,” Ott said. The basic allotment makes complicated calculations with different weights, Buckley said, and it became a talking point this session. He left it unsaid, but Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been resistant to raising the basic allotment. Wu said rural and urban districts need support, but the current plan is “lopsided” toward rural districts. Along the way, the House took input from their rural Republicans, who were resistant to the voucher proposal. Rep. Trent Ashby, a Republican from rural East Texas, was an emissary on Speaker Dustin Burrows’ negotiating team. And before the negotiators announced the deal to the broader Republican and Democratic caucuses, they briefed rural Republicans on the framework of the deal. “As a rural member, I am very excited about the compromise plan,” Ashby told The Blast. “This is going to be a game-changer for our districts.” Meanwhile, Democrats learned the specifics of the bill along with everyone else. “It’s very disappointing that the governor, after spending all this time personally intervening in so many things on vouchers, basically just said — after he got what he wanted — ‘whatever’ and walked away, not giving a care about whether or not the hostage is released safely,” Wu said. [END] --- [1] Url: https://thetexastribune.beehiiv.com/p/the-blast-may-21-2025-0d24cf94a5adc529 Published and (C) by Texas Tribune Content appears here under this condition or license: Used with Permission: https://www.texastribune.org/republishing-guidelines/. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/texastribune/