Discussion for article #227026
Texas has schools? Who knew?
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texass trying to out stupid Kansas…And there off way off…forrest gump was right stupid is as stupid does
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Yes, and at one time, Texas had ridiculously cheap education available at state colleges. During my last semester at the University of Houston in 1984, I paid a whopping $214 for 15 hours of classroom instruction.
I don’t think I paid $2500 in total for my BS degree.
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The dream solution: private, for profit, charter schools. They won’t have to bother with those useless subjects of math and science and will be free to teach Rush Limbaugh sex education, Sarah Palin critical thinking, Rick Perry ethics and best of all creationism and apocalypse fantasies by Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee. What could possibly be wrong with that curriculum?
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Hey I thought that according to Rick “oops” Perry Texas was the bestest state in hole onion!
Guess the glasses aren’t helping after all. Too bad that reality does tend to trump lies.
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Great timing - in the local paper today, there was an op-ed whining about the Dem candidate for Lt. Gov - Leticia Van de Putte call for more educational spending via the Rainy Day Fund.
I went back and attached this information - the whining will commence soon, I'm sure! :-)
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A 400 page decision. Wow. That’s like writing The Great American Novel of court rulings I’m guessing. And yet, still nothing will happen anytime soon in Texas as their legislature convenes so little for such a large state. Part time legislators doing at best a half-ass job most of the time.
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It is true that just “throwing money” at schools won’t solve any problems. What would help is if Republicans actually believed in the importance of a good public school system.
But when a large percentage of the Republican base and the politicians themselves see public school as a nursery for spawning liberals, homosexuals, and progressive thought, that isn’t going to happen. The rich think the solution is exclusive private schools, and the less than rich think that getting home schooled with an emphasis on bedrock* Christian principles is the real solution.
- bedrock = stone age
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I can tell you as a native Texan that we don’t all fit the TexAss profile, support Republicans, wear cowboy hats or kick shit. I’ll also tell you that I’m mad as hell that I’ve owned my house here in Austin (a liberal bastion, indeed) for 20 years and seen my property taxes go up, and up, and up and seen no improvement in our schools.
My daughter and I live in our 1100 square foot house in the poor part of town and this year my prop taxes are over $5000 dollars. And our local community college just announced they’d like to take an additional 9% to bring themselves up to speed.
I’m currently trying to transfer my little 3rd grader out of the POS middle school she’s currently in and into a better school across town, but were on a waiting list. Don’t know about other parts of the country but here we not only pay high school taxes for shitty schools, we’re required to buy school supplies that include copy paper for the office and dry erase markers for the teachers.
Some of us Texans really do care about these shenanigans our pols are engaged in and vote accordingly. I’ve always said Texas is turning purple, and to not discount the sleeping brown giant. And some of us are engaged in grassroots efforts to help speed the change.
Please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not all Texans are religious gun hugging hicks just because the state elects pols like Perry and Bush who project that stereotype.
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I hear you. I have a dear friend who is a Democrat who lives in a small town north of Dallas, and she’s deemed a “good liberal” in a town full of RWNs who will unfailingly vote for repubs who do them no good nor effect any positive change in their lives. I’m stunned by the amount of prop tax you pay as well. In California we enacted the much-hated Proposition 13 in the Seventies and prop tax for those who owned a home before it was enacted is very low (there’s a formula governing taxation). Sales tax is high, but with low prop tax I can afford to stay in my 1100 sq ft. house. I couldn’t agree with you more about the purple trend, either, hope it only continues.
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Rick Perry and Chris Christie have a lot of splainin to do about how they would run the country differently than they have run their states institutions into the ground.
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Not having any state income tax is a major reason why property taxes are so high. Somebody has to pay for schools and property taxes are the But putting so much of the burden for funding schools on property owners also creates a lot of the underfunding problems. Many property owners, being older and wealthier, don’t have kids in public schools, so they don’t want to pay high property taxes to pay for schools. A small state income tax would be a great equalizer.
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Perry stole from schools. Don’t think he and his henchmen didn’t get their cut.
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Hey! 
Texas? Fixing its educational system? Don’t make me laugh.
Slagathor – fellow Austinite here. I’ve been here a bit over ten years, but I don’t identify as a Texan. This is just where I’m living. However, it still pisses me off when my fellow liberals spout shit about forcing Texas out of the union. Hey, 40+% of us voted for Obama, and that 40% is probably more Democrats (in absolute terms) than the number of Dems from whatever state they are living in.
Because the Republicans have gerrymandered the state so effectively, we really don’t have very much representation. So, smack-talking fellow liberals, you should seriously reconsider your glib comments. Can we count on you for help and back-up, or do you prefer to stay smug in your own cozy situation?
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Yep; a huge part of the problem is that the schools are run but a state school board where a majority not only doesn’t believe in science, but believes public schools themselves are evil. You would think that would be a disqualifier for serving on the public school board, but apparently it’s a plus in Texas.
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They took Thomas Jefferson out of the curriculum to put in Phyllis Schlafly. I fucking kid you not.
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What’s not being reported is the root of the funding crisis.
In 2005 (?) the Tx Lege restructured school finance to shift some of the burden from property taxes to a revised business tax called the “margins” tax. This was coupled with lowering property tax rate by $0.10-0.20 I believe.
Well before 2010 it was well known that the margins tax was falling short. By 2010 it was falling short about $5 billion. The 2009 session used stimulus money to close the gap, that wasn’t available in 2011. Hence the cut.
So here we are now: Margins tax still continues to not fund what it was supposed to and property taxes have risen back to the levels back in 2005 when people were screaming for relief i.e. some folks in business got their tax bills cut at the expense of schools.
Wrt to Robin Hood, not many people realize that property “rich” cities such as Austin send nearly 50% of their collected tax to the State for redistribution. This is why you have public schools asking for basic items such as copy paper.
It’s a disgrace if you value public education. If you don’t it’s a story of a nicely pulled off con job.
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