This time they mean it: Austin district trustees move closer to school closures

This article by Melissa Taboada of the Austin American-Statesman is very concerning.  There is a lot of detail to plough through in this piece which also provides a decent history of school closures.  That said, Education Austin President Ken Zarifis maintains that "because the majority of the underenrolled schools are in the district’s eastern side, he will not support any closures unless the district first redraws boundaries," and "exhaust all options," generally speaking.

The hollowing out of the city core is deeply concerning. This reflects gentrification and the charterization of schools on Austin's East Side.  I know that they target the Latino, frequently immigrant, community ferociously.  Not speaking about any one charter school, in particular, from my own work in East Austin, I see first hand how our parents fall prey to the glossy handouts and the impassioned sales pitches to lure public school kids out of our East Side schools.  Nevermind the data and powerful evidence that show that parents would do really well to think twice before putting their child in a charter school. 

The shorter and longer game is that we as a polity, as advocates for public education, "poach" these students back into our schools by expanding the programs like dual language education, environmental science, arts programs, as well as community-based programs with high levels of parents involvement, that simultaneously breathe life into the curriculum, schools, and surrounding community.  

Dual language education and Ethnic Studies could and should be major draws that distinguish AISD not only from charter schools locally, but also with respect to public education in our country, as a whole, where such programs often depend on local champions as opposed to being embedded in district policy and practice.  Not that this or any district is perfect, but rather that because governance is local, we as communities can advocate for and seek changes like these that we want, need, and are research-based to boot.

John Dewey famously referred to our nation's public school classrooms as "laboratories for democracy."  With this as a premise, shuttering schools is bad for democracy.  

I am happy to read that the district has plans to work with the Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Council Member Kathie Tovo to transform "shuttered campuses into affordable housing or city parks."

Although this piece makes me sad, I can only imagine what it's doing to those that are feeling targeted at the moment.

-Angela Valenzuela

This time they mean it: Austin district trustees move closer to school closures

By Melissa B. Taboada

February 7, 2019

After years of putting off a decision to close schools, Austin district leaders are forming a plan that would consolidate campuses starting in August 2020.

It’s too early to know which schools will be shuttered or even how the decisions will be made. But district leaders say postponing a decision is not an option as they predict a bleak financial forecast, exacerbated by a plummeting student population, ballooning annual recapture payments to the state, and depleting district reserves. The district must eliminate a $60 million shortfall by next school year.

Administrators on Monday will begin discussions with the school board on developing criteria for closing and consolidating campuses. Officials said they would later involve parents and a committee that has been studying the issue. According to a preliminary timeline, criteria and guiding principles would be set by April, administrators would present schools for possible consolidation by May and trustees would make decisions as early as June.

“We want to ensure every single scenario we produce puts a student in a better school environment. Period,” said Matias Segura, district operations officer. “The methodology we develop and the principles we use to verify our outcomes will certainly reflect that.”

The school district for at least the past quarter-century has been criticized for holding on to chronically underenrolled schools. State officials, consultants and district committees since at least 1993 have called out the district for inefficiencies, all recommending shuttering campuses.

But such discussions always have been met with public backlash, as parents and students defend neighborhood schools and East Austin community leaders warn against closing schools in a part of the city that for years dealt with the trauma of school closures as part of a desegregation plan that shuttered schools designated as black-only and kept open schools for whites.

The district’s financial strains aren’t new, though they’ve been worsening in recent years. District trustees repeatedly have said they will be forced in the coming months and years to make difficult choices, the cuts previous district leaders adamantly opposed, to solve the district’s financial woes.

“We can’t afford to spend in the same way we have,” said board President Geronimo Rodriguez. “There is a political will to put all options on the table. There is a will to make the hard choices. We have to act.”

Calls to close

The district’s enrollment has been declining for six consecutive years, but there have been calls to close low-enrolled schools ranging back a quarter century, when a Texas School Performance Review stated Austin facilities were underused and recommended the district close schools. Then in 2000, in a 736-page audit, the state comptroller again recommended consolidations. In 2009, financial consulting firm MGT of America, hired by the district, also recommended taking campuses offline. Within months, the district acted on more than half of the consultant’s recommendations, but shuttering campuses was not among them.

And in 2011, a facilities committee tasked with finding inefficiencies recommended closing schools. About 1,500 people showed up to district meetings in one week to oppose the closures. And the school board shelved the recommendations.

In 2016, a new facilities and bond advisory committee worked alongside administrators for more than a year to create a facilities master plan, which was adopted in 2017, and also suggested schools should be closed. The consultant initially working on the plan identified schools for closure, but the committee’s facilities report did not list specific campuses. Instead, it called on the school board to examine whether schools should be closed after three consecutive years of low enrollment. Trustees approved that plan, with safeguards to provide underenrolled schools resources and support to help boost enrollment before they would be considered for closure.

Most recently, an administrative plan to balance the budget listed 12 schools that could be closed to help narrow the gap. Then in January, a budget stabilization task force found that the district could save $1.2 million for each closure, pointing to 15 elementaries with fewer than 300 students, but did not name specific schools. The majority of the more than three dozen schools with enrollments under 75 percent of capacity are located east of Interstate 35. Some rank low by state testing measures and count high numbers of Latino and African-American students from low-income families.

District leaders, including some trustees and administrators, have said students who attend aging, underenrolled schools would be better off attending modernized or new campuses with strong academic programs and brimming with students.

Low enrollment won’t be the only factor in identifying schools to close, Superintendent Paul Cruz said. Other criteria will include the physical condition of schools and their educational suitability, he said. Consultants three years ago performed complete facility and educational suitability assessments of every school. Several trustees also have said they want to consolidate schools in an equitable way, which could mean closing schools that are not under-enrolled west of Interstate 35.

“We have to look at developing a criteria that is equitable and considers multiple factors so that one or two communities aren’t disproportionately impacted,” Trustee Cindy Anderson said. “It is one tool to balance enrollment, but we need to examine feeder patterns and boundaries. It’s going to take a number different strategies to balance out the district. No one thing is going to solve the issues. We don’t want to create more problems with it.”

Losing students

The 80,000-student Austin district has declined by more than 6,000 students since 2013, which equates to about $115 million in lost state funding.

School district administrators and demographers attribute the enrollment declines to a number of factors, including transfers to suburban districts and charter schools, and birth rates that declined with the 2008 recession. The number of school-age children living in some pockets of the district is falling, a phenomenon common among urban districts. Demographers describe the loss as a doughnut-shaped hole in the city, where the core has more schools with vacancies. Schools in other parts of the district continue to grow.

Despite a housing boom downtown and areas near downtown, few new homes built in those areas are designed for or marketed to families. At the same time, the new housing is driving up real estate prices, pricing out lower-income families.

The average market value of homes in the Austin school district last year was $441,067, much more than the average market values of homes in Del Valle ($184,059), Hays ($205,261), Pflugerville ($255,785), and Round Rock ($340,767) — four area districts that attract Austin families.

The enrollment decline comes even as the district has enacted countermeasures, including adding prekindergarten for 3-year-olds, starting tuition-based prekindergarten classes, launching a marketing campaign and opening doors to students who live outside the district boundaries. The district has picked up about 2,400 students by allowing transfers from other districts. District officials also have been working with underenrolled schools, allowing specialty programs, such as a dual language program at Becker Elementary in South Austin, a fine arts program at Blackshear Elementary in East Austin, and a dyslexia program at Covington Middle School in South Austin and providing money to market those programs.

Without those efforts, the declines could have been steeper, but critics say the district has not included surrounding communities for input or done enough to help the struggling schools.

Overcapacity, underenrolled

District officials over the years have discussed solutions to address the district’s overcrowded and half-empty schools. But talks about possible school closures and boundary changes have long been contentious in Austin.

Thirty-seven Austin district schools are at or below 75 percent capacity, the threshold the district considers when defining campuses as underenrolled. But nearly an equal amount, 38, enroll more than 100 percent of capacity. In some pockets of the district, particularly in Northwest and Southwest Austin, overcrowding is common, with schools beyond 150 percent capacity. Three elementary schools in those areas have more than 1,000 students, the size of the district’s larger middle schools.

But other campuses, primarily in East Austin, are half-empty, with one at 29 percent.

Download the data

Critics have said the district is pouring millions of dollars into repairs of old buildings, which diverts money away from academic goals. A January report by the Budget Stabilization Task Force also called on the district to shutter schools, but told trustees that cuts must not have “a disproportionately negative impact on certain parts of the district, namely East Austin.” Specifically, the report said closures cannot be limited exclusively to schools that are underenrolled, and recommended consolidations and any boundary changes should increase socio-economic and cultural diversity at schools and must be balanced east and west of Lamar Boulevard.

“All of the easy and non-controversial budget corrections have already been made, leaving only the special interest, sacred cows to be evaluated,” the task force report said. “Only the politically charged and difficult options to address the structural budget deficit remain.”

Attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights Project in 2014 warned Austin district officials against closing schools on the eastern side of the district. Other proponents of keeping schools open have said closures of underenrolled schools would have a disparate effect on already marginalized neighborhoods. One group of regular district activists have threatened to organize an independent district or to be absorbed into a neighboring one.

Ken Zarifis, the president of labor group Education Austin, and one of the task force members, said because the majority of the underenrolled schools are in the district’s eastern side, he will not support any closures unless the district first redraws boundaries.

“We need to exhaust our options before looking at closing schools, but we haven’t done that,” Zarifis said.

Nationally, 1,573 schools, mostly elementary campuses, were closed in 2014-15, the most recent data available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Closures have been common among major urban school districts, with dozens shuttered in Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The Dallas district also has closed multiple campuses in recent years. Dallas school leaders last year proposed shuttering more, a plan that was met with resistance and prompted them to scale back to just a few.

Desegregation echoes?

Some experts warn there are repercussions to shuttering schools: Home values often decrease in the neighborhoods with closed schools; parents, particularly those in low-income neighborhoods, have more difficulty getting their children to the new campus locations, and building a sense of community and parental engagement becomes harder.

“Communities of color and low-income communities pay the burden of the closure but they’re not compensated for the burden,” said Michelle Renée Valladares, associate director at the National Education Policy Center, a nonprofit policy research center in the school of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “There are a lot of ripple effects and unintended consequences when closing a school. The transitions have never been as smooth as promised so it has a tremendous disruption in the life of the kids. Building that sense of community and parental engagement becomes a lot harder.”

Some see in suggestions of focusing closures in East Austin an echo of the city’s rocky history of desegregation.

As part of the desegregation efforts, the district in 1971 shuttered the original L.C. Anderson High School, which served as a place of pride for many in East Austin’s African-American community.

Parent Emily Sawyer, whose children attend two underenrolled schools said district leaders must be “bold and undeterred by discomfort” in determining what equity should look like in the district as officials approach consolidations.

“Given the current realities in our city and district, school consolidations have become necessary and I believe inevitable,” Sawyer said. “It is not enough, however, to simply be fair minded and logical in choosing and applying criteria for school consolidations. We must choose to be radical in regressing the past racist wrongs perpetrated against those in the education system whom we historically did not see fit to educate.”

Outside help

Some political heavy hitters, community and civic groups are making moves to support the district as it navigates school closures.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Council Member Kathie Tovo late last month raised the idea of transforming shuttered campuses into affordable housing or city parks.

Adler and Tovo in a joint statement said as the district faces possible closures, the city simultaneously faces a lack of affordable housing, places for parks and public facilities to meet community needs.

“Perhaps these two sets of challenges can add up to one good answer for our community: opportunities for some community needs to be met on all or part of repurposed AISD properties,” they said.

The city passed a resolution for the two entities to work together to use district facilities in a way to benefit the community.

The school district already has sold surplus land (though not schools) to developers and the city, stipulating that at least a portion of it be used to develop affordable housing, prioritizing district families and staff for such housing.

Leaders of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce also in January met with district officials, offering to support a strategic communications plan that explains to the public the need to make hard choices.

“You have a number of business leaders who care deeply about the community and want to help,” said Drew Scheberle, the chamber’s executive vice president of education. “We know that the school district has had some record academic performance and their financial status needs some shoring up and there are tough decisions they must make. We’re not trying to micromanage but trying to support those elected and those working to solve the problems.”

Our State Should Tap into the Rainy Day Fund

This is not a natural, but human-made disaster. Here's Dick Lavine's summative comment with which many of us agree:
 

Not tapping the fund, Lavine said, will be another example of the Legislature opting for “self-inflicted” fiscal crises. “It was created exactly to prevent harmful budget cuts,” he said.

 Texas' Rainy Day Fund is a large fund—a projected $12 billion. Our lawmakers should tap into it rather than cut vital support to our institutions and programs.

Angela

Past fiscal decisions, not just oil slump, root cause of budget woes

By Sean Collins Walsh - American-Statesman Staff

7

Texas House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Zerwas, R-Richmond.

Posted: 9:03 p.m. Friday, February 24, 2017

---

Highlights

• State lawmakers are preparing to make severe cuts despite the fact that the Texas economy is growing.

• Past decisions, including a tax cut and a transportation funding set-aside, are tying the Legislature’s hands.

• GOP lawmakers disagree over whether to tap the rainy day fund, which is projected to reach almost $12 billion.

As they prepare to make budget cuts to state agencies and public universities that could limit such services as chronic disease and tobacco use prevention programs and eliminate others like the University of Texas’ Bureau of Economic Geology, many Texas lawmakers are lamenting the position they’ve found themselves in this legislative session.
The budget pinch, however, is primarily the product of decisions lawmakers made in recent legislative sessions, not forces beyond their control.
Although low oil and gas prices have put a significant dent in tax revenue, other sectors have grown enough to ensure that the Texas economy is still expanding overall and that the state unemployment rate remains low, which should be good news for lawmakers. But budgeting measures adopted by the GOP-controlled Legislature — especially a $2.6 billion tax cut for businesses and a $4.7 billion set-aside for highway projects in 2015 — have left lawmakers with less money to dole out in 2018 and 2019 than they did for the current two-year budget.
“It’s not a natural disaster. It’s a man-made disaster,” said Dick Lavine, fiscal analyst for the left-leaning Austin think tank Center for Public Policy Priorities. “It’s one thing to say, ‘What can we do? This is the global oil market.’ It’s another to say, ‘We made these decisions, and as it turns out, it’s really going to cause us a lot of pain.’ You have to take responsibility.”
After factoring in population growth and inflation, the state Senate’s initial $213.4 billion budget proposal would amount to a 7.9 percent cut compared with current spending, according to the Legislative Budget Board. The $221.4 billion House plan would be a 5.6 percent cut in spending.
Texas already spends less per resident than all but three other states, according to Census Bureau data.
Despite the prospect of making cuts during a period of economic growth, Republicans say they have no regrets about the decisions they’ve made in recent years.
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“They create a little bit of challenges for us, if you will, as we look to this budget session, but no regrets about them at all,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Zerwas, R-Richmond, said. “They are things that are very, very important. I’m glad we did them.”
To limit the impact of the belt-tightening, Zerwas and House leaders are pushing for the state to consider tapping the Economic Stabilization Fund, better known as the rainy day fund. But conservative hard-liners are vowing to make do without tapping the reserve, which is projected to grow to $12 billion in the next budget cycle.
Without taking money from the state’s substantial reserves, lawmakers will likely enact severe cuts across government.
The state’s top three leaders — Republicans Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus — last year instructed state agencies to submit budget proposals with 4 percent cuts, and most of those recommendations were folded into the House and Senate’s initial budget plans. They exempted several programs, including the beleaguered Child Protective Services, public schools and border security.
The Senate’s proposal, authored by Finance Committee Chairwoman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, includes an additional 1.5 percent across-the-board cut.
‘Shortsighted’
In the wake of an oil and gas boom that flushed state coffers, lawmakers in 2015 went on a spree of tax cutting and spending on GOP priorities.
They cut the state franchise tax on businesses by 25 percent, costing $2.6 billion over two years; green-lighted a vote on a constitutional amendment that will redirect to transportation projects $4.7 billion in state sales tax revenue from general funding that could pay for schools, prisons and health care services; spent an unprecedented $800 million on the state’s border security campaign; and expanded the local property tax homestead exemption, a move the state pays for on the back end when it shores up school district budgets.
Even though it was already becoming clear that the fat times were coming to an end — prices for the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil had already plummeted from above $100 per barrel to about $50 by the start of the 2015 legislative session — lawmakers adopted those measures knowing that they would have significant ongoing costs to the state.
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The cost of the business tax cut will grow substantially over time, while the set-aside for the highway fund will take up to $5 billion in sales tax revenue each two-year budget cycle. Lawmakers have the option of undoing the transportation set-aside with a supermajority vote in both chambers, but they are unlikely to do so after voters’ overwhelming approval of the constitutional amendment that approved it.
“It looked good to have a $4 billion tax cut for your campaign flier, but that probably was shortsighted,” state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, said of the package of tax and fee reductions approved in 2015. “At that point, we already knew we were going to have a downturn.”
Howard said Republicans overcommitted the state in 2015 as “part of the overall strategy of creating a problem” to justify cuts later.
Dale Craymer, executive director of the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, applauded the franchise tax cut and the transportation spending but said the timing was “unfortunate.”
“Hindsight is always 20/20 and if the Legislature knew two years ago what it knows now, they probably would have obligated less of the surplus and deferred the highway commitment out a bit further,” Craymer said.
The tax cut, he said, is no more to blame for the budget crunch than automatic increases in spending for programs like Medicaid, the state-federal health care provider for low-income residents that the state has little control over, and the global oil market.
“There was concern at the time that oil prices were below what the budget was built on, and that was part of the reason they were willing to leave $4 billion unspent,” he said of the budget’s surplus, which is separate from the rainy day fund. “There was hope the prices would rebound, and ultimately they never rebounded.”
At the beginning of the 2015 legislative session, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar predicted oil would trade at about $65 per barrel in 2016 and $69 per barrel in 2017, assumptions that factor into the estimate of how much money lawmakers can spend. When oil prices continued to crater after the legislative session, he lowered those projections by about $15 each.
The state is now projected to finish the budget cycle with only about $1.5 billion unspent, and much of that could be used up in a supplemental budget, a stop-gap measure to plug holes in the current budget that is approved before lawmakers tackle the next two-year cycle.
Is it raining?
As lawmakers decide to what extent they want to cut their way out of the shortfall, a key decision will be whether to tap the rainy day fund.
Not tapping the fund, Lavine said, will be another example of the Legislature opting for “self-inflicted” fiscal crises. “It was created exactly to prevent harmful budget cuts,” he said.
Although Craymer disagrees with Lavine over why the state has a shortfall, they agree on the solution: “The state is short of money, and it’s got a huge stockpile,” Craymer said.
Straus’ initial budget plan is about $4 billion higher than the amount of money Hegar has projected the state has to spend, and House leaders have been signaling that the way to make the numbers work will be tapping the rainy day fund, which was created in 1988 after an oil bust and is largely funded by revenue from oil and gas production taxes.
Tapping it won’t be easy.
Zerwas, the top House budget-writer, last week pressed the governor’s staff on the rainy day fund. He complained that conservatives have been arguing that the fund should only be used during disasters and asked for Abbott to take a stand.
“It’s an extraordinary amount of money,” Zerwas said at a committee hearing. “To have $12 billion in the Economic Stabilization Fund and for it to be characterized as a disaster relief fund, I think there needs to be some direction from the governor.”
“We are more than willing to discuss any scenario that the committee would like,” said Steven Albright, Abbott’s budget director.
“So I don’t feel like I got an answer,” Zerwas responded.
“No, that’s a fair assessment,” Albright said to laughter.
Asked for comment, Abbott spokesman John Wittman pointed to the governor’s State of the State address at the beginning of the legislative session, in which he said, “I’m confident we can balance the budget without looting the rainy day fund.”
Patrick, who leads the Senate, has criticized the House budget, saying it can only be balanced through tax increases or transfers from the rainy day fund and he’s not interested in either.
Tea party-aligned Republicans also have argued that tapping the fund will hurt the state’s credit rating. Representatives from Hegar’s office, however, have testified that the fund is so large that taking several billion dollars from it wouldn’t hurt the state’s credit and using that money for productive purposes, such as infrastructure improvement, might actually improve the state’s standing with the ratings agencies.

An open letter from the César E. Chávez Institute in support of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University

HAPPENING TODAY AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY.  SUPPORT ETHNIC STUDIES.  If you're wondering whether ethnic studies "works," check out my other posts from this week on this.  The jury is in.  Ethnic Studies promotes academic achievement, actual learning, and a positive sense of belonging not only in K12, but also at the higher education level.  Let's all support ethnic studies in SFSU and beyond. Let's not eliminate the very program that helped birth the well-developed program in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) that is now receiving accolades as a result of the rigorous Dee and Penner study that showed very positive findings regarding its benefits.

Dee, T. & Penner, E. (2016). The causal effects of cultural relevance: Evidence from an Ethnic Studies curriculum. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 21865.  http://www.nber.org/papers/w21865

 

To wit, see this morning's post on Ethnic Studies featured in The Atlantic.
 
Angela Valenzuela
c/s

#ethnicstudiesnow


An open letter from the César E. Chávez Institute
March 15, 2016

Dear Familia,

Campus rally tomorrow Wednesday 3/16/16

We at the Cesar Chavez Institute are reaching out to our extended community of colleagues and supporters to let you know what is happening here at our home campus of San Francisco State University.

You may have already heard that our parent institution, the College of Ethnic Studies, the birthplace of ethnic studies and the Third World Strike that transformed San Francisco and the nation, is today fighting for its very survival. The Institute is fighting alongside it to defend fully accessible, fully funded, high-quality, relevant public higher education.

Campus-wide budget cuts were introduced during the Great Recession, as the State slashed funding to California State University; all units were affected, but being the smallest of the five colleges on campus, the decade of reduced funding has had an exponentially larger impact on ours - and disproportionately so, as recently admitted by President Wong.
An intended additional funding reduction announced by the President and Provost recently will cut our College to the bone, resulting in dismissal of all CoES lecturers, a 40% reduction in undergraduate and graduate courses, loss of faculty lines, untenable reductions in departmental support, shutting of the college's vital Student Resource Center, and the mandated closure of our Institute.

There has been a tremendous reaction of outrage and manifest solidarity across campus and from institutions and student bodies across the State and country. Our own students have inspired and moved everyone with their swift, cohesive and courageous mobilizations, spear-heading a nationally connected movement to not only defend ethnic studies but advance them by demanding increased institutional support.

The students, faculty, alumnus, administrators and staff are standing firm, armed with facts, numbers, and a clear contextual focus, and responding to the fundamentally disrespectful and devaluing rhetoric and actions coming from individuals in the higher University administration. This administration's approach echoes the historical treatment of marginalized communities everywhere - increasing disinvestment and disengagement, leading to deterioration and a prolonged struggle for resources, then blaming the communities for the crisis and watching silently while displacement and disempowerment silence us.

As our Dean just wrote in his public letter:

"We live in an historical moment when the state of California and the United States are experiencing unprecedented personal wealth, albeit held in the smallest percent of the population ever. At the same time, political leaders have chosen to provide the smallest share of that wealth for the public good, particularly public higher education. Public higher education is a proven pipeline to success for the poor and working classes and the backbone of the nation's real economic strength. Moreover, we are experiencing one of the most vitriolic backlashes against people of color, the poor, gender or sexually non-conforming communities and others in recent history. Our local challenge is apparently a flashpoint for systemic state and national challenges."

The Institute

At the César E. Chávez Institute we have worked diligently to obtain outside funding to support a high quality research agenda directly linked to community's needs. For the last 20 plus years, the Institute has been one of the more prolific research centers on campus, seeding efforts like Jim Quesada's grant on immigrant day laborers, Caitlyn Ryan's nationally recognized project on family acceptance for LGBTQ youth, the powerful work with youth of color by Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Sean Ginwright and Antwi Akom, and more recently Leticia Marquez-Magana's NIH grant to support students of color in the sciences, which emerged from our own educational equity work.

Previously the Institute had three faculty lines, a full-time Director and a full-time Director of Administration, and full administrative support. The still-deepening reductions in institutional support by the University have seriously hurt the Institute and we now rely only on a part-time Director and one staff member.  Despite these severe cuts from 2008 to today, the Institute generated $1,070,000 in external funding during the same time period. Today, the university provides no support to the Institute, and advocates for its closure next fall as a cost-saving measure.

Even now, as this battle for appropriate resource allocation heats up, the Institute is able to meet all its current commitments and the new commitments being contracted for the near future. New grants will sustain the staffing and operations specifically outlined in their respective proposals. But one thing is clear - solid institutional support is needed for a research institute to expand its grant funding, support new projects that reap benefits for both the university and the community, and attract the talent needed for expanding our work in honor of César Chávez' legacy.

What you can do:

Join us tomorrow Wednesday at a student-led protest on campus (see flyer below) to demand increased, fully accessible, fully funded, high-quality, relevant public higher education.

Write President Leslie Wong
Write the Provost Sue Rosser
¡Ya basta!
Defend our communities
Defend the vital institutions we have created
Defend  our  ideas  our  stories

In respect and solidarity,
Belinda Reyes
Director

Education cuts protested at Capitol rally

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
March 24, 2012

Sherry Dana's reason for joining a rally protesting cuts in public education spending was summed up by a quote from the Italian poet Dante on a cloth bag slung over her shoulder:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."

As far as the retired Austin teacher is concerned, this is no time for neutrality.
"We want kids to be educated," she said. "It makes this a better country."

Leaders of the Save Texas Schools coalition said more than 4,500 teachers, administrators, students and parents from across the state participated in Saturday's rally at the Capitol and march leading up to it. Capitol police estimated the turnout at 1,000. Either way, the crowd was energetic and peaceful under mostly blue, sunny skies.

A coalition rally last spring drew thousands more because of heightened interest during one of the Legislature's regular sessions, which take place in odd-numbered years. But the Republican-led Legislature, grappling with a gaping budget hole, wasn't dissuaded from reducing by $4 billion the amount owed to school districts in the two-year budget.

Lawmakers sliced an additional $1.3 billion from grant programs, including full-day pre-kindergarten and help for students struggling to pass high-stakes standardized tests.
Speakers and attendees at Saturday's rally said the way to turn things around is by voting out the budget-cutters. They stopped short of endorsements but occasionally criticized Republicans in general and GOP Gov. Rick Perry in particular.

"Cutting school funds is a Perry bad idea," read one sign.

The cuts have forced many school districts, including Austin's, to trim payrolls. Statewide, districts have 25,286 fewer employees this year than last year, including 10,717 fewer teachers, said Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

Hundreds of districts have sued the state, challenging the constitutionality of the school finance system.

The Save Texas Schools coalition wants lawmakers to restore funding and limit what it considers excessive standardized testing. The coalition also wants funding restored for higher education, which saw a reduction of nearly $1 billion.

"We just have to get them to do the right thing," said Carolyn Bruton, a librarian in San Antonio. "The right thing is to make sure each child has an equal education with the right funding."

State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said it's important to send a message "to those in control of the state" that many middle-class people believe "Texas can do better."

One of those in control, the governor, told the American-Statesman last month that the state is spending plenty on public education. "The issue is, are we spending enough money in the right places? Are we getting a good return on our investment?" Perry said.

Proponents of limited government spending said Texas should stay in belt-tightened mode.

"I'm confident that further cuts can be made without adversely affecting student performance or without adversely impacting students or teachers," said Peggy Venable, Texas director of Americans for Prosperity.

Lawmakers, Texans focus on school funding

This is just a start. We can study adequate funding all we want but at the end of the day it boils down to who is going to be there to fight and ensure that what we know needs to be invested is budgeted for. This is not just the responsibility of the people but of legislators that go into communities campaigning on education yet expend very little capital taking on the hard issues when they're on the table.

On September 24, 2011 at the Texas Tribune Festival there was a panel called "How to Pay for Public Education" where a very important exchange between Senator Dan Patrick (co-chair of the Senate Public Education Committee) and Representative Scott Hochberg (co-chair of the House Committee on Public Education). That conversation went something like this:

Sen. Patrick argued that what it costs to educate a student has yet to be defined, especially given the number of "different" students (i.e., 4.8 million students) with "different price tags"

Rep. Hochberg rejected that notion saying that the state had spent $1 million to "study," prior to Sen. Patrick's time, examining what it costs to educate based on those districts that are successful with the kids across the groups that were identified (e.g., low-income group, the kids with different language ability, etc.).

The findings showed that adequate funding and weights were much greater that what the state was currently spending. The legislature's response, according to Rep. Hochberg was: "we [legislators] frankly looked at it and said we don’t have the money to do that."

Rep. Hochberg's following argument was that it's not enough for the state to prioritize putting dollars into education (backhanding Sen. Patrick's comment that public and higher education combined account for 50% of the state budget with a quick "so what!?") but that attention needs to consider how dollars are being prioritized within education.

In this framing, questions such as where, or to who, public education dollars are going to can now be part of the discussion. Many of you who are familiar with the House Public Education hearing on House Bill 500 during last year's session know that Rep. Hochberg was trying to air some of this out.

A lot to unpack when it comes to these issues, friends.

-Patricia


by Gary Scharrer | San Antonio Express-News
02/29/2012

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, announced the creation of a joint interim committee to study the public school finance system, which likely will be meeting later this year as a state district court hears another school finance lawsuit.

The committee, created through Senate Bill 1 last summer, will study the state’s public school finance system and make recommendations to the 83rd Legislature, which will meet starting in January.

In a statement, Dewhurst said: “The future of Texas is being forged in our classrooms every day. That is why the Texas Legislature remains dedicated to continuing our investment in public education, directing more resources to the classroom and improving the quality of learning for every student in every school and every district across our state.”

Straus said: “Nothing will make a greater difference in the future of our state than the willingness of all Texans to put education first and truly make it our top priority in Texas, and I’m pleased to appoint members to this Select Committee to do so.”

Critics, however, contend that lawmakers have not made public education a priority. The GOP-controlled Legislature last year cut $5.4 billion from public education, which public schools would have gotten under existing law.

A Save Texas Schools rally featuring parents, teachers and students is scheduled March 24 at the Capitol.

“Statewide we’ve seen larger class sizes, lack of instructional materials, and loss of programs to help struggling students succeed,” said Linda Bridges, Texas AFT president. “Parents, students and teachers on March 24 will again send a loud message that we plan to fight for our kids and that we can do better for them and our state’s future. Last year we gathered by the thousands to protest these cuts but were rebuffed by some politicians who claimed that schools would do just fine, that the planned cuts would be absorbed outside the classroom. That story line didn’t fool us then, and it doesn’t wash now as we look at what thousands of school employees and hundreds of superintendents have told us in surveys.”

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, will seve on the committee. Van de Putte’s district includes the Edgwood ISD, which is the name plaintiff in the 1984 landmark school finance case.

“I’ve had to learn a thing or two about school finance. I’ll be glad to put that knowledge to good use,” Van de Putte said.

“It is my sincere hope that this interim’s committee will take meaningful action, rather than simply going through the appearance of acting for our public schools and waiting for the courts to tell us what to do,” Van de Putte said. “We must not just have more conversations about how we fund our schools. We need solutions. What we are doing now is not working and, for our students’ sake, we cannot waste any more time.”

About 92 percent of respondents in a recent Texas AFT survey noted layoffs in their district, with a large percentage reporting loss of teachers (85 percent) and teacher assistants (79 percent). A subsequent survey of 241 superintendents released in January reported actual numbers of layoffs, indicating the loss of more than 30,000 teachers and other school employees statewide by conservative estimate.

“This isn’t just about cutting band trips or football awards banquets,” Bridges said. “Laying off teachers means cramming more kids into each class and the loss of the individualized attention our diverse population of students requires. Eliminating pre-K grants means that kids don’t get the foundation in learning that they desperately need. Wiping out tutorials and services like the Student Success Initiative means more kids won’t meet increasingly rigorous achievement standards, or will simply drop out altogether.”

Four lawsuits have been filed in recent months by various school groups, alleging the state is shortchanging education.

Dewhurst appointed Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, as joint chair of the school finance committee. Members include: Sens. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville; Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock; Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen; Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound; Dan Patrick,, R-Houston; Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo; Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio; Royce West, D-Dallas; Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands and Van de Putte.

Straus appointed Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, as joint chair of the committee. The committee members include: Representatives Alma Allen, D-Houston; Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas; Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands; Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City; Donna Howard, D-Austin; Dan Huberty, R-Houston; Susan King, R-Abilene; Todd Smith, R-Euless; Vicki Truitt, R-Keller; and Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio.

DISD Says It's Not Sitting on Federal Funds. It's Actually Trying to Keep From Wasting Them

Here's the TEA's response to DISD.

-Patricia

By Robert Wilonsky | Dallas Observer
Tue., Feb. 7 2012

We started this morning by noting Brett Shipp's piece from last night suggesting the Texas Education Agency is threatening to withhold Dallas ISD from close to $80 million in federal funds birthed by No Child Left Behind. The reason, says Commissioner of Education Robert Scott: Only 40 students out of an eligible 29,349 have gotten their after-school tutoring paid for. Which, on the surface, sounds just horrible.

But DISD says today that's far from the whole story. Like, very far. Like, not even half the whole story. More like a couple of chapters from a really long story.

As proof we were sent the January 27 letter interim DISD superintendent Alan King sent to Scott in response to his January 13 warning letter on which Shipp based his account last night. In the letter, which follows, King writes that the reason DISD hasn't spent the money is because while performing its annual audit the district discovered "potential irregularities involving invoices received from several vendors" -- all of whom, incidentally, are tutoring services approved by TEA. Writes King, who later outs the issue as one involving double-billing, "the district took immediate action by reorganizing the department in charge of oversight for the program and hired a forensic team to conduct further investigations into the program."

King writes that district staff and TEA employees chatted about this in October, and that the result was an "action plan" that would resolve the hold-up. In the meantime, DISD continued trying to find out where the irregularities had come from -- inside 3700 Ross or with the contractors TEA had signed off on. Says the letter:

The initial concerns were that district employees were being paid by both the district and vendors for the same work or tutors were being paid by multiple vendors for the same time period. The District's Office of Professional Responsibility conducted a sampling of interviews with several district employees and found no indication of employee misconduct. The District, therefore, concluded that the apparent fraudulent activity was conducted by the vendors and the forensic audit team focused their procedures on these vendors.

Now here's where it gets really interesting ...

Not only is DISD concerned that those tutoring services are double-dipping from federal funds, but the district also doesn't think much of those tutoring services -- all of whom, you'll recall, are on TEA's list of approved vendors. This isn't easy to find. But there is a report, which you'll find here, that breaks down the services providers, which have names like Allegiance Learning Solutions, Cool Kids Learn, Cranium Maximus, Little Genius Private Learning, Orion's Mind and Sheila Williams Lyons: Acknowledge Me Now. According to the district, most of the 11,268 kids who enrolled in the tutoring services used Group Excellence (2,695 students), Apex Academics (1,593) or Tutors with Computers (1,129). And the district "funded SES at $1,490 per student," per the report.

But, says DISD's evaluation, it didn't appear to get much, if anything, for its investment. From Page 80 of the report:

For TAKS math vertical score means, SES eligible non-tutored students outperformed SES tutored students in the sixth grade by an average of 21 points. There was no significant difference between tutored and non-tutored students' vertical math scores in the seventh and eight grades. For TAKS reading, SES eligible non-tutored students outperformed SES tutored students in all three grades by an average of 17 points.

Eleven pages later, after a lot of data-crunching, the district determined:

In a broader sense, SES is a clear non-factor in helping students pass the TAKS that otherwise might not pass. When examining the rates between enrolled and non-enrolled (and tutored and nontutored), SES is not helping students who previously failed the TAKS test to pass this year, and there-in help schools make AYP. This is probably due in part to the fact that the majority of SES participants have previously passed the TAKS test and the fact that many providers are apparently not able to improve student academic performance.

Which brings us back to King's letter, in which he notes that the district's actually requested a waiver from TEA to "repurpose the mandatory set aside for SES services to a more productive initiative." Because, as the report notes, DISD doesn't think SES is very, you know, productive. Writes King:

The District will set aside approximately $10 million to hire teachers at Stage 2 and above AYP campuses in order to lower class sizes. Since all 26 campuses that meet this criterion are "school-wide", allocations will be distributed evenly across the affected campuses. Teachers will be hired according to the specific area of improvement of each campus. The improvement areas are math, reading, attendance and/or graduation rate. This proposal will allow the District to hire approximately 166 teachers or 6.4 additional teachers per campus.

TEA spokesperson DeEtta Culbertson says the agency is "assessing the letter" from King, but since there's an "ongoing investigation, there's not a whole lot we can say." But "the bottom line is," she adds, "we need to make sure the students in Dallas ISD are being properly served."

Little Agreement on How to Fix School Finance System

by Ben Philpott | Texas Tribune
February 3, 2012

A teachers group has urged Gov. Rick Perry to call a special session to address education funding, but there's still plenty of disagreement on what fixing the school funding system would actually mean.

Some think lawmakers should eliminate the use of local property taxes and pass a constitutional amendment to create a statewide property tax. Others want a more immediate fix: Spend a couple of billion dollars to stop additional teacher layoffs — and call lawmakers back to Austin to do so.

“State government has the money to do that — it’s taxpayers’ money, called the Rainy Day Fund,” said Rita Haecker, president of the Texas State Teachers Association.

Haecker said at a news conference Wednesday that without that stopgap money, schools could be forced to continue slashing jobs.

“An estimated 32,000 school employees, including 12,000 teachers, already have lost their jobs,” she said.

Bill Peacock with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation disagrees. “There are a lot of people calling for a special session, but we don’t see the need for one,” Peacock said.

Peacock said the Rainy Day Fund should only be used for one-time costs, not recurring expenses like teacher salaries. He said adding another patch to the heavily bandaged school finance system won't help anyone.

On that point, the Equity Center, a nonprofit group that advocates for middle- and low-income school districts, agrees. But it's focused on a big-picture fix to the system.

The center's Lauren Cook says lawmakers can do that by simply following the state's current education code.

"It should finance schools in a thorough and efficient way so that all students have the same opportunities,” she said, “and so that taxpayers that pay substantially similar rates are receiving substantially similar revenue in their school districts."

While Cook seeks equity, Peacock and his crew are searching for efficiencies, like letting parents pick the type of education their children receive.

“Vouchers, public school choice, virtual education — with technology these days, there’s a whole lot of things that one could do to improve the efficiency and put more competition into the system of public schools and public education you have in Texas,” Peacock said.

Neither the Texas Public Policy Foundation nor the Equity Center thinks lawmakers will take up major changes to school finance until they are forced to do so by the Texas Supreme Court. And that's not expected until the 2013 legislative session is over.

Teachers seek special session to stop school cuts

Gary Scharrer | Houston Chronicle
February 1, 2012

Gov. Rick Perry should call Texas legislators back to the Capitol for a special session to spare more public school cuts next year now that the economic recovery is producing more revenue than expected, a teachers group said Wednesday.

The state ended the 2011 budget year with a $1.1 billion surplus, Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, noted and the current budget cycle is expected to produce another $1.6 billion surplus.

Perry should ask lawmakers to tap into the state’s $7.3 billion rainy day fund to avoid more school layoffs and larger class sizes next year, Howard and Texas State Teachers Association President Rita Haecker said.

The Republican-controlled Legislature last year cut $5.4 billion from public education for the current two-year budget, which forced school districts to cut about 32,000 school employees, including 12,000 teachers, Haecker said.

More than 8,200 elementary classes are larger than the cap set by state law.
“It is time to stop the bleeding and stop the cuts, now,” she said.

There’s little likelihood that Perry will call legislators into a special legislative cuts to spare more school cuts next year.

“There are no plans to call a special session on this or any other issue. Thanks to Gov. Perry’s fiscally conservative leadership Texas has a balanced budget and has increased funding to Texas public schools by billions of dollars,” Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said.

Howard passed an amendment last year that would have sent money to school districts to help fund the annual 80,000-student enrollment increase if the Rainy Day Fund passed a certain threshold. But the amendment got stripped from the final bill.

The willingness to cut more education funding instead of using surplus tax revenue will become a campaign issue this year, both Haecker and Howard said.

“We need to hear from parents across the state,” Howard said.

The state’s future workforce and economic develop hinge on a better education population, both Howard and Haecker said.

Education cuts, they said, send a wrong message about the priority of education.

“You can sense in our community their frustration and anger. You will see their willingness to take a role in changing the outcome of this,” Haecker said.

The Texas State Teachers Association will be circulating petitions, urging Perry to call a special session.

UT-Austin Prepares for Fight Over Tuition Increases

by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
January 5, 2011

A group of students taking their cues from the Occupy movement wants the University of Texas System regents to know they won’t take tuition increases without a fight.

At a meeting in front of UT’s iconic tower tonight, the students will settle on a final version of a protest document they hope sparks a larger pushback against the growing cost of higher education.

If 2011 was a rough year for higher education, and UT in particular, the burgeoning Occupy UT group — which takes its name and inspiration from the worldwide phenomenon that began last year — might be an indication that 2012 may not be any easier. One assured flashpoint: how and how high tuition is set.

Forces on both the left and right of the political spectrum are already preparing for battle.

Toward the end of 2011, UT President Bill Powers concurred with recommendations from the university’s Tuition Policy Advisory Committee, made up of students, faculty and administrators, to ask the University of Texas System Board of Regents to increase tuition by 2.6 percent each of the next two years. That’s the maximum the regents, who will make the final tuition decision later this year, said they’d allow.

Adopting the recommendations will mean an extra $127 for in-state students in the coming academic year and $131 in the next. Leaders at UT argue that increases are necessary to avoid immediate cuts to crucial programs.

Not every university in Texas intends to increase tuition next year — the University of Texas at Arlington is a notable example — but it certainly is the trend. And the opposition UT faces from students and others who oppose the price hikes is illustrative of tuition struggles statewide.

Natalie Butler, the UT student body president and a member of the tuition advisory committee, said she hoped the increases would buy the university time to reconsider its approach to funding. “The fact that this current model is not sustainable is not lost on anyone, myself included,” she said.

When the committee’s recommendations were released following a closed-door meeting, many in right-leaning circles that spent much of last year questioning UT’s efficiency and transparency began crying foul. On the conservative Empower Texans blog, writer Will Lutz questioned if the process had violated recent legislative efforts to increase the transparency of the decision-making process regarding student fees. He concluded that while no open-records laws may have been broken, the committee was “ignoring both the intent and spirit” of recent legislation.

UT officials argue that as an advisory body that does not make final decisions on tuition, the committee can meet behind closed doors, allowing members to speak more freely.

Meanwhile, the ostensibly nonpartisan but generally left-leaning members of the nascent Occupy UT movement attended the advisory committee meeting following the announcement of the recommendations to chant their complaints about the proposed increases and the process that led to them.

“We know that this forum is a mere formality,” dozens of students stood up and shouted. “We know that this forum was never a chance to democratically participate in this decision-making process.”

UT President Powers later told the student newspaper The Daily Texan, “I thought the comments were very constructive. It was an interesting theatrical way to make a point. … It doesn’t surprise me that there’s not unanimous agreement on this across the University.”

Trevor Hoag, an assistant instructor at UT and an Occupy UT participant, said — speaking for himself, not the group — that he believes administrators are in “a tight spot” due to state budget cuts. And he said he wants to believe that they are more like-minded than it might seem at first blush. But, Hoag said, “If you’re really standing with us, then what would be the perfect rebuke to the Legislature than to say, ‘You’re going to cut us, but we’re not going to raise tuition. We’re going to buck the trend.’”

The Occupy students’ draft statement catalogs a list of grievances with the university: tuition increases “such that lower- and middle-class students can no longer afford to attend”; students accruing massive student loan debt, “which has led to wide-spread bankruptcy and default”; and an administration that “has leveled no serious rebuke against the legislature of the State of Texas” by demanding the re-regulation of tuition and a return to previous funding levels.

The students also complain that UT has made those decisions, among others, “with practically no democratic input from students, and it will continue to do so until students unite in order to turn the tide.”

Kevin Hegarty, UT’s vice president and chief financial officer, disagreed. He said the opportunities for student involvement in tuition recommendations had increased — the tuition advisory committee held open forums prior to its decision, and several new student budget advisory committees have been established in the last year — but overall student participation had not. “The vast majority of the student body does not seem to want to engage in that particular discussion, but that said, we’ll continue to make the effort,” he said.

Butler, the student body president, agreed, saying she had expected to hear calls to prevent tuition increases at two open advisory committee meetings before the recommendations were finalized. “I was expecting it and didn’t hear it, and that colored my thinking of things,” she said.

Now, the tuition decision rests with the regents, and it’s likely that they will hear opposition from voices on the right and from Occupiers like Hoag, who said, “We just want, if nothing else, manageable student debt.”

Hoag and his compatriots in Occupy UT have big plans. Thus far their strategy has been more event-based, but a physical occupation could be in the works for later in the semester. And they are reaching out to sympathetic groups at other schools, like Texas State University in San Marcos, which has had a small band of occupiers for months.

“Our target is, in some way, to attract others to swell the movement rather than to plead to the masters for more scraps,” Hoag said.