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ARTICLE · 07 FEBRUARY 2007

Public School Finance

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The past year has seen significant changes in the Texas public school finance system and many aspects of how schools operate.

United StatesTax
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This article originally appeared in Texas Bar Journal, January 2007

The past year has seen significant changes in the Texas public school finance system and many aspects of how schools operate. On Nov. 22, 2005, the Supreme Court of Texas found that the state’s reliance on, control over, and use of local property taxes had evolved into an unconstitutional state property tax, in violation of Article VIII, Section 1-e of the Texas Constitution. The court set a deadline of June 1, 2006, for the state to remedy the constitutional violation. If the state failed to meet the deadline, the court’s order would have enjoined funding of the system, and Texas schools would have closed.

Prior to the court’s ruling, the 79th Texas Legislature had tried, without success, to address the widely recognized problems with the school funding system. The 2005 regular session and the first two special sessions failed, sometimes acrimoniously and dramatically. The core problem the state was unable to solve

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