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During the 90th Texas Legislative Session, lawmakers have the opportunity to enact legislation to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow, while helping the state meet critical workforce needs.
Texas boasts one of the most dynamic economies in the world and educates more than 5.4 million students. Yet, our fastest-growing industries cannot find enough skilled workers. Driven by rapid population growth, massive infrastructure expansion, and a boom in data centers, manufacturing, and energy development, the demand for a highly-trained workforce is skyrocketing.
By 2030, more than 60% of all jobs in Texas will require education or training beyond a high school diploma. Currently, employers across critical sectors—including construction, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and technology—are facing severe workforce shortages.
Many of these high-demand careers offer competitive salaries without requiring a traditional four-year degree. Texas students are already stepping up to meet this challenge: nearly 1.2 million high school students are actively building career skills through Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways, completing at least two courses in a single program of study. This makes CTE the state’s leading launchpad for earning career-ready technical certifications, obtaining professional licensures, and securing college credit while in high school.
Texas public schools face an uphill battle in building the capacity required to fuel our future workforce. Too many high-value CTE programs lack sustainable funding, cutting-edge equipment, and adequate facilities to meet growing industry demand. Schools also face a glaring hurdle in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers and instructors.
A new public education and workforce endowment could provide permanent, supplemental funding directly to our public schools. By providing reliable dollars above and beyond existing state formulas, the Legacy Education Fund could help schools confidently expand CTE capacity, upgrade vital training equipment, and offer competitive pay to attract top-tier industry professionals into the classroom.
The fund could also support high-priority workforce initiatives like the Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) program, while creating the flexibility to invest in other statewide public education priorities over time, all without raising taxes.
Dedicated, predictable funding is important for workforce programs because equipment must be consistently updated and replaced, and employer partners need assurance that programs will be ongoing and reliable before investing their own resources to support them.
Initial endowment earnings could support and add to existing funding streams for our public schools’ workforce initiatives by supporting:
Texas has proven it knows how to manage multi-billion-dollar long-term investments responsibly. Building a similar public education and workforce endowment ensures every dollar is carefully tracked, rigorously audited, and protected. This tried-and-true, strictly governed model would secure our state’s economic and education sovereignty.
TSTC Endowment
In November 2025, Texas voters approved Proposition 1, establishing an $850 million endowment dedicated to the Texas State Technical College (TSTC) System. Because TSTC lacks local taxing authority to fund campus expansions, this dedicated fund generates an estimated $40 million annually for capital improvements. It is a prime example of Texas successfully leveraging a dedicated endowment to modernize hands-on technical training, expand program capacity, and directly address critical workforce shortages.
Texas Water Fund
Texas voters overwhelmingly approved a dedicated, long-term solution to secure water. The Texas Water Fund was created in 2023 with a $1 billion appropriation and voter approval of Proposition 6. In 2025, Proposition 4 expanded the effort, authorizing up to $20 billion for water projects over the next two decades.
Permanent School Fund (PSF)
The Permanent School Fund is one of the state’s oldest endowments, and recent legislation has modernized the fund’s management and enabled it to increase its returns. Those returns finance a portion of the Foundation School Program entitlement. However, increased returns do not automatically provide additional dollars to schools; instead, they supplant other sources of state funding. The new endowment we propose would leverage the expertise that has increased the PSF’s returns, allowing those returns to generate ongoing additional funding for public schools.
