Statement on House Bill 3’s Passage in the Texas Senate

The Texas Senate on Monday, May 5, 2019, passed its version of House Bill 3. The bill will now move to conference committee.

“Raise Your Hand Texas thanks the Senate for advancing House Bill 3 on Monday. We hope the members of the conference committee will continue improving this school funding legislation, which is critical for the 5.4 million students in Texas.

We appreciate the Senate recognizing the need for full-day high-quality pre-K funding and urge members of the conference committee to preserve the Early Reading Allotment as a top priority. This funding will go a long way toward helping the 53 percent of Texas students who are not Kindergarten-ready.

We also encourage conferees to remove the provision tying funding to third-grade test scores. These policies have no basis in research, create a culture of winners and losers, and would further exacerbate the overemphasis on high-stakes testing in Texas. The money allocated to this program should be moved to the basic allotment to maximize flexible funding to school districts, as the House version of the bill did.

The 2.5 percent revenue cap provision advanced today would create vastly different tax rates across school districts. The cost of this provision to the state is unsustainable and binds the hands of future legislatures. Future members of the legislature should decide how to invest billions of dollars in public education. Creating a system that automatically spends billions of dollars without a vote of the legislature will impact our schools, teachers, and students for a generation.”  

Dr. Michelle Smith, Director of Government Relations

Raise Your Hand Texas

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