By Kiah Collier
The Texas Tribune
In a packed Austin courtroom in 2012, the state’s lawyers sought to convince a judge that if Texas schools spent their money wisely, they needn’t suffer greatly from a $5.4-billion cut to public schools passed by the Legislature. Surely, an assistant attorney general argued, districts could deliver a sufficient education “without iPads or teacher aides or brand-new facilities.”
Nearly two-thirds of the state’s school districts had sued, arguing that lawmakers violated their constitutional duty to provide an adequate and efficient public school system by slashing funding to help balance a post-recession shortfall even as a rigorous new testing and accountability systems raised the bar on expectations.
The districts pointed to a host of evidence to underscore their argument: swelling class sizes, truncated staffing and flat test scores. Ultimately, a Travis County district court judge agreed with them, deeming the state’s method of funding public education unconstitutional.
Three years later, as the state prepares to argue an appeal before the Texas Supreme Court, a Texas Tribune analysis shows that schools still are grappling with the fallout from the lean budget times even as the Legislature has restored a majority of the cuts.
Read full coverage here.