It’s coming, but schools are going to wait to see what the Lege does before proceeding with the inevitable.
“School districts right now are in a state of shock,” [Austin litigator Buck] Wood said. “Things are much worse than even I thought just a few months ago.”
Adding to the urgency is the fact that Texas is adding about 85,000 public school students a year.
“That begs the question — whether or not you are really gutsy enough to go in and start voting to fire 10 percent of your teachers in your school districts. That’s what it’s going to take, literally, to make that kind of cut,” Wood said.
[…]
[San Antonio ISD Superintendent Robert] Durón prefers that school districts wait before seeking help in the courts.
“Waiting a few more months to see what happens cannot hurt. It will take years for a resolution to come back from the court option,” he said.
It makes sense to wait, agreed David Hinojosa, a senior lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has played key roles in earlier Texas school funding lawsuits.
“Although the system may be unconstitutional right now, we should give the Legislature an opportunity to do what’s right for the children of Texas,” Hinojosa said. “But if they go in the wrong direction and start cutting public education, then they should expect a very tough fight on their hands.”
I don’t know that there’s any “if” in that. It’s a matter of when.
This fact at the end really deserves to be a story on its own:
Over the past 10 years, the number of Texas public school children from low-income families has increased by about 894,000 — virtually representing the entire enrollment growth.
What have we done over those ten years to help those children build a better future for themselves and their children? Not nearly enough, that’s for sure.
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