With less than a week before the start of a special session of the Texas Legislature, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick laid out a proposal Thursday to give teachers bonuses and increase their retirement benefits, with plans to pay for both long-term using money from the Texas lottery.
Patrick called a press conference to roll out his own priorities for the next 30 days and tear down the House's plan for revamping a faulty school funding system as a "Ponzi scheme."
Patrick's plan, in part, would provide $600 to $1,000 bonuses to long-term and retired teachers, inject $200 million into the Teacher Retirement System, give $150 million to struggling small, rural districts, and provide $60 million for new facilities for fast-growth school districts and charter schools.
Over the next two years, Patrick said, $700 million to pay for the plan would come from a deferral of funds to managed care organizations. Over the long-term, $700 million would be directly allocated from the Texas Lottery if voters approved an amendment to the Texas Constitution to ensure that transfer of funds continues indefinitely.
Patrick called on school districts to reprioritize 5 percent of their funds over the next four years to increase teacher salaries. Districts, he said, "have to be better about how they spend the money. They have to put more focus on teachers."
Mark Wiggins, lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said most schools don't have the financial wiggle room to reallocate funding without additional money from the state. "We haven't seen any of these proposals. That's why it's tough to say where our members would come out on them," he said.
The House passed a bill during the regular session that would have put $1.5 billion into public schools, in part by deferring a payment to schools to 2019. Patrick Thursday called that budget trick a "dangerous political stunt" and a "Ponzi scheme."
The Senate tacked a "private school choice" provision to the House's school finance reform package, effectively killing both issues in the regular session, since House members oppose public subsidies for private schools.
House Speaker Joe Straus and top House education leaders have appeared before education groups in the last month, chastising the Senate for not approving key reforms to the school finance system and refusing to change their positions on controversial issues such as "private school choice."
Gov. Greg Abbott announced a 20-item agenda for the a special session beginning on July 18, including several education issues that the House and Senate clashed over during the regular session. Patrick stressed Thursday that he supported all 20 items, while pitching a multi-layered plan beyond the governor's agenda.
Soon after Patrick's press conference, Abbott praised the lieutenant governor's efforts.
"My office has been working with lawmakers in both the Senate and House these past six weeks, and if these items do not get passed, it will be for lack of will, not for lack of time," Abbott said.
