Determination of School
District Spending
Allocation Formulas
School districts rely
on the property tax as their local funding source, but, because
property values vary widely across the state,
the amount of money each school district can raise varies widely.
The state
offsets this variation by providing different amounts of aid to
different school districts. Schools with lower
property wealth
per student receive more state funding than schools with higher
property wealth per student. In this way, state funds equalize
the resources
available for educating students throughout the state.
The Foundation School
Program (FSP)
The FSP represents the
system of formulas for determining state and local funding of Texas
schools. The Texas Education Agency
uses FSP formulas to calculate the
allotment for each of the 1,032 school districts that levy a property
tax.
Essentially, Texas '
school funding system consists of two tiers, designed to take into
account the characteristics of each school district and
its students:
Tier 1: The
foundation funding level in the Texas FSP, Tier 1 takes into
account a Basic
Allotment of dollars per student , adjusted for
district
characteristics
such as the cost of education (using the Texas Cost of Education
Index), district size (using the Small and Mid-Size District
Adjustments) and
sparse populations
(using the Sparsity Adjustment). For more information on each
adjustment, see the Glossary. The allotment is adjusted again
to account for
the higher cost
of serving some students. Districts must tax 86 cents to participate
in Tier 1.
Tier
2: The Tier 2 program guarantees a yield (an amount of money) for
each student for each penny of tax from a combination of state
and local
sources.
Districts
with higher property wealth raise most or all the yield through
the local property tax. Lower-wealth districts receive state
aid to reach
the yield
per penny.
Districts may raise Tier 2 taxes up to 64 cents.
Chapter 41 Wealth Sharing
Chapter 41 of the Texas
Education Code requires school districts with weighted average
daily attendance of over $305,000 to submit
to wealth
reductions
for optimized wealth equalization. Essentially, this means
the highest property wealth districts may have property tax revenues
reallocated
to lower property
wealth
districts. |
