Update at 4:45 p.m., May 24
The House voted 134-15 to reject the Senate's changes to House Bill 21, including a change that tacked on a school choice provision. The House and Senate will instead meet in a conference committee to hammer out changes.
Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, made a motion to instruct conferees not to accept a bill with a school choice provision tacked onto it. The House accepted this motion in a 101-45 vote. Although it is non-binding, it likely forecasts the shaky future of this bill.
Senate Education Chairman Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, has said he would not accept a version of HB 21 without a school choice provision.
Original story
As the passage of House Bill 21, chalk full of school finance adjustments and
now a Senate-added provision creating a school choice program, becomes more controversial, lawmakers are exploring alternatives to fix public finance.
Senate Education Committee Chairman Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, has provided the alternative lawmakers might be needing in
Senate Bill 2144.
Throughout the session, Taylor has said he doesn't think school finance can be fixed in this one session. At the inaugural Senate Finance Committee meeting, Chairwoman Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said her intent was to see a fix passed this session, but wasn't sure if that was plausible.
Taylor's bill would punt the problem to a future session while studying the issue in the interim session.
In the time following the 85th legislative session, the commission, comprised of 15 members including governor, lieutentant governor and speaker of the House appointments as well as representatives from Senate Finance, Senate Education, House Public Education, House Appropriations and the State Board of Education, would study the issue of public school finance.
The commission would be tasked with providing recommendations related to the public school finance system including its purpose, appropriate funding schemes and potential policy changes. A report would be due by the end of 2018 so the next session, scheduled to begin in January 2019, could take action.
It is worth noting that these recommendations are non-binding. In the time between the 84th and current session, other commissions met and submitted recommendations, but action was not necessarily taken.
For example, the Texas Commission on Next Generation Assessments and Accountability met to tackle the high-stakes testing environment within the state and
submitted a list of recommendations. Not all were acted upon.
On Tuesday, Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, questioned why such a commission was necessary with the existence of HB 21, a bill sponsored by House Public Education Committee Chairman Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston.
"Why do we need a commission to tell us...or another select committee to tell us what we already know?" Walle asked.
Huberty acknowledged Walle's question, saying that the House had resolved problem with passage of HB 21.
"I guess it is just appointing more members to tell the legislature how to fix school finance," Huberty said of the commission. "I think we worked on a methodology to do that...we did that, we passed a bill."
Huberty said this would be the fourth panel he would sit on to study school finance in his time in the legislature. He temporarily delayed the consideration of the bill until 6 p.m. on Tuesday.
Should the bill not pass through third reading by midnight Wednesday, it will die in the House.
