Patrick, a former state senator from northwest Harris County, was first elected to his current role in 2014. He oversees the 31-member Texas Senate.
From his office at the state capitol in Austin, Patrick also discussed his plans to expand state funding for public schools, make housing more affordable and stop Texas retailers from selling consumable THC. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The two legislative chambers are looking at separate teacher pay proposals: Senate Bill 26 would directly raise salaries for educators with at least three years of experience, while House Bill 2 seeks to boost pay through an increase in base per-student funding, among other things. How do you negotiate these differences?
One of the areas we’re focused on is, there's a $10,000 pay gap between rural teachers and urban-suburban, so we're trying to close that gap. So rural teachers will get a little bit more this time, but every teacher will get a pay raise, including the urban [and] suburban.
The reason we like our plan is ... state funding for schools, over a long period of time, was about four times higher than teacher pay. So we were sending money to the schools, but it wasn't going to the teachers. So we want a separate path directly to the teachers.
So that's our position in the Senate. We want to be sure that teachers get the pay raise, and [some] of the money designated for teachers can't be spent on other things. ...
Teachers need to be paid like professionals, because it's a profession; it's not just a job. We need to pay them well to attract the best and brightest to the profession. I'm sure we'll work it out with the House, but our goal is to get the money in the teachers’ pocket.
The other thing that we've done for teachers in the last couple of years ... retired teachers have always wanted a COLA—a cost of living [adjustment]—so last session, the Senate passed a bill for $4.5 billion, and we established the first COLA ever.
And why is that important? Because any teacher coming into the profession today needs to know that one day, they'll have a good retirement. ... So paying teachers and attracting the best and brightest into the profession [includes] current pay and a good retirement benefit.
Some Texans have expressed concerns that public schools could lose revenue if students leave for private schools under an education savings account plan, which would give parents public funds to spend on private education,
With about 80% of Texas school districts anticipating budget cuts next fiscal year, what would you say to public school leaders who are worried about this?
There's just tremendous misinformation, even in the education system, and a lot of it is pushed forth by the [national] teacher unions, not teachers. ...
I believe in 2015, our [state] education budget was $43 billion, and this session it’s over $80 billion. So we've increased funding dramatically. Part of that is teacher pay, part of that is reducing school property taxes; we’ve cut around 41% of [school maintenance and operations taxes] on your tax bill.
When it comes to school funding, most of the schools that are having a problem ... it’s because the money that all schools received during COVID, the federal government warned them that it's one-time money. ... Many school districts went out and hired people with that money.
So a lot of the cutbacks that they're talking about is because they spent the money on ongoing things. Our funding for education is higher than it's ever been. This year, in total, it's going to be close to $96 billion, with over $80 billion from the state and additional money from the [federal government].
So school districts should not be cutting their budgets, and if they are, it's either an anomaly in the system, or it's because they hired too many people with money that was going to go away... and they had to let them go to replace all that money. ...
On ESAs, we're spending [about $80 billion] for public education and $1 billion for school choice. There are 5.5 million students in Texas public schools, and there's going to be 100,000 in school choice. There's just no way that that undermines the school system.
And yes, some schools will lose some students, absolutely, but schools lose students all the time. Students move; parents get a job somewhere else. ...
Here's an interesting number for you: in 2019, our total school enrollment in Texas K-12 school was about 5.4 million kids. Five years later, it's only 5.5 [million]. We actually have less students coming to public schools, [because] people are having less children and homeschooling has really exploded.
But even though the school population’s only increased by 100,000 in five years, our funding for schools has dwarfed that. We're spending much, much more money for roughly the same number of students.
Similar to last session, the House and Senate are advancing competing property tax relief plans. Can you come to an agreement there?
[In 2023], we fought for the homestead exemption, and at the end of the day, we won that battle. ... For every billion dollars we spend in compression, [which is] simply reducing the tax rate, for every billion dollars we spend to do that, property taxes are cut for the average person about $30.
For every billion we spend on the homestead exemption, you get about a $125 cut. The numbers can drift a little bit, depending on the session, but on the homestead exemption for $1 billion, you get almost four times the tax cut.
Homesteads are voted on by the people; [that's] in the [Texas] Constitution. It can never be taken away. Compression is just a budget number, and anytime we would have a downturn, you could take all compression back. So that's why we support homesteads [in the Senate].
We have two strategies [this session]. We've [proposed] increasing the homestead exemption to $140,000 this year. I want to increase the senior exemption to $200,000, and we're working with the speaker on that.
The other option is, we can increase the homestead [exemption] to $300,000 roughly, if we reduce the compression a little bit, and that would take a lot of people off of paying any school [maintenance and operations] taxes.
The average home in Texas is [worth] $350,000, so if we raise the exemption to $300,000, basically you're zeroed out on paying school [maintenance and operations] taxes. You still have county taxes, and you still have debt taxes from school districts. But that's our goal, to get rid of the biggest part, which is M&O taxes.
Senate Bill 3 would ban all forms of consumable THC from being sold in Texas. Why is this bill important to you, and how would it impact hemp retailers across the state?
I don't think the roughly 8,000 smoke shops that have opened up are local businesses. THC is much [stronger] than marijuana. I think it's all a major operation by the cannabis industry from other states, sending cannabis into this state.
What got my attention was, as I traveled across the state, a number of women came to me and said, ‘I've lost my son. They now have schizophrenia. They now have paranoia.’
This is potent poison that's being sold in smoke shops, and they package it for kids. There was a bag of gummies in the store that I went in—750 milligrams [of THC]. That'll put you on your rear end ... and cause potential life-altering health issues. ...
[Retailers] register to sell this product with the [state]. We had over 4,000 people apply for these licenses in three years, and on average, they opened up two stores each. ...
People say, ‘Why do you want to close down these THC shops?’ Because people who are buying it have no idea what’s in it. And some people said we should regulate it, but we can't regulate and check on 8,000 shops. We just have to close them down. ...
This is dangerous, poisonous stuff in these shops that's being sold to kids and adults. So in lieu of that, we do the Compassionate Use Program. That's for veterans with PTSD, that's for cancer patients who have great pain or children with seizures. And so we're going to expand the CUP program. ... We'll open more of those [providers], but these [THC retailers] have to be shut down.
Tell me about Senate Bill 5, which would create a state Dementia Prevention and Research Institute. Why is this a top priority for you?
Texas has the ability to do big things. When I was a sophomore senator, we passed CPRIT, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. We put 300 million a year in the program for 10 years. That sent a signal to researchers all over the country that Texas is really serious about doing cancer research. ...
One disease that I think so many families sadly know about, because maybe they have family or friends, is Alzheimer's. ... We have a $24 billion budget [surplus] this time, and I said, ‘How can we best spend that money?’ Public safety is always No. 1, and property taxes are a big part of that spending, but public health is also a major issue.
Alzheimer's just destroys families. ... You cannot leave an Alzheimer’s patient by themselves, so someone has to give up their job, or they have to find someone to help.
So DPRIT is modeled after CPRIT’S $3 billion program, $300 million a year. We want to attract the best and brightest people to do research to hopefully find a cure one day, but also to find prevention and hopefully research on medication that delays it as long as we can.
In large Texas cities, Senate Bill 15 seeks to reduce minimum residential lot sizes for new neighborhoods. Tell me about the Senate’s focus on land use and local zoning regulations this session.
It's not a surprise to anyone that the cost of housing is going up, so we're looking at housing affordability. One thing we have to do is cut property taxes, and we'll continue to do that; we'll never stop when it comes to lowering property taxes.
But we also have to make it easier to buy a home. One of the things that increases the cost of homes is lot size: the bigger the lot, the more the house costs. ... In a lot of our big counties, for example, in Dallas County—a police officer and school teacher can't afford to live in Dallas County. ...
So anything we can do to streamline the building process, make it more efficient, so that there aren't as many fees involved and many delays involved, and [reduce] lot sizes—whatever we can do to make housing more affordable is a big step in that direction.
The average home buyer today is [56] years old. The average new home buyer is 38. People should be able to buy a home, and they don't need a mansion.
