TEA presents legislative appropriations request

Commissioner of Education Mike Morath spent approximately 15 minutes hitting the high points of the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA’s) nearly 400-page legislative appropriations request (LAR) at a joint budget hearing Tuesday. During these hearings, state agencies formally present LARs to staff from the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), the governor’s office, Senate Finance, House Appropriations, and the House speaker’s office.

The vast majority of funding in TEA’s appropriations request is Foundation School Program (FSP) funding that flows through the agency to districts. However, hundreds of millions in state spending is appropriated directly to the agency each biennium for staff salaries and program budgets. There are six exceptional items within that category of proposed spending in the TEA LAR totaling roughly $230 million. These items are on top of the agency’s official base budget request, and the largest—coming in at $119 million—is a request to fund Bluebonnet Implementation Supports.

What are “Bluebonnet Implementation Supports”?

Morath initially described this item in broad terms as “grants to school districts to implement [HQIM].” HQIM—high-quality instructional materials—is a label created under state law that the agency and State Board of Education, working in conjunction, apply to a broader subset of instructional materials. However, Morath quickly acknowledged the agency was in fact only requesting funding for the implementation of open-source educational resources (OER) and, more specifically, only Bluebonnet. 

He specified that implementation support isn’t direct funding for Bluebonnet; it is funding for Bluebonnet instructional coaches and training and professional development. He then conflated funding for general math and reading instructional coaches on campuses (part of the package of reforms the state of Mississippi has implemented that have come to be know as the “Mississippi miracle”) with funding for what is effectively a sales and support program to promote school district acquisition of Bluebonnet.

ATPE participates in public testimony

After Morath and invited testifiers from Windham School District testified, the hearing was opened up to public testimony. The majority centered on general education funding that flows though the agency as opposed to funding for agency-level programs. The largest group of testifiers represented  the special education community. ATPE Governmental Relations Director Monty Exter provided comments during this portion of the hearing that can be seen here. 

ATPE will continue to scrutinize the agency’s budget request as well as work with legislative appropriators before and during session to advocate for increased resources for educators and the students they serve.