Justice and some relief may come after all as the suffering of children of lower-income families is scorching down on them like that Texas sun as they were already at a disadvantage with lack of funding prior to budget cuts.
Article taken from: Texas AFT Legislative Hotline: https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/1314068ba4a2fb38
New School-Finance Lawsuit Brewing: The San Antonio Express-News reports that school-district lawyers are getting ready to file a new school-finance lawsuit against the state for failing to provide constitutionally mandated, equitable support for public schools statewide. According to the news story, the lawsuit could be filed in September. Among other things, it would attack the state’s failure to ensure roughly equivalent funding per pupil among districts, regardless of their local property wealth, at similar levels of local taxation. Under the state’s badly skewed system of school finance, districts in the highest wealth bracket continue to be assured of far more funding per student than the lowest-wealth districts, with an average advantage of $2,500 per pupil per year for the wealthiest. The recently enacted state budget for 2012-2013, while reducing school districts’ formula funding by $4 billion, also does little or nothing to alleviate this already-inequitable distribution of state aid. If the school districts filing the lawsuit prevail in court, the state legislature would be forced to rewrite state law on school funding. The last such court-ordered revision of state school-finance rules occurred in 2006.
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