Texas Insider

By Jim Cardle

On March 12, 2010, the State Board of Education announced that the Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF) is now valued at $22.2 billion, up from $18.1 billion in December 2008.  Why is this significant?  Because the Texas Permanent School Fund provides the funding the state uses to purchase instructional materials for all students attending public school in Texas, as the Texas Constitution requires.  

The largest public endowment for public schools in the nation, the PSF provides textbooks free of charge to the state’s 4.7 million schoolchildren and provides general financial support to the more than 8,000 Texas public schools, according to the Texas Education Agency.

Despite the PSF’s “economically healthy” status, several threats exist that would reduce the amount of PSF-funding made available to the state to purchase constitutionally-mandated instructional materials for students. 

These threats are in the form of legislators imposing funding cut-backs, and in the form of technology hardware competing for instructional materials funds which pay for the educational content used in classrooms to teach and learn. 

The Texas Constitution requires that the State of Texas provide free textbooks (print or digital) to every student attending Texas public schools.  Texas legislators decide how much funding the State Board of Education must set aside — actual dollars from the Permanent School Fund (PSF) — to purchase these textbooks and other instructional materials. 

The first threat to Texas students receiving the required instructional materials comes from legislators: Funding for next year’s textbook proclamation — Proclamation 2011 — has already been reduced by 15 percent, even though lawmakers will not meet until January 2011 to appropriate this funding.  Proclamation 2011 is currently budgeted at $495 million.

Each year’s proclamation identifies the specific subject areas scheduled for review, such as math and English, and contains content requirements for the materials to ensure they are aligned with the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills) standards.  Proclamation 2011 calls for the development and purchase of instructional materials for Grades K-8 English as a Second Language Students (ESL students), along with updated materials for pre-kindergarten, spelling and English. 

Further funding level reductions for Proclamation 2011 would have disastrous consequences for Texas students, especially those students enrolled in the English as a Second Language Program. 

The second threat comes from legislation passed in 2009. 

In 1854, the Texas Legislature created the Permanent School Fund (PSF) with an initial $2,000,000 appropriation, and this fund does not derive from taxpayer revenue.  Profits from this fund are constitutionally-bound to be used only for the purchase of instructional materials and for a per-capita distribution to school districts. 

In 2009, legislation added an additional funding category for the PSF, and profits may now also be used to purchase technology equipment for classrooms.  This puts the PSF at risk of being raided to purchase technology equipment and hardware, such as laptops. 

Funding to provide the instructional materials and content that Texas students need to learn and teachers need to teach should not be sacrificed so that every schoolchild has a brand new laptop. 

Legislators must champion the right of every child to have access to effective learning materials and be wary of siphoning resources away from basic student knowledge.

James B. Cardle is President & CEO of the Texas Citizen Action Network, a dynamic community of Texas leaders who develop ideas, brainstorm solutions & acquire the skills necessary to impact the public policy decision making process in Texas.