So What Was That About School Funding?

Based on the last part of my previous post, this headline from the Houston Chronicle should come as no surprise:

Next Governor Likely to Face School Finance Problems

This is the critical issue facing the state, as it has since 1993, 1997, 2003, and obviously today. But when a school district like Plano is facing such serious shortfalls, it's surprising when the governor won't admit that there's a problem.

TEX EDUCATION, 2010

An interesting post by Paul Burka regarding the two Republican gubernatorial candidates in Texas. The gist is that Senator Hutchison claims that Governor Perry has let public education founder during his record-setting time in office. Fine by me.

But Burka points out that the senator's own statements on what she would do to solve the problem are woefully lacking, writing:

Here’s what’s missing from the Hutchison battle strategy: She doesn’t hesitate to say that Perry is doing some important things badly, and she doesn’t hesitate to say that she has done good things in the Senate. What she doesn’t say is what she will do when she is elected governor. Voters have no more clue what the top priorities of a Hutchison governorship might be, or how she might carry them out, than they did when she first announced that she was running a year ago.

This is one of the major problems with education--it's always there as a whipping boy for the next cycle, but progress is painfully slow. My sense is that until the state contributes more tax dollars to the schools instead of relying so much on property taxes and recapture, we won't make serious headway.