The biennial budget shortfall you’ve heard so much about — estimated to be anywhere from $13 billion to $28 billion — will require the Legislature to take a paring knife and possibly a machete to government agencies and programs. The largest single consumer of state dollars is public education, so it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which funding for teacher salaries, curricular materials and the like isn’t on the chopping block, especially if state lawmakers want to make good on their promises of no new taxes.
Nobody knows for sure how drastic the cuts will be until January, when the comptroller releases her revenue estimate and lawmakers unveil their starting budget. But one educated guess in November suggested school districts may have to prune between $3 billion and $5 billion from the more than $35 billion public ed budget, which represents just under 44 percent of the state’s general revenue spending. Where is that money going to come from?
First, expect fewer teachers in classrooms. For most Texas school districts, personnel costs — employee salaries and benefits — account for 80 percent to 90 percent of total expenses. While the goal for belt-tightening districts will be “to stay as far away from the children” as possible, says Wayne Pierce, the executive director of the Equity Center, which advocates for increased funding to districts, there’s only so much they can do without touching such a large chunk of their budget.
With the specter of the 2011 shortfall looming, many districts have already stripped what they can from administrative and custodial positions, he says. And delaying routine maintenance like fixing leaky roofs until better times can only take them so far. That leaves spending on teachers, which in turn means cutting salaries and, in some cases, eliminating positions. "You have to have electricity, you have to have gasoline for the buses, you have to have teaching supplies,” Pierce says. “So bottom line, you have to cut personnel.”
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