Key Terms: education funding, plural executive, SBOE, legislature,
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Lawmakers are proposing a wide range of fixes for the state’s public school endowment, which has lost out on billions in growth during the past decade while paying out less to schoolchildren.
One bipartisan bill backed by high-powered legislators would restore the State Board of Education’s control over nearly all of the investments for the $44 billion Texas Permanent School Fund, reverting to the way it was before a 2001 law change.
Another would allow the School Land Board, which now controls about $10 billion of the endowment, to double the amount it can send annually directly to schools — up to $600 million. Yet another would take most of the money away from the feuding boards and create a new nine-member governing body appointed by the governor to decide how the endowment invests and distributes its dollars.
In a year-long investigation, “Broken Trust,” the Houston Chronicle found that the while endowment is far larger than it was 20 years ago, it has grown more slowly than many comparable funds. And it has been paying out less to schools than it did in the previous 20 years in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Last year, the fund distributed only 2.8 percent of its value — roughly half the share paid out by many endowments. If it had paid out 5 percent of a four-year average market value, as many endowments try to, Texas schools would have received $720 million more in 2018.
