By Ken Mercer SBOE District 5
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas The 2010 Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) led by Chairman Gail Lowe (R - Lampasas) voted to send the 2011 Texas Legislature $3 billion dollars of new funding for public education.
How? The forefathers of Texas had the foresight to create the Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF) to ensure that all children in Texas will receive free textbooks.
While some elected officials are promoting the idea of raising taxes and fees on the backs of hard-working Texas families the SBOE is blessing Texas with a $3 billion payout generated
from the PSF endowment.
Lowe sent a letter to the Texas Legislature signed by all 15 members of the 2010 SBOE asking that the first $500 million be used to purchase new textbooks recently built upon newly adopted standards and that
the remaining $2.5 billion left over be dedicated to education funding.
Some of the textbooks being replaced are 12-18 years old.
That $2.5 billion could pay the salaries of 25000 English math or science educators for the next two years.
On January 18 2011 Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and Speaker Joe Straus released a formal letter praising the SBOE for this huge distribution of new
funding for education.
The SBOE is the only entity in Texas that sends the Legislature a bill for $500 million and then provides $3 billion in new education funding which is six times the amount needed to pay that $500 million bill.
The
SBOE is fulfilling what our founders intended - free textbooks for Texas children.
That $500 million secures two major victories for Texas parents.
First the new English Language Arts textbooks will include a strong emphasis on phonics explicit grammar spelling and handwriting. These English skills are critical to help students gain English proficiency.
The SBOE listened to their constituents cry to go back to the basics and return to a proven success phonics. Now our students need those new textbooks to help them learn the new standards.
Second the public has screamed for an end to high stakes testing and teaching to a test. These new textbooks and standards will move Texas to the
sensible end-of-course exams championed by Sen. Florence Shapiro (R - Plano) and mandated by the Texas Legislature.
Our educators cannot achieve that 2012 Legislative mandate without new textbook materials that are aligned with the new standards. Failure to fund these new textbooks means another unfunded mandate for educators.
Please call and remind your State Legislators that
the SBOE provided $3 billion of new funding for education. Ask them to spend $500 million on the new textbooks and dedicate the remaining $2.5 billion to public education.
Ken Mercer (R - Bexar) is a current Member of the State Board of Education and a former State Representative. Mercer represents 1.7 million constituents in 12 counties including Blanco Burnet Caldwell Comal Gillespie Guadalupe Hays Kendall Llano and parts of Bell Bexar and Travis.
