Today, Senior Education Policy Advisor Kara Belew testified before members of the House Committee on Public Education on the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s public education plan, Right on Education: Texas’ Agenda to Restore Money to the Classroom and Eliminate the Main School Property Tax.
“The key components of the TPPF public education agenda are ensuring school boards set student outcomes goals, provide merit pay for teachers, and focus on improving civics education,” said Belew. “TPPF looks forward to working with state leaders this session on innovative ideas that will improve student outcomes while lowering the property tax bills of families across Texas.”
- The six components of the public education agenda are:
- Direct school boards, principals, and teachers to establish goals and monitor the progress of their schools’ and students’ reading and math outcomes
- Direct school boards to adopt merit pay programs for Texas’ most effective principals and teachers and support their curriculum success in the classroom
- Empower parents to ensure their children have a civics education focused on the founding principles of America
- Eliminate the maintenance and operations (M&O) school property tax in order to significantly reduce each family’s property tax burden
- Stop taxpayer-funded lobbying
- Give parents the opportunity to trigger school district efficiency audits to improve the use of taxpayer money.
The idea of an efficiency audit is one that has previously been discussed by parents in the Austin school district, however it’s not an issue the AISD school baord has really discussed. However, as the district struggles with a growing budget deficit, as well as a year-over-year turnover of students and teachers, TPPF says this kind of audit can identify wasteful spending that could be re-allocated for other programs, as well as for an increase in teacher pay.
CLICK HERE to view the full plan.
