Texas Schools Face New Rules on Financial Hardship
The Texas Education Agency has released new guidelines that set tough thresholds for school districts hoping to take advantage of special legal exemptions passed by the Legislature and intended to help schools cope with significant budget cuts.
A school district's declaration of “financial exigency” is necessary to trigger many provisions of Senate Bill 8, including those that allow districts to streamline mid-contract employee terminations and avoid seniority-based layoffs in certain circumstances. The law, passed during the special session, left it up to the Commissioner of Education to establish a minimum standard for such declarations, which were previously largely in ...
Comments (3)
Dormand Long
Perhaps it is time for independent school districts to re-examine what their mission is.
The Dallas Morning News recently reported that the Richardson ISD had $2.4 million more in expenses than in revenues for its football programs.
While few would advocate eliminating football, it is time to consider whether the apparently out-of-control subsidies for the football program are effective public policy in an era in which most of the holders of high school diplomas arrive at college to discover that they are not qualified to even start college level course work.
We have dire shortages in many occupations in this country. At the same time the secondary schools are offering training which was appropriate for the early 1900s.
There are few jobs open for either agricultural work or for unskilled manual labor in industrial plants, yet that is what our schools are turning out graduates for.
Let's realign our public policy on the mission for schools to match what the needs and requirements are for the early Twenty First Century.
Massive subsidies for football programs are markedly inappropriate.
David Spratt
"Before SB8 there weren’t any standards for declaring financial exigency and the bill required the commissioner to adopt minimum standards,"
Maybe this is why some rules were put in place? Maybe a little more responsibility spending what you have. What were the minimum standards before, just the ability to ask?
gypsy314 ne
The state would have plenty of money if they would start deporting illegal aliens and do not allow them to abandon there children here. We need e-verify and take away permits for company's that hire illegal aliens. Then put there sorry ass in jail. Think of the billions we would have for our children then. We need to send a message to all courts we are not going to pay for some other country's children schooling. We must put shorter terms on all judges. If a judge has more then three cases over turn in one year remove them from the bench for 90 days if it happens twice fire them. We need to clean up some of these crooks that we have on the bench. Remember a vote for a democrat is a vote for Obama.