On May 10, 2019, the first conference committee was held to negotiate the differences between the House and Senate plans for school finance reform. As was briefly discussed in last week’s update, one of the issues that is being negotiated is the Senate’s proposal to calculate school funding using property values from the current year rather than the existing practice of using prior year values. While this is a seemingly small issue, it will have an enormous impact on the pot of money allocated to school districts. According to Frisco ISD’s own analysis, the change would cost the school district $36 million which would have otherwise been able to go to hiring additional teachers in order to reduce class sizes. This week, the Frisco Chamber sent a letter with other area business leaders urging conference committee members to address this issue. You can click on the photo of the front page of that letter to be directed to a link with the full text of that letter.
How can you help? Click here to EMAIL our statewide elected officials and members of conference committee to encourage that they USE PRIOR YEAR VALUES in House Bill 3. These dollars are critical to fund Frisco ISD teachers, programming that benefits our students, and curriculum that will prepare our future workforce.
