I think that I'll tell us managers.
I'm gonna try to get this quick because I have
too much material to go over as usual.
But today I'm gonna talk about school funding and the
blue bonnet program.
I'm gonna go over a couple of uh some myths
that are out there.
I'm gonna go ahead and debunk them, and then I'm
gonna tell you why uh the blue bonnet curriculum that's
being pushed by SBOE, the State Board of Education is
not the answer.
Before I continue, I do want to I do want
to thank Frisco ISD.
They invited me to a very awkward closed-door meeting with
Jared Patterson and uh two other State House Republican State
House representatives, um Frederick Frazier and uh and one other,
Matt Shaheen.
And I was the only Democrat in the room.
The whole purpose was to make sure that the representatives
and the candidates understood how finance works when it comes
to our ISDs.
And so they gave us this nice little slideshow.
I'm gonna go over a couple of them.
Some of this might be a little bit of information
you may already know.
I'm gonna talk about the WADA.
The Wada stands for the weighted average daily attendance.
This is a formula that is determined by our state
legislature.
It determines how much money that goes to each of
our independent school districts.
Generally speaking, it goes like this: there's a number that
floats above every kid's head.
That number is around $6,000, uh, specifically on here $6,160.
And these numbers, that basic allotment number, that $6,000 number
gets multiplied based upon two variables.
One, the kids' attendance at school, and two, their needs.
For example, in this slide here, we can see how
if someone attends 95% of the time, that can drag
that number down a little bit.
But if if uh say, for example, this kid's special
needs, that can be multiplied by 1.2.
There are different weights that are applied to this basic
allotment number.
Again, that number is around $6,000.
But what's most important to know is that this number,
the $6,000 number, has not been adjusted since the year
2019.
And we've had considerable inflation since then.
So given the fact that the static number does not
auto-adjust to inflation, and it's still still out of date,
it means that our public education system as a whole.
is being defunded due to inflation
More specifically, if we wanted to keep the basic allotment
up to inflation, we would have to increase the basic
allotment by $1,400.
Something that both Frisco ISD has asked for and Dedent
ISDs asked for as well.
I'll go over that in a little bit.
But essentially, they really want to drive this home to
myself and the other State House representatives.
They basically have this chart here showing that, hey, look,
in Frisco ISD, we're getting more money through our gold
pennies, our silver pennies, essentially our property taxes.
But when you adjust it to inflation here, it's still
not the same amount of dollar value coming into our
independent school districts.
This is something they basically asked for in the last
very last slide.
They were begging basically the statehouse reps to please increase
the basic allotment by $1,400.
And then there was secondly, they really wanted the basic
allotment to auto-adjust with inflation as inflation continues to basically
take care of our future.
So that was uh something that they were really asking
for, and they're really trying to drill home that we
have a massive surplus in Texas.
We got money in the bank.
We've all been paying a lot of money through our
property taxes, right?
I know they all feel that I do.
And we got money in the bank.
We can pay for our independent school districts and our
broken roads and utilities and so many other things, if
only we would use our surplus.
I don't know how if I can share the audio,
how well the audio is can't do the audio.
I'm gonna have to just go ahead and wing this.
As I said, increase the basic allotment.
Increase it by at least 1,400, it will bring us
back to the 2019 levels, and also ever since HP3
2019, any increase to the basic allotment is a guaranteed
increase to our teachers's salaries.
So I think someone down there said I want a
$1,400 increase to the basic allotment.
Do you guys understand how much that costs?
$800 bilonli for a $100 increase to the basic allotment.
That's $11.2 billion.
Do the math for those of you business people in
here.
$20 million surplus, $11.2 million, $112 billion going
pub head when we know that a third of every
dollar gets into the classroom with the teacher.
I'm going to go into this just real quick because
I was really, really agitated that Mitch Little did this
because there's a slide of hand here that I saw
happening on the spot.
He's trying to basically say that we have a $20
billion surplus.
First, that's kind of true, but not quite right.
I want to bring up this slide right here.
We have, I'm going to chairs, there we go.
Our actual surplus right now in Texas is $23.7 billion.
Last session we had a $33 billion surplus.
We had $10 more billion dollars in our surplus.
We lost that because of Operation Lumstar, because our governors
are hemorrhaging that money away.
Secondly, he's trying to say that I'm demanding for $11.2
billion to spend in our public education system.
Actually, I would love it if we did, but we
don't really need to.
If we increase the basic allotment by $1,000, that would
only cost us $5.5 billion.
I know that $5.5 billion sounds like a big number,
but again, you have to understand we currently have $23.7
billion in surplus right now.
And previously we have $33 billion.
This money belongs to our public education systems.
I'm going to jump ahead real quick too, because I'm
running out of time.
Because I want to talk about Blue Bonnet.
Blue Bonnet is a scam being offered by our state
board of education.
What they're trying to say is that, hey, look, if
you really want to increase the amount of funding coming
to our school board districts, then adopt this optional curriculum
called Blue Bonnet.
What Blue Bonnet actually is is a curriculum that infuses
a church and Christian education into our public schools.
It will basically slap the Bible into the laps of
kindergartners and teach Bible studies from great kindergarten. through grade
five
And what they're doing, and the reason I went over
the budgeting stuff, is because they're trying to say, hey,
look, if you adopt this blue blonde curriculum, we're going
to give you $30 for every student that you have
in your school.
Now, I want you to hear that.
$30.
Not $300, $30.
They're offering $30 per kid.
All the meanwhile, $70I, we've been advocating for over a
thousand dollars increase to the basic lotment, right?
But they only want to give us 30.
That barely covers the material.
Because you've got to pay for the Bible, you gotta
print out all the learning material that they're gonna push.
Not to mention which denomination of Christianity is going to
be taught.
This is one of the things we always run into
whenever we try to talk about Bible fused in curriculums.
But I'm a bit out of time, but I want
to touch on many can of worms that this opens
up, and also I really want to go over the
budgeting because they're trying to dangle this thread in front
of our ISD saying, hey, look, if you really want
this money, accept this curriculum.
But the reality is it's snapjack squat to what our
ISDs really truly deserve.
Thank you.