In the biennial legislative session of 2011, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature cut about $5 billion from education. They trumpeted this "accomplishment" as necessary to balance the Texas budget, and assured citizens that it would not hurt the quality of education in the state. As the top chart shows, about half of the population believed them.But two years makes a big difference. For one thing, we now know what that cut did to education in Texas. Thousands of teachers (and other school employees) were laid off, and class sizes were increased. It did affect the quality of education in the state. The bottom chart shows the percentage of those who now believe the huge budget cut to education hurt education quality -- and most Texans want that money restored.
Those charts were made from information gathered in a bipartisan poll commissioned by the Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA). The poll was done by Republican pollster Jan van Lohuizen and Democratic pollster Keith Frederick between February 19th and 25th of 800 random Texas adults (with a margin of error of 3.5 points).
That wasn't all the respondents had to say. When they were informed that the state's Rainy Day Fund currently has $12 billion (and is still growing), most said they wanted all of the cuts made in 2011 to be restored by using money from that fund -- and this desire reached across political lines. Here are the percentages of those favoring taking $5 billion from the Rainy Day Fund and restoring it to education funds:
General public...............79%
Democrats...............93%
Independents...............76%
Republicans...............61%
They then asked the question in a different way. Would you support using Rainy Day Funds to restore the cuts in education if it could possibly result in a future tax increase? More than half of the respondents still said they wanted that (even though the numbers were slightly reduced). Here are those numbers:
General public...............69%
Democrats...............83%
Independents...............64%
Republicans...............52%
Respondents were also asked what was the most important thing the Rainy Day Fund could be spent on, and they answered as follows:
Education...............66%
Water...............5%
Roads...............4%
All three...............27%
The Republicans evidently know how unpopular their cuts to education have become. A subcommittee of public schools of the House Appropriations Committee has recommended adding $434 million to education funding. That is clearly insufficient (being only 8.68% of the funds cut in 2011), but it would let the Republicans say they increased education funding when they run for re-election in 2014 -- and getting re-elected is the only thing they really care about.
Texas has the money to fix the big mistake the legislature made in 2011, and restore the $5 billion that was cut from education funding. The problem is that the GOP-controlled legislature (and the governor) don't have the desire to do it. For them, education is just not a priority.
