With conflicting budget estimates, will Texas teachers get the pay raises they anticipated?

[TexasTowelie]

by Aliyya Swaby, Texas Tribune


When state lawmakers passed their landmark $11.6 billion school finance law in late May, school employees were eager to see how mandatory raises would affect their paychecks.

A month later, they're scratching their heads, struggling to decipher complicated changes and conflicting financial estimates that might not net teachers as much money as they expected.

Before lawmakers voted nearly unanimously to approve House Bill 3, which drastically overhauled Texas' outdated school funding system, they received estimates from the state on how much additional money each of their school districts would likely receive over the next two years. But the estimates came with a warning: They could change significantly once the calculations were performed using local data.

Ahead of the upcoming school year, districts are now redoing those calculations themselves — and some are coming up short. That could pose a problem for teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians, since under HB 3, school districts are supposed to use a portion of the new money on those employees' raises and benefits. (School boards must approve their budgets by either a June 30 or an Aug. 31 deadline.)

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/03/teacher-pay-raises-school-district-budgets/