On June 18, the Houston Independent School District’s administration proposed a budget for the 2019-2020 school year, which the board of trustees voted down. That budget, written and presented by HISD’s chief financial officer, ignores board policy and its underlying values of HISD’s parents, community members, teachers and taxpayers.

The revised compensation plan would mean pay increases for an already bloated central administration, and the budget does not invest enough in students at the campus level. The board must demand a budget that puts campus needs first.

To grasp what this proposed budget got right and very wrong, it is first necessary to understand how HISD schools are funded. During the 1990s, in response to declining student academic performance, increasing dropout rates and beliefs that schools were funded inequitably, HISD transformed itself from a highly centralized bureaucracy to a decentralized district. Schools took control of their own budgets, personnel and curriculum.

Under this model, the bulk of each campus budget comes from the Per Unit Allocation (PUA), in which students are the “units,” and a certain number of dollars follows each one. Since not all students are the same, the PUA is higher for students who cost more to educate: among them, the economically disadvantaged, English-language learners, the gifted and talented, special education students, the homeless and more.

When a campus’s PUA increases, principals have the funds to hire more teachers and pay for instructional materials and programs that they otherwise couldn’t afford. When the PUA decreases, the campus must make cuts.

During the recent legislative session, House Bill 3 was signed into law, overhauling the state’s outdated public school finance system. As a result, the budget proposed on June 18 has $135 million in new revenue.

Of that new revenue, $34.1 million goes toward raises for teachers and campus-based support staff. This is significantly more than HB3 requires the district to spend on pay raises. What the proposed budget got right was to prioritize this much-needed pay raise to teachers, especially those with more than 25 years experience and campus-based support staff. These proposed raises fall short of reflecting their hard work, however, and likely are not enough to stay competitive with nearby districts.

Unfortunately, the proposal also boosts the pay scale for already highly paid administrators, continuing HISD’s tradition of prioritizing increases to administration while giving very little to those making the least. But overall, the raises are a step in the right direction.

What the proposal got very wrong was adding zero dollars to the PUA — the money that follows the students, the money that schools control. Instead, those funds will be controlled by HISD’s central administration.

This is especially important because last year HISD cut the PUA by $197 per student, which resulted in a $45 million cut at campuses across the district. Principals were forced to cut staff and programming and increase class sizes.

And that affects students. As school finance expert Bruce Baker writes, “Ample research indicates that children in smaller classes achieve better outcomes, both academic and otherwise, and that class size reduction can be an effective strategy for closing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.”

This is the core work of a school district and must be prioritized.

When a board member asked why there was no proposal for restoring the PUA, Chief Financial Officer Rene Barajas said, “Putting the money directly in the PUA is, in my opinion, an inefficient use of it because it creates more inequity because it helps the bigger campuses and not the smaller campuses.”

This statement ignores that an additional $11 million is added to the budgets of small schools to make up for the economies of scale that they’re too small to achieve.

And importantly, it goes directly against the HISD board’s own policy on educational philosophy, which states, “Schools must be empowered to develop and implement the methods that best achieve their unique and individual instructional goals. The District is fully committed to a decentralized system of schools, giving principals the authority over the educational and operational systems.”

It is not the role of HISD’s administrators to make budgetary decisions in direct conflict with board policy. But incredibly, Barajas even stated that if it were determined early next school year that HISD will receive more funds than anticipated under HB3, the administration will not necessarily consult the board regarding how to spend those funds.

It is administrators' job to present a budget that reflects the board’s priorities and stated policy. As such, any HB3 unmandated dollars should be used to begin restoring the PUA to previous levels, so that principals have the resources to staff campuses optimally and provide the most effective learning experiences possible.

The budget that HISD’s chief financial officer presented on June 18 reflected administrators' priorities. The board must demand that the revised proposed budget is aligned with HISD board policies and the community’s underlying values. Students will benefit when more money is spent closer to them.

Golden, Cross and Maddux are HISD parents and Leadership ISD alumni. They advocated for public education reform in Austin this session.