Textbooks are next in Texas budget battle Board of education fights for new texts

Lawmakers say replacing books makes little sense if teachers fired

State board members are growing increasingly anxious that lawmakers might not provide funding for new textbooks and instructional material - even though they're giving the Legislature $1.9 billion from a 157-year-old endowment established to help schools, including providing free textbooks for students.

Board member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, warns that students won't be able to handle tougher school accountability tests without updated instructional materials.

"It's a moral imperative that you provide the proper instructional material," Bradley said this week in an effort to focus attention on the conflict.

A unified board insists that lawmakers spend $500 million on textbooks and instructional material for biology, chemistry and physics in high school, and for English language arts and reading in lower grades, Bradley said.

"This is non-negotiable," he said.

Some legislative leaders, however, question the wisdom of buying new textbooks when schools face up to $11 billion in budget cuts.

"Right now it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend money on textbooks and then fire the teachers who would be using the textbooks," said Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, vice chair of the House Public Education Committee and school finance expert on the Appropriations Committee.

No help from Perry

The 15-member board of education supervises the Permanent School Fund, an endowment for public education created by the Legislature in 1854 with a $2 million appropriation. Today the fund is worth about $25 billion and consists of state land that generates royalty payments, for example, from minerals and offshore oil leases.

The board of education decides what percentage of the fund's earnings can be used to finance public education. The Texas Constitution requires the fund to provide free textbooks and a per-student allotment to school districts for their general use.

"The Constitution is silent to which takes priority and, in a year when you are firing teachers, the books have to come second," said Hochberg, noting that the Constitution doesn't say how often textbooks must be replaced.

Neither House nor Senate budget plans currently has money for new textbooks, and Gov. Rick Perry didn't help, Hochberg said, by declaring the state's rainy day fund off-limits for the 2012-13 budget. (Perry agreed to spend up to $3.2 billion from the reserve fund for this year's budget.) At least 76,000 teaching jobs and related positions could be lost due to multibillion-dollar budget cuts, according to some experts.

Senate Education Chair Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said she will insist on at least $400 million for textbooks and instructional material.

No end-of-course exams?

The Permanent School Fund will generate $1.9 billion for lawmakers to spend on public education in the next two-year budget.

Without funding for new textbooks and related materials, teachers will be left to find updated information on their own to match the state's revised standards. Students are scheduled to be tested on the new standards starting next year, although some districts are lobbying for a delay.

Shapiro said that if students don't get updated textbooks, "there will be no end-of-course exams."

The state's curriculum standards - called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills - broadly describe what students are supposed to learn in each subject and grade level but don't go in-depth as textbooks do.

The board of education significantly revised curriculum standards in English, science and social studies in recent years, leaving current texts outdated in some areas.

In Houston ISD, the state's largest district, the curriculum department will be able to help teachers - but on a tight budget, said Rebecca Flores, director of governmental relations. HISD has been bracing for an estimated shortfall of $171 million.

"Given the limited amount of funds we have, we will have to be very judicious about what we can provide," Flores said.

Houston Chronicle reporter Ericka Mellon contributed to this story

gscharrer@expressnews.net