The constitutional claim. The Texas school finance
system fails the “efficient system” standard set by Article VII §1 of
the Texas Constitution and applied by the Texas Supreme Court in
Edgewood v. Kirby (1989) and Morath v. Texas Taxpayer and
Student Fairness Coalition (2016). Four structural shortfalls
accumulated during the decade since Morath fall below the
suitability standard the 2016 Court articulated.
The fiscal finding. A campus-level regression on
Texas Education Agency PEIMS data covering 1,203 districts and 8,674
campuses produces empirically derived at-risk weights that diverge
substantially from the post-HB 3 (2019) tiered weights. The aggregate
annual structural-soundness gap is $1.82 billion
statewide, with $2.91 billion of aggregate underfunding
among the 401 high-need districts whose empirical need exceeds the
post-HB 3 statewide average weight. The Lost Decade (Texas AFT
& Every Texan, 2022, 2024) documents a separate wage adequacy gap of
approximately $4 billion per biennium. The two findings
measure different axes of the same constitutional crisis.
Four documented shortfalls
- Inadequate at-risk weights. House Bill 72 (1984)
set the TEC §48.104 compensatory weight at 0.20. House Bill 3 (2019)
restructured it to a tiered 0.225 to 0.275 range keyed to census-block
poverty. Adjusted for forty years of inflation, the post-HB 3 weights
still do not cover actual instructional cost; empirical weights from the
ARC regression run two to three times the post-HB 3 statewide
average.
- Bond-dependent facility funding. Cleveland ISD
failed four of five bonds 2019–2023 while serving 92.8% economically
disadvantaged students. Ten Texas districts have passed zero
non-athletic bonds across 39 attempts since 2016.
- Charter duplication. 118 non-HISD campuses operated
by 51 different Local Education Agencies are inside Houston ISD’s
boundary. Austin ISD and KIPP Austin both contracted simultaneously in
November–December 2025.
- TIA pipeline. 46.1% of campuses in the highest
economic-disadvantage quartile have zero TIA-designated teachers. House
Bill 3 (2019) created TIA without the campus-type adjustment Dallas ISD
added in 2020–21.
Eight legislative actions
- Recalibrate funding weights every five years from PEIMS data, with
campus-level and student-level allotment calculation; add absenteeism,
homeless, and foster-care weights.
- Index IFA and EDA guaranteed yields to construction-cost
inflation.
- Establish a state Facility Equalization Allotment for low-wealth
districts.
- Bond-Failed Fast-Growth Allotment: state per-pupil
facility aid for fast-growth districts whose bonds have failed.
- Restructure SB 1882 partnership program (TEC §11.174): public
posting, sunset, conflict-of-interest bar, clawback.
- Require ISD impact assessment before charter expansion; prohibit
simultaneous ISD/charter board service.
- Restructure takeover trigger (TEC §39.107(a)) to require de novo
judicial review.
- Amend TIA (TEC §48.112): campus-type adjustment + need-profile
distribution cap (1.5x).
Full brief: maestro.press/blog/research
• Contact: kevin.hopper@maestro.press