HOUSTON – Spring Branch ISD Board President Chris Earnest sharpened criticism against his State Senator, Paul Bettencourt. Tuesday night (Feb. 27, 2024) Bettencourt posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) sharing a recent opinion piece from the district’s former superintendent questioning the district’s recent funding shortfall.
Bettencourt referenced a January vote by the school board authorizing the superintendent to send a recapture payment to the state.
“If [Spring Branch ISD board] going to attack state leadership because they were. If [Spring Branch ISD board] going to attack the state legislature, they were,” Bettencourt said. “If [Spring Branch ISD board] going to say, there’s terrible things happening and there weren’t. Then you have to be demonstrative and say, ‘hey we made a mistake. We changed our mind, here’s why.’”
Bettencourt argues the district wasn’t as vocal about the January vote as they were during an August vote when the board told the superintendent not to send a nearly $80 million check back to state.
During the August meeting the board vice president said she was ‘vehemently’ against sending the check.
“I think that school districts across the state of Texas, who are recapture districts, are going to have to start standing up to Governor [Greg] Abbott, our legislature, [Texas Education Agency] Commissioner [Mike] Morath on behalf of the children of Texas that go to schools, public schools,” said Spring Branch ISD Board Vice President Lisa Alpe.
KPRC 2′s Rilwan Balogun asked Board President Chris Earnest what changed between August and January.
“When we started that fight, we were projecting a recapture payment of over $80 million. With the Senate Bill 2 tax reduction that recapture payment for Spring Branch was lowered to about $10 million,” Earnest said. “Looking at it from a pragmatic approach, if we didn’t make the payment TEA (Texas Education Agency) could step in and they could reassign commercial property to other districts and make that cash revenue and send it to other school districts that need the money. The problem is Spring Branch is a rooftop wealthy district, meaning we don’t have enough commercial property to detach from our district to get out of recapture.”
Bettencourt authored Senate Bill 2, which allocates about $12.6 billion to reduce the school property tax rate by 10.7 cents per $100 valuation for homeowners and business properties. It also includes an increase to the state’s homestead exemption from $40,000 to $100,000 at an estimated cost of $5.3 billion, and some extra relief for seniors and property owners with disabilities, averaging an extra $170 per year.
Earnest said they faced two options: send the $10 million recapture payment or risk losing the district.
“That’s the reality for us. We don’t have enough commercial property to detach which seems, you know, it’s not great. But it’s something maybe we could live with. If you were to detach some property, assign it somewhere else,” he said. “But to be merged and our district to no longer exist is not what we were elected to do.”
The feud between the senator and the school board isn’t new. Since the start of the school year there have been posts on social media and press releases.
During a Wednesday meeting, Bettencourt shared with Balogun that he’s pressed district leaders to apply for the state’s Teacher Incentive Allotment, or TIA.
“It’s free money from the state,” Bettencourt said. “They give your best teacher raises and then you use that money, and your other dollars could do what you need it to do in the district. And it’s really been frustrated for me to know that good teachers at Spring Branch are not getting those raises when it’s a wildly known program.”
The state senator also added he believes during the next legislative session there’s at least four bills that will aid schools statewide.
“We’ve already got four and a half billion dollars allocated, right now. That’s going to be unspent in the budget,” Bettencourt said. “More money for schools, more teacher pay, [and] an increase in the incentive allotment that we’ve already been using.”
The 89th Regular Session is scheduled for January 14, 2025.
In the meantime, Earnest said they’ll keep advocating for more funds.
“We’re going to ramp up the fight again for this next year, “Earnest said. “We think with the increasing news of budget issues across the state and other ISDs that there’s going to be more school districts that are going to take on that fight with us.”
WHAT IS RECAPTURE
The Texas Education Agency calls the process as excess local revenue and “these provisions are sometimes referred to as “share the wealth” or “Robin Hood” plan because recaptured funds are redistributed by the school finance system to assist with the financing of public education for all school districts.”
“We are a property wealthy district, considered to be a property wealthy district, meaning we raise more taxes than we’re allowed to keep for our education costs within the district,” Earnest said. “Meaning we have that spill over, that excess revenue that we collect is sent back to the state.”