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House Education Chairman Continues Crusade For Reforming The State's School Finance System

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The architect for revamping the state’s school finance system says he’s committed to getting a vote on an $800-million dollar bill that aims to change how much school district’s spend per student.  But Texas Public Radio’s Ryan Poppe reports the bill has little chance of passing out of the senate.

House Public Education Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock, a Republican from Killeen, introduced a bill that would provide most school districts more money in per pupil spending.  Aycock says coming up with an appropriate formula and then getting members of the Legislature to agree with it has been a near impossible task.

“The question is where do you find the balance point," Aycock said. "At what point do you say we’ve taken as much as we can take from the rich guys and we’ve given about as much as we can from the poor guys. Finding that balance of the Robin Hood endeavors is a real hard issue.” 

Aycock admits that getting the necessary votes can be difficult especially when considering each House member represents an individual school district, each with individual financial needs.

“The rural guys want more, the big schools want more, the demographics groups want more," Aycokc said. "Everybody wants, as you talk about redistributing the money, everyone, as you talk about distributing the money everyone wants their pie bigger, but they also want their piece of the pie to be bigger. So getting everybody to hold hands and play nice is sometimes difficult.” 

Aycock and dozens of legislative colleagues announced the creation of his school finance reform bill earlier in the session, but support in both the House and Senate has begun to dwindle as the session winds down.  Lawmakers expect the legislation to go unaddressed this session while the Texas Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on whether Texas’ system for funding schools is unconstitutional.  

Ryan started his radio career in 2002 working for Austin’s News Radio KLBJ-AM as a show producer for the station's organic gardening shows. This slowly evolved into a role as the morning show producer and later as the group’s executive producer.