Is There A Racial Factor To School De-Funding ?

According to the Texas Education Association (TEA), Hispanic students now comprise more than half of all the students in Texas schools (including Pre-K through high school). It marks the first time that Hispanics have made up more than half of the school population. Since 1995-96, the year that the White student population peaked, Whites have declined by 218,557 while Hispanics have increased by 1,082,891. Here is the current racial/ethnic breakdown in Texas schools:

Total students...............4,900,000
Hispanics...............2,480,000
Whites...............1,538,409
Other races...............881,591

And there is no reason to believe the trend toward more Hispanics and less Whites will change in the future. While Whites now make up about 31.4% of Texas school children, that percentage will drop in the future as the Hispanic percentage (50.2%) continues to increase.

I hate to say it, but all of a sudden the school funding (or should I say de-funding) by Republican lawmakers makes a lot more sense. There is a $27 billion budget shortfall in Texas for the next biennium. That shortfall could be made up a number of ways -- use the "rainy day" fund, legalize casino gambling, broaden the sales tax base, institute a tax on millionaires, adjust the business tax, raise fees or something else.

But the mostly white Republican politicians have decided that they will make up the deficit by simply cutting state agency budgets -- and by cutting nearly $10 billion out of the money allocated for education. Of course this means that nearly 100,000 teachers will be laid off and school class sizes will be drastically increased. That sounds crazy for a state with about a 30% drop-out rate -- a state that is already lowest among the states in per pupil funding. But that's what they want to do.

The school districts hurt the worst by the cuts will be the urban districts and the poorer districts (where minorities make up large percentages of the school children), while rich surburban districts and private schools (where the children/grandchildren of most of these Republican politicians go to school) will survive the cuts much easier.

Why is it so easy for these white politicians to consider such drastic cuts to education? Could it have anything to do with the fact that 68.6% of Texas school children are non-white, and that percentage will grow larger in the future? Are they reluctant to ask their rich white friends and corporations to pay to educate a largely non-white school population?

This would not be as likely if Texas didn't already have a history of ignoring poor and minority districts. It took a court decision to force the Texas legislature to even out the funding of the state's school districts, and even then they came up with a flawed "Robin Hood" plan that only partially worked (and poor districts were already considering a return to court).

Texas has never really wanted to properly fund poor and minority school districts on a par with the rich suburban districts, and this is starting to smell like another excuse to avoid doing that. The Republicans will whine that they just don't have the money to properly fund education, but we all know that's just not true. There are ways to do it -- there just isn't the political will to do it.

The fact is that all Texas school children deserve an opportunity to get a good education -- even minority and poor children. To deny them an equal educational opportunity stinks of bigotry/racism. It's time for the mostly Republican legislature to step up and do the right thing. They may be in a mostly white party, but they are responsible for insuring the future of all Texans.