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In a letter to the legislature posted at the Center for Public Policy Priorities earlier this week, guru of education justice Scott McCown called the first school funding bill radical and urged the legislature to be not so shortsighted.

According to McCown, the legislature is attempting to retreat from ‘recapture’ or the so-called ‘Robin Hood’ formulas that have for the past decade somehwat equalized the abilities of rich and poor districts to raise money for schools.
McCown doesn’t say that the logic of the entire West Orange Cove initiative has been heading this direction ever since the wealthier school districts of Texas banded together and filed the lawsuit that created the court mandate for this special session on school funding.

But we can say it: because the impoverished neighborhoods of Texas could see this coming, they tried to intervene. One distressing pattern in this round of struggle is the refusal of the Texas courts to take the intervenors more seriously, thus granting a kind of tacit permission for the turn now being taken. Under these circumstances we have a right to worry whether Texas has begun an historical reversal of the Robin Hood principles in school funding reform.

The situation is not improved by news reports that headlined recent court decisions as explicit rejections of Robin Hood principles. Those headlines may have created expectations that Robin Hood reversal is what the legislature is supposed to be doing.

McCown stays the optimistic course by arguing that any retreat from Robin Hood equality will surely be rebuked by the courts. But we wonder if legislators have a sense that court politics ain’t likely to return to the logic that Judge McCown brought to the bench when he was reviewing school funding cases. Judicial trends cannot be isolated from their political environments. And we have a right to wonder if the forces for progressive education policy will be able to stage a movement meaningful enough to compel the logics of elected judges.

McCown’s important letter is archived below:

April 20, 2006

Re: House Bill 1

Dear Representative:

Supporters describe HB 1 as the bare minimum to satisfy the Texas Supreme Court, a “Get-Out-of- Dodge bill.” In fact, HB 1 is a radical change in the law, more of a “Rob-the-Dodge-Bank” bill.

HB 1 is a Radical Change in the Law
HB 1 compresses the property tax rate from $1.50 to $1.33. It continues the current law guaranteed yield at $27.14, meaning that for every penny of property tax, the state guarantees a local school district $27.14 per student.

HB 1 then takes the radical step of eliminating recapture above $1.33, dramatically increasing the revenue gap between rich and poor school districts. For example, Highland Park Independent School District could raise $127 more per student merely by going to a tax rate of $1.34, and $2,163 per student by going to a tax rate of $1.50. In contrast, 820 school districts could only raise $27.14 more per student at $1.34, and only $461 more per student by going to $1.50. On average, the wealthiest 10% of the districts could raise $841 more per student at $1.50.

Limiting Recapture Will Hurt Your Schools and Communities.
As a matter of good policy, you want to keep all school districts in the herd tethered together. If you assign a small number of school districts exclusive rights to lush pastures with green, high grass, once the pastures assigned to the other districts no longer yield enough for their herds, they will be unable to get the political support needed for more money for better pastures. Without money for schools, their communities will suffer. Economic development flows to districts that can have great schools at low tax rates rather than those districts forced to suffer with mediocre schools at high tax rates. Recapture is good policy because it makes our individual interest our common interest, thereby ensuring fair and adequate school funding for all.

The Law Doesn’t Require Limiting Recapture
Nothing the Supreme Court has ever said requires the Legislature to limit recapture. The Court found recapture to be constitutional in Edgewood IV and speaks of it as an important feature of the system in its latest ruling in West Orange-Cove II. Supporters of HB 1 argue that the Court raised a concern about the amount of recapture. Not so. The Court discussed the amount of recapture only as a factor in determining whether districts have meaningful discretion, meaning something like 10% tax capacity for supplementation.
As long as districts have meaningful discretion, the amount of recapture is of no legal concern. West Orange Cove II at 81. Indeed, if you strip the provisions limiting recapture from HB 1, but still compress the property tax rates by 15 cents or so, thereby giving districts meaningful discretion, the amount of recapture falls automatically and is of no legal concern.

In Fact, Limiting Recapture Will Get You in Trouble with the Law.
The Court has cited recapture favorably as maintaining the very marginal equity in the current system. West Orange-Cove II at 72. Under HB 1, however, in the words of the Supreme Court, first written in Edgewood IV and just repeated in West Orange-Cove II, limiting recapture “destroys the efficiency of the entire system.” West Orange-Cove at 73 and 84-85. If the Legislature provides vast amounts of unequal supplementation for rich districts thereby destroying the efficiency of the entire system, the poor districts must go back to the Supreme Court and ask it to close the schools.

What to Do
You should compress property tax rates. However, the very same bill that compresses property tax rates should also raise the guaranteed yield and the equalized wealth level (the point at which recapture begins) in a way that 1) reduces the revenue gap between the rich and the poor as much as you can afford, and 2) takes as many districts out of recapture as you can afford.

Interpreting the Governor’s Call
If the Governor’s call allows consideration of HB 1, which limits recapture, then it allows raising the guaranteed yield and the equalized wealth level. All three regulate the same thing. Conversely, if you cannot raise the guaranteed yield or the equalized wealth level under the Governor’s call, then you cannot limit recapture.

Don’t Be Short-Sighted
Those of you not in the House pre-Edgewood probably cannot imagine how inadequately and unfairly the Legislature funded schools. Your predecessors had to fight hard for what little money they got for their schools. Whatever you estimate your school districts might temporarily gain under HB 1, if you limit recapture, thus returning the law to the pre-Edgewood era, in the future they will get nothing. Unless our individual interest remains our common interest, the wealthy 10% will eat the high, green grass, and the rest will eat weeds, if they eat anything at all.

Any Calendar Rule that Limits the Ability of the House to Express Its Will Must Be Defeated
Any Calendar Rule that prohibits you from amending HB 1 to strip out the recapture limitation, raise the guaranteed yield, or raise the equalized wealth level must be defeated if the will of the House is to prevail. We urge you to do right for Texas.

Sincerely yours,

F. Scott McCown
Executive Director
Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP)

The election year antics are beginning to spin like an extra-rinse cycle. Houston Indymedia mentions a sweep last week (Jan. 19) in League City: "police officers and immigration agents swept through two day laborer sites and took more than sixty immigrants into custody."

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia
Austin / CounterPunch

There I was, eating enchiladas mole at Las Manitas, trying not to make a big deal out of Jon Dee Graham standing right next to me, when, through the window, Congress Avenue turned red, white, and green with chanting students…

500 high school students from Austin, Cedar Park, and Leander marched to the capitol Friday where they rallied for immigrant rights in opposition to a threatened federal crackdown.

Students marched up Congress Ave. shortly before 2:00 p.m. and rallied along the wide sidewalk just outside the capitol gates.

Dressed mostly in white t-shirts and carrying various sized flags of Mexico, students chanted “Me-xi-co, Me-xi-co, Me-xi-co” and “Hell No, We Won’t Go!”
“We’re here to work. We’re not criminals!” declared one hand-made sign. “Viva Mexico, Si Se Puede” said another, echoing the famous slogan of Cesar Chavez, “Yes, We Can!”

“We Pay Taxes,” said a slogan written in black marker on the back of a white t-shirt. “Without US Mexicans, the US is Nothing,” said a posterboard sign in black and white. A few young women wore petit-sized flags tucked to the fronts of their shirts.

The students were greeted with frequent honks from passing cars as drivers waved and gave ‘thumbs up’ to the impromptu demonstration for immigrant rights and dignity. Sometimes the car would be a mint-condition Chevy SUV, full of students waving Mexican flags from the windows.

One demonstrator, with his face half covered by a bandana made from a Mexican flag said most of the students were between the ages of 15 and 18. Others identified themselves as from Reagan, LBJ, and Garza high schools in Austin.

“I was on lunch break from Garza High School,” said 19-year-old Daniel Dimas, “and I heard the people walking shouting ‘ay, ay, ay!’ So I pulled up beside them and played my Spanish music real loud and said, ‘Do you need some support?’ So I ended up here!” Dimas held a Mexican flag mounted on a short pole that he waved as he led chants.

“Who made this country?” asked Dimas before he turned back to his newfound friends and shouted,”Who likes beans?” and “Who likes tortillas?” He could have asked also about caramel-colored lollypops, which seemed very popular with the crowd.

“You see what I mean,” says Dimas, smiling at the robust cheers that answered his questions. “We’re a whole new diverse group that this country needs. And we’re not going anywhere. What else can I say?” Of course, he had more to say:

“We built this country. We are nearly half the population. Even if they stop us, we’re going to come back. They’re not going to stop us. We’ve been here too long.”

Sixteen-year-old Vanessa Villa from Vista Ridge High School in nearby Cedar Park said she had planned to march next Tuesday, but on the spur of the moment this morning, students started walking from the high school toward the capitol, a distance of 24 miles.

“We’ve been walking all day, since 10:30!,” exclaimed Villa.

“We’re that proud!” said 15-year-old Jacki Caballero of Cedar Park, recalling the long walk down FM 1431 to Highway 183 where the students caught a bus.

“We’re the ones who created this place!” said Caballero.

“And we’re working for all immigrants,” said Villa, “not just Mexicans, but Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, too.”

An adult passed through the crowd with flyers announcing a national day of action here on April 10 (at 4pm). On Saturday (April 1) the annual Cesar Chavez march was also scheduled to highlight immigrant rights.

Leading up to last Saturday’s immigrant rights march held in Los Angeles, students there staged walkouts. That march topped a million people, and students across the country have continued walkouts this past week.

The afternoon was unusually warm for late March, and one student was taken away by ambulance for apparent heat exhaustion. She was only one block from the capitol.

At the main entrance to the capitol grounds, some students sat shoulder-to-shoulder along low stone walls, occasionally joining in chants or making “waves” from one end of the wall to the other with a ripple of dancing hands.

Other students enjoyed the rally in the modest shade of small trees. Still others led chants and cheers from the warmed up sidewalk along 11th Street.

When a television cameraman moved into position behind the sidewalk crowd they turned their attention from passing traffic to face the camera.

“No, no,” explained the cameraman, “face the street!”

When the students first arrived at the capitol, the Austin police department lined up eight motorcycle patrols along the curb of the sidewalk. But with students in a cheerful, peaceful, and sometimes playful mood, police soon retreated to the shady side of the street.

Tourists passing through the main gate to the capitol grounds made their ways gently through the crowd of students. It was impossible not to note that two Anglo women passed through the crowd walking their Chihuahua.

After about an hour of rallying, students began to peel away from the rally, many of them leaving by way of the nearby bus stop where they could be seen lining up to board buses and Dillos (the smaller downtown shuttles).

Afterword, with Obscenities

If you visit the streets of Austin often enough, you’ll see occasional t-shirts that say, “F**k y’all, I’m from Texas,” a trend that might possibly be blamed on the cultural influence of Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard who wrote a song with a very similar title a few years back, but who of course sings the song with a great deal of wry glee.

This is just a long way of introducing the context for one carefully lettered t-shirt in red, white, and green marker that was covered up most of the time. But for a few minutes the student took off his outer t-shirt (yes it was a guy thing) revealing the back panel of his his inner white-t, lettered with the kind of font that you sometimes see in family names written on the rear windows of pickup trucks.

“F**k Y’all,” said the t-shirt, “I’m from Mexico.” It was a total work of art.

AMY GOODMAN: So what’s Dow’s responsibility now?

DIANE WILSON: Dow’s responsibility, they claim all the profits, and we believe that they claim the liabilities also. I do know that they have taken on Union Carbide’s liabilities in the United States. There was a case where a child was contaminated with some of Union Carbide’s pesticide. And I believe the American child received up to $6 million. And the children over in India, a lot of them received nothing at all. And some of them just, you know, like $500.

AMY GOODMAN: You found Warren Andersen here in this country. Can you talk about what happened? DIANE WILSON: Well, it’s real interesting, because, you know, they had been trying to extradite him to India for a long time. And the FBI kept saying, well, they couldn’t find Warren Andersen. They just had no idea where that man was. Well, actually, it was Greenpeace who found him first. And once we heard that Warren Andersen was in South Hampton on Long Island, I was in New York one day. So I just decided just to go by his house and stand out front. And I had a big sign that said, “Warren, shouldn’t you be in India?” And I had actually had no idea that he was inside. You’d see — every once in a while you would see a curtain pull back. And I was really surprised when he and his wife walked out.

Note: In her preface to the interview, Goodman cites the Oct. 10 story by Corporate Crime Reporter.