Parents file 5th Texas school finance lawsuit
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A small group of parents filed the fifth school finance lawsuit against Texas on Friday, this one charging that the state is not getting enough bang for its buck and asking the courts to address inefficiencies in how education funding is spent.
Attorneys submitted the suit to the 200th Judicial District Court in Austin on behalf of five families who say the state's schools aren't meeting their children's needs, as well as Texans for Real Efficiency and Equity in Education, a new group formed by three entrepreneurs.
Four other lawsuits already have been filed claiming the school finance plan approved by the state Legislature is not equitable in how it distributes funding to school districts. In all, more than 500 school districts representing more than 3 million children are suing the state as part of that process.
Chris Diamond, lead attorney in the latest litigation, said it may eventually be combined with the other cases. But he said it goes further, asking the courts to look at how money is spent — rather than simply if it is distributed fairly.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Parents-file-5th-Texas-school-finance-lawsuit-3359028.php
= new reply since forum marked as read
And they get sued regularly on it. It's a basic principal in the Texas constitution. Which they barely comply with. They comply just enough to tied them over to the next ruling against them in the courts.
Even if the court rules against the state in this lawsuit - the Lege would only screw it up anyway.
There is one very troubling aspect of this to me - the charter school angle. When you start opening the free public education system to become paid for private institutions - it will quickly become education for the wealthy only. If we think there is unequal education financing now in Texas. Wait until the rich and more well to do families pull their kids out of the public school systems entirely for charter schools. The public education system in Texas will collapse. Kent Grusendorf is a right winger of the extreme kind. See this piece on him in Texas Monthly. I don't trust his crew one bit. 
Charter school group wants to be part of school finance lawsuit
(snip)
Opening the doors to more privately managed public charter schools in Texas is one of the ultimate objectives of Texans for Real Efficiency and Equity in Education, a newly formed nonprofit group led by former House Public Education Chairman Kent Grusendorf .
The group has enlisted a handful of parents and taxpayers to intervene in the largest of the four school finance lawsuits already pending in a Travis County court.
In that case, school districts argue that the state has run afoul of the Texas Constitution by failing to provide adequate resources to meet the higher academic standards established by the Legislature. At the same time, districts lack "meaningful discretion" to set their own tax rates, as the courts have said is required. Finally, the system for divvying up the limited state dollars among the districts is inequitable and arbitrary.
The new challenge, however, maintains that "money is not the only issue" and the litigation should not look exclusively at school finance. Instead, the focus should be on the cost-effectiveness of the current system and the need for structural reforms to improve results.
"It is not where the money comes from or how it is allocated, but it is how that money is spent once it gets into the system," said Chris Diamond , a Houston lawyer representing the group.
He said the system is fraught with "gross bureaucratic waste," and more competition from charter schools would force schools to root out that waste.
That's made much clear in the Austin American Statesman article. That was not so clear in the Houston Chronicle article. Don't be too surprised that the whole thing is being bank rolled by James Leininger the quack whose been trying to kill public education in Texas for decades. And despite not getting charter schools passed in the Lege he's at least been successful at starving the public education system enough to have it put on life support. He owns the Lege including Rick Perry. The joke around the capitol is that he had an "owner's box". He was allowed in rooms that only members or legislators and their staffs were allowed to be in.
Texas Tribune article
Who is James Leininger?
