1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

I know that lawmakers face many competing priorities during the final weeks of legislative sessions. I’m writing to urge you to make funding our public schools and paying our teachers one of your top priorities as this legislative session comes to a close. Tell leadership and budget writers to make sure that at least $9.1 billion in new funding goes to public schools and teachers this session. • $9.1 billion in new funding for public education is currently laid out in the House version of the budget: • $7.7 billion is dedicated to House Bill 2, the primary school finance bill. More than $1.4 billion supports other other public education priorities, including at least: 
$400 million for school safety 
$500 million for career and technical education 
$500 million for early literacy and numeracy 
$62 million for virtual education Although the state has enjoyed unprecedented surpluses in the last two legislative sessions, our schools have received no increase in state funding since 2019. Combined with historic inflation, this means that the average teacher salary is effectively $5,000 less than it was in 2020, and that schools are attempting to maintain operations with effectively $1,340 less per student. I appreciate that both the Senate and the House are committed to investing in teacher pay and school funding this session. It will take multiple legislative sessions to fund our schools competitively with the rest of the country. Right now, it is crucial that the legislature do its utmost for our 5.5 million public school students by ensuring at least $9.1 billion in new school funding this session. Thank you for fighting to help ALL TEXAS STUDENTS have a great public school system.