Passage
Passage came in 1993, after the Texas Supreme Court threw out two attempts by the Texas Legislature to write a constitutional school-finance system. The Legislature finally passed a funding plan that was accepted by the Court, in 1993.
The goal of the system was an attempt to prohibit wealthy districts from being able to raise revenue to provide benefits which poorer districts could not. Two provisions of the legislation would seek to implement this:
- First, school districts were strictly limited to a $1.50 tax rate per $100 assessed property value for maintenance and operations (M&O). School districts already over the limit could continue at that rate. The tax rate was not capped for additional taxes assessed to pay for bond packages for facility construction or renovation.
- Second, notwithstanding the rate cap, districts were limited to M&O revenues which did not exceed a statewide rate per student. Any revenues in excess of the statewide rate were "recaptured" by the state and given to poorer districts. The wealthy district could, in lieu of state recapture, enter into an agreement with a poorer district to transfer funds. It is this portion of the legislation which earned it the "Robin Hood" name.
Read more about this topic: Robin Hood Plan
Famous quotes containing the word passage:
“So I was glad of the fog’s
Taking me to you
Undetermined summer thing eaten
Of grief and passage where you stay.
The wheel is ready to turn again.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)