Amber

As soon as the Texas Senate’s state budget was filed yesterday, the teacher unions were quick to attack. Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina was unimpressed. She says Texas schools are currently not fully funded. She is wrong. They are fully funded under the state formula. Since I became Lt. Governor in 2015, the Senate and I have increased school funding by $39 billion - and we’ve increased teacher pay more than ever before in Texas history, despite the school population being mostly flat during those years. As you can see on the attached chart, public education is the biggest share of our state budget. In 2019, the Senate increased teacher pay based on experience. Less experienced teachers received an average pay increase of $3,800 while the average pay increase for more experienced teachers was over $5,000. I also made sure the money flowed directly to teachers, not tied to any other school funding mechanism. In 2023, the Senate passed a bill with $4 billion specifically allocated for teacher pay increases. The Senate passed $3,000 pay raises for all teachers with an additional $7,000 pay increase for rural teachers to help close the pay gap between smaller and larger districts. Inexplicably, Speaker Dade Phelan killed that teacher pay raise bill on the last day of the session. The bill would have passed the House resoundingly. Not one of the teachers' unions helped to pass any of those pay increases. It was the Senate and my initiative. 𝐍𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐠𝐞𝐭, 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡.