{"id":438429,"date":"2026-09-17T04:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T04:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/438429\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T04:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T04:24:08","slug":"morath-pitches-property-tax-relief-plan-as-many-texas-school-districts-face-deficits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/438429\/","title":{"rendered":"Morath pitches property tax relief plan as many Texas school districts face deficits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath told Texas lawmakers that a key part of the state\u2019s school finance system <\/a>relies on projected property tax revenue \u2014 not what school districts actually collect \u2014 and that mismatch can leave districts short on money even as property taxes statewide have fallen.<\/p>\n

Morath appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee to discuss property taxes, which have already dropped after lawmakers raised the homestead exemption and the real estate market cooled. More than half of Texas school districts ran a budget deficit this year.<\/p>\n

Morath said the current approach can reduce state funding for districts because the state assumes they are collecting more in local taxes than they really are.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt reduces the amount of state aid that they would have otherwise received, because we think that they’re collecting more in taxes than they actually are,\u201d Morath told the committee.<\/p>\n

Morath said lawmakers could consider changing the system so state aid is based on actual collections rather than estimated collections. \u201cThe legislature could entertain, which is to switch the school finance system, so it is predicated on collections, not on imputed collections,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Josh Sanderson, executive director of the Center for Equity, Inadequacy and Public School Finance, said Morath was right to raise the issue as a potential fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommissioner Morath was correct in our opinion to bring this up as a possible suggestion to the legislature,\u201d Sanderson said.<\/p>\n

Sanderson said districts often do not collect all the property taxes they levy. \u201cMost school districts don’t collect 100 percent of their taxes on a year-over-year basis for a variety of reasons,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When the state bases aid on estimates rather than what is actually collected, Sanderson said, districts can end up with budget shortfalls. \u201cThis is just a small piece in that bigger pie that’s causing the budget deficit issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sanderson said the impact of a collections-based approach would not necessarily be bigger for property-wealthy districts such as Austin ISD.<\/a> \u201cActually no,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said districts that are property wealthy and pay recapture are already treated differently in the way the state accounts for collections. \u201cIf you’re a district like Austin and you’re property wealthy and you pay recapture, they actually do what the commissioner was talking about. They do look at collections in that instance,\u201d Sanderson said.<\/p>\n

But Sanderson said districts that are not property wealthy are handled differently under the current system. \u201cIf you’re not a property-wealthy district like Austin, so if you’re Leander ISD, the state doesn’t look at that way; the state looks at Leander’s property values, not their collections,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Equity Center does not expect the Legislature to focus heavily on school finance in the next session because both the governor and the lieutenant governor have property tax proposals under consideration. Sanderson noted that because it is an election year, what lawmakers prioritize could depend on the outcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath told Texas lawmakers that a key part of the state\u2019s school finance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-438429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}