Fort Davis chief hopes to plead financial case

Feb. 14—As Fort Davis ISD Superintendent Graydon Hicks heads for Austin later this week, he has low expectations for whether anyone will listen to his concerns about his district finances.

Hicks will be accompanied by Board Vice President Pene Ferguson and trustee Julie McIvor. State Rep. Eddie Morales, D-Eagle Pass, said in an email to Hicks and Ferguson that he has asked the governor's office and Texas Education Agency to meet with Hicks on the financial issue.

In a Feb. 13 phone interview, Hicks said he's been trying to get his local legislators to listen to him for at least two years and the meeting with the governor's office and TEA has been a long time coming.

Fort Davis has 180 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade and serves a 1,500-square-mile area. Homeowners, ranchers and mom-and-pop businesses are the only tax base, but it is considered property rich.

House Bill 3 got the allotment per child to $6,160 per child, per average daily attendance, for a year. Hicks said in August it has never been tied to inflation, so there is no automatic adjustment.

Fort Davis ISD's budgeted annual expenditures have hovered around the $3 million mark since at least 2015, Hicks said. This year, it is $3.27 million. Last year, it was $3.18 million.

Last year, Hicks said he sent more than $200,000 back that was classified as an overpayment. Then he had to send another $26,000 back as recapture.

"I'm sure this year it will be even more," he said.

In an email to Hicks and Ferguson, Morales said his concern is that Republican state leadership is on a path to further erode the stability of the funding model by advocating for public vouchers.

"Most rural Republicans and Democrats stand firm in the belief that this will only hurt our rural public schools even more. It is imperative that you and the citizens of Jeff Davis make your voices heard by contacting the Governor and Lt. Governor who are the main proponents of this voucher system," Morales wrote.

"While I understand that the focus should be on finding a solution as fast as possible, the difficulties come from our Texas electorate voting the same way for 20 plus years (especially rural communities) and leaving the same party in power that has consistently voted to reduce the state's share of funding during that same time frame and in the process placing more and more of the funding burden on local taxing entities," Morales wrote. "I take pride in advocating for both parties to work together and in reaching across the aisle to reach consensus. Hopefully, we can accomplish that this session.

"I strongly support legislation that will force the state to pay 50% or more of the public school funding (it is currently closer to 40%). I ask that you support legislators like me that are willing to force the state to pay its rightful share," he said.

In an email to Hicks and Morales, Ferguson wrote that as vice president of Fort Davis ISD Board of Trustees, she completely agrees with Hicks' sentiments.

"We have cut every corner, begged every local dime, and done all that is humanly possible to keep providing our children with a quality education for the last decade. We have done it not with the help of the State of Texas, but in spite of the State's steady and calculated defunding of our district," Ferguson wrote.

"I know that we lack the votes out here for anyone in Austin to care. But you should all be ashamed of your failure to serve the public you swore an oath to serve," she added.

Hicks said he doesn't think anyone in Austin cares and he doesn't have any hopes of talking to anyone face to face, let alone convince them that there's a problem with the school funding formula.

The MALDEF website says the Edgewood lawsuit was filed on behalf of Edgewood ISD and six other school districts. The suit, "known as Edgewood v Kirby argued that Texas school funding violated the state constitution's requirement that the legislature provide an efficient and free public school system," the site said.

Hicks said there are several problems with public school funding in Texas.

"The Edgewood cases all dealt with the state basically creating a default state property tax in violation of the state constitution. That's what the Edgewood case has mainly dealt with. (In) the last school finance case, the Texas Supreme Court said with a unanimous decision in so many words ... don't bring another school finance case to us because it's constitutional. It may not be perfect, but it's constitutional. Then House Bill 3 doubled down; not only did they keep control over what a school district can levy in taxes, they required the school district to compress every single year for five years and then they justify sending less (funding) because the property values go up. So they're limiting what a local education agency can collect even further than they were doing before House Bill 3, which is kind of ironic to me. There were so many lawsuits with exactly the same thing with split decisions and then once they get a unanimous decision they say man let's go for it. We're going to really stick it to them now," Hicks said.

The other issue, he said, is that the state Comptroller's office can override the values that the county appraisal district sets, so he wonders what the purpose of a county appraisal district is.

"The idea is that at some point the state is going to take over all the county appraisal districts. It's going to just start setting all the values no matter what, which is kind of what they do already," Hicks said.

"... The state property value study is tied to so many other calculations and so many other sections in statute that for them to somehow change that, even if they agreed that it's not right I just don't see them (doing it) just because of the amount of work it's going to take to go into every little nook and cranny that the property value study affects," Hicks said.

But he's going to try anyway.

"Short of something miraculous coming out of the session, I will be broke in August or early fall of 2024," Hicks said.

When he's asked top TEA officials, legislators, chief appraisers and school finance experts what happens when a school goes broke, no one has an answer.

He also has no place to consolidate with. The closest ones are Marfa, Alpine, Valentine and Balmorhea.

"Marfa is 20 miles away; Alpine is 25; Valentine is 40. If we consolidate with them, the consolidation itself with our property values would make the new district a Chapter 49 district," Hicks said. "Statute says you can't do that. You can't consolidate and then the commissioner can't detach and annex property to another district if it's going to make the district a Chapter 49 district," Hicks said.

He added that it is a legislative decision and one for the Senate and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

"I think the House, generally speaking, is favorable to the financial crisis of small school districts. It's the Senate that is on the other side of the argument from this. Even though the House is mainly Republican, I think most if not all of the Republicans in the House are sympathetic to this issue. I think they generally want to try to do the right thing," Hicks said.

He said it doesn't completely disagree with the need for charter schools and school vouchers, but he thinks it would work better in an urban setting.

Hicks said it's probably 20 percent of the students statewide that are in urban districts compared to 80 percent that are in rural districts.

"I don't understand why they want to make one size fit all. Why does it have to be one or the other? I don't understand this dogmatic refusal to look at things individually. ... It's like nobody cares. That's the way it feels," Hicks said.