All About Tax Ratification Elections!

Today’s broadcast is hosted by Dr. Ray Freeman, the Deputy Executive Director of the Equity Center. Ray has extensive knowledge of the Texas School finance system, having served as Chair of the Alvarado plaintiffs’ committee from 2003 until 2009 when he joined the Equity Center. As a Superintendent of Schools, he was also active in lobbying for equitable school finance legislation from Edgewood I through IV. He often testified before legislative committees about the needs of Texas school children. He is well respected with members of the House and Senate, and individuals and organizations in the education community.

Today’s interviewee, Joe Smith, is considered to be one of the few experts in the State of Texas on all aspects of school taxation, finance and tax ratification elections (“TRE”). Indeed, the topic today is TREs, their history and the prospects for future elections. Joe explains what a TRE is and why they must be held.

Joe tells how the failure to include some type of inflation adjustment to the allowable school tax rate above the $1.04 level creates an enormous squeeze on school districts’ budgets and is depriving Texas school children, in many districts, and making Texas students’ educationally disadvantaged.

There have been 32 TREs this year, with one remaining.

Joe founded TexasISD.com after he retired early from a successful career as Superintendent of Schools for Hudson ISD, deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Due to a long battle with Post-Polio Syndrome the doctor made him hang it up and rest for six months. Never being the kind of person to sit still and also not being the person to listen to his doctor, Joe logged lengthy sessions in front of his PC researching school issues, reading papers and corresponding with his friends and colleagues in the education business.

While Joe was on forced sabbatical, his son Joshua was still in High School. Joshua and his group of friends were tinkering with the new found possibilities of the internet. Joe began collecting interesting articles and links to share with his friends. Josh and his friend Jason Cook showed Joe how to compose a web page and post it on the web. Joe was off and rolling. This was the beginning of TexasISD.com.

Joshua and Jason tried their hand at a little web development and were moderately successful. One day Joe approached them with an idea to take his little personal web site to the next level. They kicked around domain names for a couple weeks and finally decided on “TexasISD.com.” Of all the names this one expressed in a nutshell what they wanted of their creation, the lone source of news gathered and written along with editorial comments geared toward the education professional. They wanted to be a one stop news source that any administrator and educator could go to and find all the latest news to keep them on the cutting edge of information as they operate their school and that is what “TexasISD.com” encompasses.

Joe worked to refine the site and got help as needed from Josh and Jason. After working the site for a few years using a simple web editor the site started to become cumbersome to develop and slow for the user due to the hosting situation.

You can find TexasISD by Clicking Here. And here is a tidbit right off of TexasISD’s web pages:

Joe is sought after by school related organizations to speak about school finance and is a fixture during legislative sessions in the halls of the House and Senate, advocating on behalf of equitable school funding. He also assists numerous school districts in solving their funding and tax related problems.

We are pleased to have him on our show and think you will learn much from this interesting man.

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