Amy Beneski and the Educational Finance Coalition

You can email your questions about school finance and equity for answer on the air to ECRadio@EquityCenter.org.

Today, our host, the voice of Equity Center Radio and its Executive Director, Wayne Pierce, has an in-depth discussion about the school finance coalition with Amy Beneski. Amy, the Executive Director of the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), 406 E 11th St, Austin, TX 78701–where she can be reached at 800.725.8272–reveals how an influential alliance of associations originated and banded together to form a potent league to promote healthier school funding in the State of Texas and how it is now at work enhancing the school finance environment.

The coalition, aptly named the Coalition to Invest in Texas Schools, is comprised of the following organizations:

• Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) | TASA, which was founded in 1925, is an organization that represents public school superintendents and administrators among others, before the legislature and provides numerous other services to assist its members in the professional roles.
• Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) | Created in 1949, TASB is a voluntary, nonprofit educational association that serves the needs of Texas’s 1045 school districts.
• Equity Center | The Equity Center, who sponsors this podcast every Friday morning at 10:45 am, is the largest research and advocacy organization of its kind in the nation. It is the only group in Texas which exclusively represents the interests of low and mid-wealth (Tier 2) public school districts. You can find out more about the Equity Center by clicking HERE. Whether researching or developing policy alternatives, crunching numbers for a multitude of finance proposals, testifying before legislative committees, making presentations to school groups across the state, or working with state agencies, the Equity Center concentrates all of its energy on improving the financial status of our school districts.
• South Texas Association of Schools (STAS) | STAS is made up of sixty-two school districts in deep South Texas. It purpose is to promote excellence in education and an equitable distribution of public resources for the benefit of all public school children in this State;
• Texas Association of Community Schools (TACS) | TACS, whose executive director, Ken McCraw, appeared on this show just last week, strives to promote, support and develop excellence in student achievement through the collaboration of member schools. A community school is defined as a school district having no more than one high school in the district. Institutional members are community school districts or Education Service Centers. Associate members are persons interested in improving education through the community schools concept.
• Texas Association of Midsized Schools (TAMS) | The Texas Association of Mid-Size Schools mission is to impact the state’s school finance system in order to obtain equitable funding of education resources while addressing disparities in size and diseconomies of scale. TAMS pledges to actively participate in the legislative process to insure continued support for the unique financial needs of districts up to 5000 regular ADA.
• Texas Association of Rural Schools (TARA) | TARS was created to enhance the fiscal capacity of small school districts and narrow the funding gap between small districts and other districts.
• Fast Growth School Coalition (FGSC) | FGSC was created in 1997 in response to the need to promote an agenda to assist the approximately 100 school districts throughout Texas that accounted for nearly all of the student growth in Texas, just as they do today.
• Texas School Alliance | Founded in 1990, the Texas School Alliance (TSA) represents 29 of the larger, diverse school districts educating approximately one-third of all Texas students and more than one-third of all minority students. These districts work together to provide a positive and significant impact on public education by bringing together selected school districts with mutual concerns to work cooperatively for the benefit of all public school children. The alliance, including the large urban districts, formalized an excellent working relationship between urban, suburban, and mid-sized districts across the state.
• Texas School Coalition | The Texas School Coalition is organized for the purpose of bringing together independent school districts that have an interest in improving the school funding laws for all school districts. The organization provides research, information and consultation regarding school finance legislation.
• Texas Rural Education Association (TREA) | TREA is a statewide organization with a formal affiliation with the National Rural Education Association. It promotes quality educational opportunities and experiences for all children from rural public schools which will enable them to live and compete in a global society.

Today’s guest explains the core principles that govern the group and discusses how its goals were collaboratively developed. According to Amy “the Texas public school system is at a crossroads” and the coalition is working to shape school funding for generations to come with additional student funding per capita so that Texas schools can keep pace with those in the rest of the country.

Amy Beneski

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