SALADO — Gov. Greg Abbott signed a sweeping education funding bill into law Wednesday that will provide teachers with billions of dollars in pay increases.
The funding law will give $8.5 billion to Texas public schools, including an estimated $170 million for Dallas schools over the next two years.
“The foundation is now a place for Texas education to begin the upward climb of the ranks toward the pathway of eventually being ranked No. 1 for education in the United States of America,” Abbott said at a bill g event.
Nearly half of the infusion of new state funding – $4.2 billion – is dedicated to teacher retention raises.
Abbott signed the bill at Salado Middle School library, one of three schools in the central Texas community of Salado, south of Temple. For school districts like Salado ISD, new state money translates to a $4,000 pay increase for teachers with three or four years experience and $8,000 at five years. The district is considered a smaller district, with fewer than 5,000 students.
Larger districts, such as Dallas, Frisco and Plano ISDs with more than 5,000 students, will see $2,500 pay increases for teachers with three or four years of experience and $5,000 raises for teachers with five or more years of experience.
Many teachers will also see increases to merit-based bonuses through increased funding to the Teacher Incentive Allotment.
“This allows more teachers to focus entirely on teaching ... and keeps our most effective teachers in the classroom,” JoMeka Gray, a kindergarten teacher at Kennedy-Powell Elementary in Temple, said at the event.
Teacher pay raises are the biggest item in the vigorously negotiated law that was ed in tandem with “school choice,” which will create a $1 billion education savings program giving taxpayer dollars to private schools.
Abbott had held new school funding hostage in 2023 after the Texas House failed to a similar school voucherlike proposal. In the interim, several North Texas schools were closed, and staff were laid off under budget crunches.
House Bill 2 aims to take on some of the growing expenses schools have experienced in recent years. The bill creates a $1.3 billion fixed cost allotment that schools can spend on insurance, utilities, contributions to the Texas Retirement System of Texas and transportation.
The fixed cost allotment reflects how lawmakers wound up with the highly negotiated bill. House leaders preferred providing a vast swatch of money to schools with no strings attached. The Senate called for the state to direct schools on how to spend the new funding. The Senate’s approach won out, but House lawmakers involved in negotiations got $500 million more in funding and the fixed-cost allotment.
Much of the $500 million increase in the law will go to pay raises for non-istrative staff.
The law also gives schools $850 million for special education and $430 million for school safety.
The funding was one of the central pieces of a recently concluded Legislative session with a tight focus on education policy. Other major initiatives will inject religion into schools by requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms and creating more accommodations for prayer in schools.