Abbott Signs Teacher Pay Bill Into Law

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday evening signed into law a bipartisan bill that will infuse an extra $8.5 billion into Texas public schools over the next two years, with a significant portion targeted at attracting and retaining teachers.

Flanked by Republican lawmakers and local school leaders in the Salado Middle School library, Abbott proclaimed that House Bill 2 will dramatically improve education in the Lone Star state.

“Now is the time to make Texas No. 1 in educating our children,” said Abbott in a prepared statement on Wednesday. “House Bill 2 ensures that our schools are funded better than ever, teacher pay and student funding are at all time highs, reading and math performance will improve, and students will be better prepared for the workforce. The foundation is now in place for Texas education to start climbing the ranks.”

Salado, a tiny town about 50 miles north of Austin, is by no coincidence the residence of Republican Rep. Brad Buckley, who was a key negotiator on the school funding bill as the chair of the House Public Education Committee this past session.

Both Buckley and his counterpart on the Senate Public Education Committee, Conroe Republican Sen. Brandon Creighton, joined Abbott for the signing ceremony, along with  Salado Independent School District Superintendent Michael Novotny, local elementary school teacher JoMeka Gray and a slew of Republican lawmakers.

Retaining more teachers

HB 2 will direct about half of its price tag toward boosting teacher pay by offering experience-based bonuses and expanding the state’s existing performance bonus program, the Teacher Incentive Allotment.

In smaller school districts — those with 5,000 or fewer students — teachers with at least three years of experience will collect an extra $4,000 annually, and teachers with at least five years of experience will collect another $4,000 per year on top of that.

Larger districts will get smaller teacher bonuses, starting at $2,500 per year at three years experience and growing to $5,000 per year in total.

The bill also will expand benefits for public teachers, offering free preschool for children of Texas educators.

Those changes are aimed at reversing the yearslong exodus of public school teachers from Texas. Many districts in the state are understaffed and have hired teachers without certification instead. 

Retaining more teachers was a top priority for Abbott this session, one that he outlined in his State of the State address at the beginning of the year.

HB 2 could go a long way toward attracting more teachers, but that effect might be dampened by the increased appetite that Texas Republicans showed this session for pursuing controversial policies and mandates for public schools.

This session, Republicans passed a mandate that all public school classrooms display posters of the Ten Commandments, and another bill that gives school districts the green light to conduct voluntary prayer time and Bible readings in public schools.

A noteworthy absence

The version of HB 2 that Abbott signed on Wednesday also will direct hundreds of millions of dollars toward special education, trade school training and one-time funding for support staff.

But notably absent from earlier drafts was a meaningful increase to the basic allotment — the per-student figure the state uses to calculate funding for each school district — which had been a major component of the House’s version of the bill, negotiated with bipartisan support. School districts have long urged lawmakers to raise the basic allotment to restore the spending power they had in 2019, the last time the Legislature adjusted that figure.

The exclusion of a basic allotment increase was driven by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who as president of the Senate was reportedly unwilling to stomach any permanent increase to the basic allotment. Patrick stripped those provisions out of the bill during the negotiations process with the House, conducted in closed-door meetings rather than in public committee hearings. 

The final version of the bill also maintains the Senate’s prescriptive approach that gives districts little flexibility over how to spend their new money. To help schools struggling with deficits, HB 2 includes $1.3 billion over the next two years for “Allotment for Basic Costs,” or ABC.

Even with many of the provisions from House Democrats stripped from the final version of the bill, the more restrictive iteration of the bill still found strong support from Democrats — though Houston Rep. Gene Wu, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, was one of 13 representatives who voted against concurring with the Senate’s changes.

Still, it’s unclear whether the $8.5 billion bill will actually be enough to help the numerous districts across the state that have faced wrenching deficits for years that have forced them to close schools. At least one superintendent has said that despite the extra money, his district still would be operating in a deficit without more freedom to spend it on his community’s needs.

Another open question is the effect that the state’s new private school voucher program will have on public school funding. Earlier in the session, the Legislature passed, and Abbott signed, Senate Bill 2, which will set aside $1 billion for the 2026-27 school year for “Education Savings Accounts” to subsidize private school tuition for families. 

Every public school student that instead enrolls in private school using an ESA, as SB 2 aims to do, necessarily will decrease their former school district’s enrollment, and therefore reduce its state funding. But the scale and scope of that migration out of public schools for now remains to be seen.

A partisan signing

Democrats overwhelmingly supported HB 2, and many argued that it didn’t go far enough to boost funding for schools. 

Rep. Diego Bernal, the San Antonio Democrat who served as vice chair of the House Public Education Committee, worked with Buckley to increase spending on the basic allotment for school teachers, and amended the substitute version of the bill on the House floor to provide for full-day preschool across Texas.

But they were absent from Wednesday’s signing. Abbott’s only legislative guests on Wednesday were Republicans, according to his press office, with the following 17 representatives present in addition to Buckley:

    •    Charles Cunningham, R-Humble

    •    Paul Dyson, R-Bryan

    •    Caroline Harris Davila, R-Round Rock

    •    Stan Gerdes, R-Smithville

    •    Ryan Guillen, R-Rio Grande City

    •    Helen Kerwin, R-Glen Rose

    •    Stan Kitzman, R-Pattison

    •    Mark LaHood, R-San Antonio

    •    Terri Leo-Wilson, R-Galveston

    •    Shelley Luther, R-Tom Bean

    •    John McQueeney, R-Fort Worth

    •    Angelia Orr, R-Itasca

    •    Katrina Pierson, R-Rockwall

    •    Joanne Shofner, R-Nacogdoches

    •    Valoree Swanson, R-Spring

    •    Denise Villalobos, R-Corpus Christi

    •    Wes Virdell, R-Brady

Pleasanton Republican Sen. Pete Flores also attended the signing ceremony, the only senator present other than Creighton.

That exclusion reflected the minority party’s role on the sidelines of the final round of substantive negotiations on HB 2. After the House adopted the final version of the bill with Democratic input, Republican leaders in both chambers haggled over its provisions in private until announcing their deal.

And the makeup of Wednesday’s signing cohort adheres closely to Abbott’s brand as a combative and unyielding conservative with little interest in cooperating with the minority party. After rural Republicans voted against a voucher program last session, the governor raised money to replace them with pro-voucher Republicans in their party primaries.