Colleges and school districts urge Legislature to give more money to education

McALLEN - Educators from public school districts to higher education institutions across South Texas are all making the same plea to the state: Give us more money.

The Texas House's Select Committee on Higher and Public Education Finance had its second of four meetings Friday to hear what public school districts, colleges and universities are doing and how the state can better help them.

It plans to make recommendations to the Legislature based on the testimony it receives from educators.

The committee visited Dallas on Monday and plans to visit San Antonio on Tuesday and Houston on Friday.

Representatives of educational institutions from Laredo to Brownsville listed their accomplishments at Friday's meeting at McAllen City Hall but said their ability to do more is stifled by the lack of funding from the state.

Presidents of the Rio Grande Valley's two universities - University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg and University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College in Brownsville - talked about how their institutions continue to grow and are closing achievement gaps by graduating more Hispanic students.

But they still fall far behind some of their sister universities, like UT San Antonio and UT Austin. And the Valley universities are not receiving enough money to maintain and improve the programs they have.

"You all may argue you made a large investment, (but) we would argue it is not huge enough," UTB/TSC President Juliet Garcia said. Community college leaders echoed much of what the universities said, but added that they are also given the tasks of training people for technical jobs and providing remedial courses for students not ready for college-level work.

At South Texas College alone, about two-thirds of first-year students have to take remedial classes, said Shirley Reed, the college's president.

And as community college enrollment continues to increase, the task of offering these programs and finding and retaining employees becomes harder, officials from area colleges said.

Committee Chairman Rep. David Branch, R-Dallas, said he believed the state needs to do more to help public education, but that the colleges need to continue looking for support from the private sector.

"You have to be a booster for your space," Branch said. "I think the state (also) needs to step up and do better."

Valley school district superintendents said many of higher education's woes could be alleviated by giving more money to districts so they could better prepare students for college.

The school districts have many challenges of their own, however, including finding money to pay for new schools and helping students with limited English proficiency catch up academically with their English-speaking peers.
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Jennifer L. Berghom covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462.