Last semester, I and 11 other student reporters spent three months investigating the racially and financially divided Texas public education system.
Finally, our hard work has been published through InvestigaTexas, a collaboration between The Dallas Morning News and Reporting Texas.
Two versions of the stories were published. My investigative partner, Eileen Tay, and I had our full-length article, "Experts say state funding is creating inequitable educational environments" published online:
In Hutto, a small city in central Texas, any student who lived within a two-mile radius of school faced losing their free bussing last year. In South Texas, Premont Independent School District faced permanent closure. Instead, the basketball, football, tennis and volleyball teams were shut down for an entire year.
In school districts across the state, classroom sizes have been increasing past state-recommended teacher-student ratios.
In the last legislative session, lawmakers cut $5.4 billion from the Texas education budget. In the wake of the cuts, school districts made sacrifices in various departments while struggling to keep up with the minimum education standards set by the state.
And experts now say that unless Texas figures out how to fund education in a more equitable manner, the state is in danger of creating an increasingly inequitable educational environment. Read more.
And here's the condensed version, "State Legislature seeks to restore some funding" published by RT online, and DMN online and in the May 5, Sunday issue:
After cutting more than $5 billion from schools two years ago, the Legislature is looking to restore part of that. But some education advocates worry it won’t be enough.The money struggles also are being waged in the courts, where a judge in February sided with more than 600 public school districts that had sued the state.
In a preliminary ruling, state District Judge John Dietz said the funding system was inadequate, inequitable and in violation of a ban on a statewide property tax. Read the rest at DMN. Or read it on RT.