Legislative Priorities

Legislative Priorities 2024

Goodrich ISD

January 30, 2025

The Goodrich ISD Board of Trustees has identified several priorities for the 89th Legislature. With a mission to Empower All Students to Pursue Excellence. Goodrich ISD will focus on the following legislative priorities:

  1. School Funding

  2. Accountability and Assessment

  3. Local Control

School Funding Priorities

  • Increase the Basic Allotment per student (BA) since it has remained stagnant since 2019. The current per student BA is $6,160. An increase to offset inflation would move the per student BA to nearly $7,500 currently.

  • Increase the Small and Mid-Sized Allotment to adjust for the TEA-reported educator pay gap between large and small districts of $10,000 allowing smaller ISDs to compete for high-quality educators along with larger urban ISDs.

  • Utilize enrollment-based funding versus the current average daily attendance measure. This would eliminate the ongoing unstable funding practice based on current student attendance as most budgeted expenditures remain constant for districts during these attendance fluctuations.

  • Public Dollars must remain in Public Schools which educate 90% of students in Texas and can effectively and efficiently meet the Governor’s Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative of 2016 ensuring continued growth of our Texas economy.

Accountability and Assessment Priorities

  • Design and Implement formative assessments that help inform instruction throughout the school year without adding additional testing time and include them in the academic measures within the A-F Accountability rating system.

  • Expand the scope of Texas’ A-F accountability ratings system to include factors beyond STAAR test scores. 

  • Limit STAAR test scores to 50% of any domain or the overall score for districts and schools in the state’s accountability system. 

  • Allow reasonable transition timelines for local districts to implement changes made to STAAR Assessments, State Accountability, and other TEA initiatives. 

Local Control

  • Limit TEA “earmarked” funding for grant initiatives allowing the additional funding to be distributed through the Texas school finance funding formula.

  • Equalize funding for all instructional materials in order to not penalize alternative instructional materials that may fit the needs of our students as compared to the SBOE approved materials.