Three bills filed Nov. 9 for the 2027 legislative session would raise the base amount Texas guarantees each school district per student from $6,160 to between $7,075 and $7,500 and then raise it automatically with inflation, according to bill texts posted by the Legislature. One of the three would also earmark part of each future increase for raises for teachers and other campus staff.
The figure at stake is the basic allotment, the starting number in the state formula that decides how much money each of Texas’ more than 1,000 school districts receives for every student. The $6,160 base was set in 2019 and has not changed since. A 2025 law added a small adjustment on top of it but put most new school money into targeted teacher raises. School groups have argued for years that inflation has eroded the base. Because almost every other part of the formula is built on it, a change to the basic allotment reaches every district.
Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, would set the base at $7,500 in House Bill 178. Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, would set it at $7,075 in House Bill 853. Both bills say that “beginning with the 2028-2029 school year,” the base would rise each year by the inflation rate, as determined by the comptroller from the Consumer Price Index, the federal government’s main measure of consumer prices. Both would take effect Sept. 1, 2027.
Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, folds a $7,365 base into Senate Bill 98, a broad rewrite of school funding that runs to about 98 sections. Among its larger changes, SB 98 would pay districts based on the number of students enrolled rather than average daily attendance. Under the attendance system now in law, a district loses money when students are absent, even when it still pays for teachers and buses.
SB 98 also attaches strings to new money. When per-student funding rises from one year to the next, the bill would require a district to spend part of the increase on pay for full-time staff other than administrators. Of that share, “75 percent must be used to increase the compensation paid to classroom teachers, full-time librarians, full-time school counselors” and school nurses, “prioritizing differentiated compensation for classroom teachers with more than five years of experience,” the text says. The remaining 25% would be left to the district. Parts of SB 98 still refer to the 2026-27 school year, a sign the bill carries language from an earlier version.
A Republican, Rep. Brooks Landgraf of Odessa, has filed House Bill 868, captioned as relating to “an adjustment in the amount of the basic allotment and the guaranteed yield.” Its text was not available on the Legislature’s site Nov. 12, so its terms could not be confirmed for this story.
Raising the base is costly because so much money flows through it. In 2025, lawmakers chose to direct much of the new money in House Bill 2 into raises tied to teacher experience and district size rather than into the basic allotment. Supporters of that approach said it guaranteed the money reached teachers. Supporters of a higher base say it gives districts room to cover costs that have risen across the board, from insurance to utilities. SB 98 tries to do both by raising the base and earmarking part of each increase for pay.
No cost estimates are posted. The Legislative Budget Board prepares fiscal notes after bills are referred to committee. The pressure behind the bills showed up on local ballots this fall, when many districts asked voters for higher tax rates or bonds to cover costs the state formula does not.
The 90th Legislature convenes Jan. 12, 2027, when the bills will be referred to the House Public Education Committee and the Senate Education Committee.
Key facts
- Basic allotment base in current law: $6,160 (Education Code 48.051), set in 2019.
- HB 178 (Howard): $7,500; HB 853 (Anchía): $7,075; both indexed to CPI-U from 2028-29; filed Nov. 9, 2026.
- SB 98 (Menéndez): $7,365; funding by enrollment instead of attendance; 75% of the staff-pay share of new money to teachers, librarians, counselors and nurses.
- HB 868 (Landgraf, R-Odessa): caption covers basic allotment adjustment; text unavailable Nov. 12.
- No fiscal notes yet; session convenes Jan. 12, 2027.