School fund board decides whether to send public schools an extra $1.2 billion

The board that invests Texas’s $60 billion school endowment votes Thursday on how much extra money to send public schools in 2028 and 2029. It can write a check for up to $600 million a year, or none at all.

The Texas Constitution lets the fund’s managers make a supplemental distribution to the state account that pays for schoolbooks and classroom operations, drawn from that year’s land and property revenue and paid on top of the regular formula payment. The ceiling is $600 million per manager per year. This board has done it once, in September 2024, when it approved $600 million in each of the two years now ending. Added to the 3.45 percent regular payout the State Board of Education set, that brought schools $4.8 billion over the current budget period.

Whether directors repeat themselves is the whole question, and their chief executive framed the arithmetic for them in May: inflation is running higher, student enrollment is flat to negative, and the asset base is larger. The fund closed its last audited year at $60.6 billion, up 5.8 percent. Nothing the corporation has published says what number staff will recommend Thursday.

The board also votes on what to ask lawmakers for in 2027. Staff sketched that request in May at a $124.3 million baseline for the two years, plus $2.4 million to carry this year’s funding forward and $1 million for five more staff positions — roughly 2.7 percent above the current period. Directors will review draft committee charters, hear a presentation on private equity, where the fund’s 20 percent target sits below the 31 percent median among comparable endowments, and take up their outside investment consultant’s report.

One item has no name attached to it yet. Directors vote on reappointing the fund’s fiduciary counsel — the lawyers who advise them on their duty to the schoolchildren the money belongs to — but nothing the corporation has posted identifies the firm now holding that contract. The board’s own governance manual, adopted in December, is what requires the periodic vote. Watch whether the supplemental distribution reaches the $600 million ceiling or lands below it.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Tom Maynard, Florence — chair; State Board of Education member.
• Brad Wright, Houston — vice chair; co-founder of an energy investment firm.
• Aaron Kinsey, Midland — secretary; chairman of the State Board of Education.
• Dawn Buckingham, Lakeway — commissioner of the General Land Office.
• Keven Ellis, Lufkin — State Board of Education member; chiropractor.
• Will Hickman, Houston — State Board of Education member.
• Marisa Pérez-Diaz, San Antonio — State Board of Education member.
• Jim Stanislaus, Austin — General Land Office appointee.
• Cliff Thomas, Victoria — logistics company chairman; former Texas A&M regent.

The roster follows the corporation’s own board page and matches the strategic plan it filed on June 25, 2026, so it was current as of two months ago. All nine seats are filled. Education Code §43.053 sets the composition; the five State Board of Education seats and the land commissioner’s carry terms ending January 1, 2027, while the outside appointees run to 2029 and 2031. Land Commissioner Buckingham has repeatedly sent a designee to meetings. Robert L. Borden is chief executive and chief investment officer. The corporation was created by a 2021 law and took over the fund’s investment operations in 2023; the General Land Office still manages the fund’s land and mineral leases. Staff contact: Melissa Dix, (512) 631-1000.