by Cecilia Meischen (Posted on April 10, 2026 @ 11:33 a.m.)

Texas’s per-student funding is around $13,189, which might sound like a lot of money, but in reality, it is simply the bare minimum. In Dr. Guthrie’s opinion, the state of Texas has not done a good job at properly funding schools, and he’s not the only one who feels this way. Texas school funding has faced criticism for failing to increase the basic student-by-student allotment since 2019. This raises the important question: what exactly does that mean, and what has our school done to cope with that?

How do we cope?

One of the many things our school has done to manage the unfortunate budget constraints is cutting back on the number of conferences we are able to send our staff to. Dr. Guthrie told us that typically there’s enough money in the budget for us to send administrators or counselors to conferences, but because of budget changes, we haven’t been able to go to as many conferences as we used to. The downside to cutting back on the number of conferences is that we are losing benefits. Dr. Guthrie stated, “What that does is we get to go work with other school districts or other people. You learn so much—you learn what they’re doing well, you get to share things that you’re doing well, and it’s more than that because you also talk about theoretical things, how kids learn math, science, those kinds of things. But the reality is that it does hurt the school over time when we don’t go to as many as we used to.”

Enrollment

Enrollment numbers must affect the amount of money in our budget, but how does the per-student allotment affect our school? In Dr. Guthrie’s words, “Enrollment is a big key. It doesn’t impact it on a daily basis, but basically, anytime a student shows up to school, we get fifty dollars—that’s kind of how it works, but the money is already given to us by the district.” There are two different budgets: the school budget and the district budget. But what’s the difference? Dr. Guthrie said, “Because you have a district budget and a campus budget, and so the district budget will handle things like buses—they pay for the lights, water, all those things—but the school budget pays for like school supplies for the kids and materials for the different departments: English, math, science, social studies, all that kind of stuff.”

In conclusion

To wrap things up, Texas has faced criticism for failing to increase the per-student allotment, causing budget cuts, but our school has worked through it and made the changes that were necessary. We might not be going to as many conferences as we used to, but our school is still thriving academically and financially.