Dynamic Funding System Law Benefits Texas Community College

When House Bill 8 became law at the beginning of 2024, it was a big change from how Texas has been paying for its community schools for decades. In June of last year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 8 into law, which gave $683 million to community schools across the state.

Before this year, the 50 community schools in Texas would get money from the state based on how many students they had. The president of El Paso Community College, William Serrata, said that this way of getting money was "static" and that the colleges would have to split up the money that the Texas Legislature gave them evenly among all of their schools. She also said that HB 8 changes the way money is spent to a "dynamic" system.

"Now the new model takes into account how well you do. As a result of graduating more students and giving more of them credentials, you will get more money. "So it's really a competition with yourself to get better, do more for your community, and offer more programs that help students get jobs that pay enough to live on and be useful members of our community," Serrata said.

Dynamic Funding System LawPhoto byKTSM9 News

With the new law, Texas will also give rewards to community colleges that help students get into four-year colleges and take college classes while they are still in high school. There are three types of money that community schools get: state money, local property taxes, and tuition and fees.

The law was passed in Austin with a lot of help from Serrata and El Paso billionaire Woody Hunt. Abbott put Hunt in charge of the Community College Finance Commission, whose job it was to look into how community colleges handle money and write suggestions for the Texas Legislature.

Serrata was the head of the Texas Association of Community schools and spoke for all 50 of them. It was his job to explain to Texas lawmakers what the schools' goals were. For the current biennium, the new rule means that EPCC will get an extra $7.1 million.

We've really been focused on making sure that students get to the finish line, which is one reason why 49 of the 50 schools saw their funding go up. I'll show you what I mean by that. About 37,000 degrees were given by the 50 community schools in 2001. In 2010, it was more than twice as much. "We thought there would be a little more than 125,000 degrees and certificates in 2020," Serrata said.

The new formula looks good for the future of community schools, so EPCC is already planning how to use the extra money to its advantage.

"So new programs are already being put in place." The Occupational Therapy Assistant Program is one of six new programs that were passed by the Board of Trustees last month. These are programs that are in high demand and require a lot of skill. As a result, the salaries are much higher than those for standard programs, Serrata said.

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