Texas Senate bill would give public school teachers free pre-K and raises based on experience and performance

A Texas Senate bill filed on Tuesday would provide long-term pay raises to teachers based on years of experience, expand a state program that offers raises to instructors based on student performance and allow educators to enroll their children in pre-K free of charge.

Senate Bill 26, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, comes as Texas educators have left the teaching profession in droves and the state has increased its reliance on instructors who lack formal classroom training. Gov. Greg Abbott declared teacher pay an “emergency item” earlier this month, allowing lawmakers to fast-track any proposals on the topic during the legislative session that ends June 2.

SB 26 would establish yearly pay raises for teachers with at least three years of experience, with additional increases for instructors who teach for at least five years.

Teachers in smaller school districts would receive bigger raises. Those with 3-4 years of experience in school districts with 5,000 students or less would receive a $5,000 raise, while those with five or more years of teaching on their resume would earn $10,000. Educators with 3-4 of experience in school districts with more than 5,000 students would earn a $2,500 raise, while those with five or more years of experience would receive $5,500, according to the bill.

The legislation would also expand the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a state program that allows eligible school districts to award bonuses to instructors based on their students’ academic growth. It would also allow districts to implement a similar evaluation system for school principals and assistant principals.

The new bill proposal would allow up to 50% of teachers at a school district to participate in the teacher incentive program compared to the current cap of 33%.

SB 26 would also add the children of public school teachers to the list of kids who qualify for free pre-K services from the state, which many Texas elementary schools already offer. And it would allow the Texas Education Agency to offer liability insurance that protects educators from legal action stemming from “conduct that the teacher allegedly engaged in” throughout the course of their duties.

“Totaling almost $5 billion, this is a generational investment in our educators,” said Creighton, the bill’s author, in a statement. “If we want to recruit and retain the best teachers for our kids, we must make Texas the most attractive place in the country to teach.”

The state’s average teacher salary rests at $60,716, which ranks 30th in the nation, according to the National Education Association, an organization tracking educator pay across the U.S.

For at least one of the state’s teacher advocacy organizations, the Senate bill does not go far enough in helping improve teacher salaries for all Texas educators.

“Let’s quit talking about pulling out a select few teachers for extra pay,” Texas State Teachers Association spokesperson Clay Robison told The Texas Tribune. “Because every student deserves a well-paid teacher, and every teacher deserves to be well paid.”

Monty Exter, governmental relations director for the Association of Texas Professional Educators, called the money designated for experienced teachers “impressive.” But if lawmakers in the future decided not to set funds aside for those teachers in the budget, Exter said, then school districts would likely have to cover the costs. That could lead to districts eventually clawing back raises from instructors or adopting budget deficits, he said.

Exter also said teachers may not support the state attempting to encourage districts to adopt a merit-based pay evaluation system for all educators. The bill notes that if a school district participates in the expanded teacher incentive program, they must not provide “across-the-board salary increases for instructional staff” except for salary changes related to inflation.

“I don’t think that teachers or educators at large are probably going to respond very positively to that based on history,” Exter said. “But we’re going to tell them about it, and we’ll see what they tell us.”

Abbott said during his State of the State address that he wanted to increase Texas teachers’ average salary to an “all-time high” and put more teachers on a pathway to a six-figure income through the Teacher Incentive Allotment. The House and Senate have both proposed allocating roughly $5 billion in new funds to public schools. Senate leadership has said it wants to use most of that funding to boost the teacher incentive program and increase teacher pay.

Notably, the new Senate bill does not aim to raise teacher pay through an increase to the base amount of money school districts receive for each student — something that public school administrators and education advocates have called for in recent years. Increasing that stream of funding, which the state’s teacher vacancy task force also recommended in 2023, could offer school districts more flexibility in raising salaries for teachers and support staff while helping them combat the rising costs of goods and services schools rely on.

Districts have not received an increase to their base amount of funding per student since 2019, which school officials say has exacerbated the challenges they currently face — from budget deficits and program cuts to campus closures and teacher shortages. During the last legislative session, schools missed out on a $7 billion funding boost, which would have included an increase to schools’ base funding, after lawmakers declined to pass a bill establishing a program that would have allowed families to use taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s private education.

Abbott had promised that he would not sign a bill increasing public education funding without the passage of that program — widely known as school vouchers or education savings accounts — his top legislative priority in recent years. The Senate has already passed its priority school voucher proposal this year, and the legislation now awaits a vote in the House.

Newly elected House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, said at a private school event on Monday that the House would introduce its own voucher bill this week. He expressed confidence that the proposal has enough votes to pass that chamber, where it repeatedly hit a dead end two years ago.

The House has also indicated a desire to increase teacher pay, but it has not yet outlined specifics.

The Senate Committee on Education K-16 has scheduled a public hearing for the new teacher pay proposal on Thursday.