HB 82 would replace the public school finance system’s use of “average daily attendance” with “average enrollment” in a wide range of Education Code and related Government Code provisions. The bill rewrites the core funding definition in Section 48.005 so that school finance is generally based on the average number of students enrolled during the school year, rather than the quotient of days attended. It also updates many formulas and references throughout the Education Code to conform to that change, including provisions governing basic allotments, special education, bilingual education, career and technical education, small and mid-sized district allotments, charter school funding, facilities funding, recapture, tax notices, and various special-purpose programs.
The bill also makes several program-specific adjustments to how students are counted for funding. It preserves or clarifies enrollment-based counting for students in dual credit, off-campus instruction, juvenile justice settings, disciplinary alternative education programs, dropout recovery schools, residential placement facilities, virtual courses, and certain early high school completion and rural pathway programs. It repeals provisions tied to flexible school day and blended learning attendance calculations, and it directs the commissioner of education to adopt rules for calculating average enrollment, including using total enrollment on the last Friday of October and March to estimate annual enrollment. The bill takes effect on the 91st day after the legislative session ends.
HB 82 would significantly affect state school finance law by changing the metric used to determine funding, wealth per student, tax-rate calculations, and eligibility thresholds across many statutes. Because many formulas in Chapters 46, 48, and 49 are keyed to student counts, the bill would alter how state aid, local revenue equalization, facilities assistance, and recapture are calculated for school districts and open-enrollment charter schools. It would also affect related provisions outside the Education Code, including county and municipal finance-related statutes that rely on school district size or student counts.
No committee transcript or vote history was provided, so there is no recorded legislative debate or roll-call sentiment in the materials supplied. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears to be a broad technical and policy shift toward enrollment-based funding, which may be viewed as simplifying school finance and better reflecting district resources, but it also changes long-standing attendance-based formulas. The absence of recorded opposition or support in the provided context means any sentiment assessment is limited to the bill’s structure and scope rather than documented legislative reaction.
The main points of potential contention are the fiscal and distributional effects of moving from attendance to enrollment, and the many downstream formula changes that could increase or decrease funding for different districts depending on attendance patterns, program mix, and student mobility. Charter schools are treated differently in some provisions, and the bill also removes or narrows certain attendance-based adjustments, which could draw scrutiny from districts that benefit from current attendance rules. Another likely issue is administrative implementation, since the commissioner would need to adopt new rules and districts would need to adjust reporting and budgeting systems to the new enrollment-based framework.
HB 82 would amend a large number of Education Code provisions and several related statutes to substitute average enrollment for average daily attendance as the baseline measure for school finance and related calculations. This would affect Foundation School Program formulas, charter school funding, special program allotments, recapture and wealth-per-student calculations, facilities aid, tax notices, and various eligibility thresholds tied to district size. It would also repeal certain attendance-calculation provisions and require the commissioner of education to adopt implementing rules, making the change both substantive and administrative in scope.
No committee discussion or vote record was provided, so there is no documented legislative sentiment in the supplied materials. From the bill text, the measure appears to be a broad reform intended to modernize or simplify school finance by using enrollment rather than attendance, but it also makes extensive formula changes that could have uneven fiscal effects across districts. That combination suggests the bill could attract support from those favoring a more stable enrollment-based system and concern from districts or charter operators that could lose funding under the new approach.
The most likely contention is over how the switch from attendance to enrollment would redistribute state aid and local revenue among districts with different attendance rates, mobility patterns, and program offerings. Districts with chronic absenteeism might favor enrollment-based funding, while others may worry about losing attendance-linked adjustments or about the fairness of funding students who are enrolled but not regularly present. Additional friction points include the bill’s different treatment of open-enrollment charter schools in some provisions, the repeal of flexible-day and blended-learning attendance rules, and the administrative burden of rewriting many formulas and implementing new commissioner rules.