Savings Totaled About $73.08 Per Student Statewide
Report Says ESCs Saved ISDs and Charters
$396+ Million During the 2018-19 Fiscal Year
The state’s 20 regional education service centers (ESC) collectively saved the state’s 1,207 ISDs and charters just
That amounts to a savings of about $73.08 per student statewide for ISDs and charters.
The data is contained in a just-released legislatively required TEA report on ESC cost savings to ISDs and charters — a report that has been released every two years just prior to the start of each regular legislative session since the 2011 session.
Contracts Worth More than $965 Million
The report estimates that ESC partnered with more than 8,200 businesses for contracts worth more than $965 million during Fiscal Year 2018-19, which produced an estimated $377 million in cost savings for ISDs and charters.
Of the $696.7 million in funding received by ESCs for 2018-19, nearly half (48 percent) was from federal grants, and 42 percent was from local ISD and charter sources. The remaining sources of ESC revenue was derived from state contracts and grants (8.8 percent) and legislative appropriations (1.7 percent).
The report notes that direct legislative appropriations to ESCs have declined over time.
Direct legislative appropriations to ESCs for each year of the current biennium and the prior biennium totaled $11.88 million per year. In contrast, ESC appropriations for the biennium that included the 1999-20 and 2000-01 school years totaled just over $59 million per year.
The report also provides summary data on the numbers of full-time equivalent employees working at ESCs and related fiscal data.
COVID-19 Assistance
Although the report focuses on 2018-19, a good deal of space is devoted to the critical role ESCs have been playing in assisting ISDs and charters during the COVID-19 pandemic that began affecting Texas schools last spring.
The report does not evaluate the quality of the services and products provided to ISDs and charters by ESCs.
But an annual UT Austin survey cited in the report noted that for most items, 90 percent of all ISDs and charters expressed that they were “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with the various services provided by ESCs.