Robin Hood: Texas Senate Bill Seven

What is Robin Hood?

Senate Bill Seven was created in Texas in 1993. Nick named, Robin Hood, it is a school funding policy failure named as such because it took money from rich school districts and gave money to poor districts. The policy had good intentions to make education for all students fair and equal. During the 1980’s and 90’s, Texas was facing hundreds of lawsuits from various school districts. At the time, the policy seemed like the best way to solve the school-funding problem. The purpose of Robin Hood was to have a positive impact on all students, but the exact opposite happened. “The Robin Hood plan design caused substantial negative capitalization and shrunk its own tax base. It relied only heavily on high marginal tax rates.

“Senate Bill 7 mandated that all districts having a wealth per weighted student (WADA) exceeding $280,000 must give up that excess wealth. In 1997, the Texas Legislature revised the formula for calculating the amount to exclude taxes collected for debt service from the calculation. Voters approved an additional $10,000 homestead exemption in August 1998.” (http://www.pisd.edu/news/advocacy/robin.hood.shtml) By1999, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 4. This new law increased the wealth per weighted student (WADA) that districts may retain by $15,000. The in crease in the WADA was the first increase since the bill was created in 1993. The increase did not help as it was

In 2005, Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the property-wealthy districts declaring that holding such reliance on local property taxes for school funding is an illegal statewide property tax. The Legislature enacts Governor Rick Perry's proposal in 2006 to cut school property taxes by about one-third and replace much, but not all, of the lost revenue with a dollar per cigaretty pack statewide tax increase. In 2011, a new law also placed strict limits on how much school districts can raise local tax