Taxparency is a grassroots effort by Texas public school districts to provide the public with transparency into how their tax dollars are being spent on public school education, and raise awareness to the public school funding crisis.

Funding public schools is a shared responsibility between local property tax payers and the state, with some funding (less than 10%) from federal sources.

While local funds come from primarily one source, school district property taxes, state funds include a combination of sources comprising general revenue, lottery proceeds and recapture or “Robin Hood” payments.

This video from Raise Your Hand Texas provides a great overview of how Texas schools are funded. 

Many taxpayers are unaware that the additional money they are paying to the local school district as a result of property value increases will benefit the state budget, not Plano ISD. This, in turn, allows the state to decrease its share of funding public education. In fact, the state's funding per student is less today than it was a decade ago, despite an increase in students’ needs. 

The increased recapture (or Robin Hood) payments are not without impact. This year, Plano ISD adopted a deficit budget, having to resort to using savings to fund the budget shortfall due to Robin Hood. 

The state's current system of funding education does not require that all of this money be used to help other school districts. Rather, it simply allows the state to reduce its own contribution to the education budget.