High School Stadiums, Packed With Loopholes
Texas isn’t a place you’d expect to see the words “equalized wealth,” but there they are in the state’s education code. The so-called Robin Hood provision passed in 1993 requires that school districts with taxable property values above a certain level, currently $319,500 per student, surrender some of their revenue to poorer communities. For the 2012-13 school year, a record 374 of Texas’s 1,030 districts are giving up a total of about $1 billion. (In 1993, 35 districts made the list.) Tax money used to repay bondholders is exempt from redistribution, so as the number of towns deemed property-rich has grown, many have raised millions from bond issues to build lavish football stadiums and schools. Nearly 100 high school stadiums have opened in Texas in the last five years. “If you don’t pass a bond and spend it here for your kids, the money just goes to the state,” says Dustin Burns, president of the booster club at Carthage High School, near the Louisiana border.
Voters in some districts have balked at issuing bonds to
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