Watch: Texas policy experts discuss how lawmakers addressed education, infrastructure needs this year

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Texas lawmakers made headway this year on tackling the state’s growing education and infrastructure needs brought on by its economic boom — , but there’s still work to be done, policy experts said at a Texas Tribune event Friday.

Staffers from with Texas 2036, a nonpartisan think tank, discussed how state lawmakers addressed Texas’ water, energy and education needs during a pair of panel discussions with Matthew Watkins, editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune.

Here are some of highlights from the event:

School funding bill sends more money to teachers and schools

One of the key topics discussed was school finance, with a particular focus on House Bill 2. The bill allocates $8.5 billion toward teacher salaries, certification, special education, campus safety, and early childhood education. Experts voiced strong support for the bill, expressing hope that it would help address the shortage of certified teachers and encourage more people to enter the profession.

Mary Lynn Pruneda, director of education and workforce policy at Texas 2036, said the success of any education legislation comes down to two questions: “Are more children going to read and do math on grade level?” and “Are more children going to graduate, ready for college and career?”

“I think that House Bill 2 does move the needle towards both of those things,” Lynn said. “It does things like paying teachers more to keep our teachers in the classroom. It does reading and math screeners so that we can begin to address these problems that we have in proficiency in the earliest grades. It also puts more money into the pockets of school districts by providing hundreds of millions of dollars in special education funding that districts were sorely needing.”

John Hryhorchuk, senior vice president of policy and advocacy at Texas 2036 said teachers also need the tools to succeed, which is something that will be possible after the past legislative session.

“The state has made big investments in high-quality curriculum. The state is making investments in additional days to the school year this session. Those are things that address learning loss,” Hryhorchuk said.

Hryhorchuk also noted that Texas is setting a trend for the rest of the country: what the state is doing with its public schools, he said, is likely to be “what every other state is copying in the next five years.”

Infrastructure

Lawmakers this year committed to spending $20 billion over the next two decades to head off the state’s projected water deficit in the coming decades. That money will go toward repairing the state’s ailing water infrastructure as well as ways to boost the water supply like desalination and conservation projects. Texas voters will decide whether to approve those funds at the November ballot box.

Texas needs to invest at least $154 billion over the next 50 years to keep up with the state’s population growth, said Jeremy Mazur, director of infrastructure and natural resources policy at Texas 2036. The funds the Legislature approved this year could lure private dollars to help develop those infrastructure projects. But a funding gap of about $110 billion to deal with the state’s projected water needs in that time remains, he said.

“What we've done in 2025 is basically set our state's financial strategy on the right track to have consistent baseline funding that, at a bare minimum, is needed in the long run,” Mazur said.

Lawmakers also plugged more funds into creating more energy generation as the state’s power demand grows. They put $5 billion more into the Texas Energy Fund, a pot of money lawmakers created two years ago that helps subsidize construction of new gas-powered plants through low-interest taxpayer funded loans. They also put $350 million toward development of nuclear power sources.

Efforts to check the state’s green energy boom by making it more difficult to build wind and solar power died — perhaps out of recognition, Mazur said, that the state needs all of the electricity it can get.

Disclosure: Texas 2036 has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!