Although the Robin Hood school funding system has been punctured by the legislature’s House Bill 1, Mildred and Fairfield are still going for one more deal.

This past summer, Mildred school officials rejected a request to sell any of its education credits to Fairfield, its Robin Hood partner for the past two years. Under the arrangement which benefited both school districts, Fairfield “bought” credit for educating students in Mildred. This allowed Mildred some extra cash for technology, including computers, a new server, and miles of wiring. In return, Fairfield got to keep a greater percentage of its local taxes.

However, as the state began kicking in more funding this fall, the deal was off, because it would no longer benefit Mildred financially.

On Monday, the district’s school board chose to go ahead with the deal anyway, on the assurance from Fairfield Superintendent Tony Price that it would help Fairfield, and that Mildred wouldn’t suffer.

“Mildred has gotten half a million dollars in technology money over the years (from Fairfield),” Mildred Superintendent Doug Lane told the school board Monday night. “Tony (Price) has been more than fair, and Mildred can afford to help.”

Fairfield has three power plants, and a rich oil and gas field that puts that district into the “wealthy” school category, and requires it to share the district’s tax income with poorer districts like Mildred.

“My other option was to write a check for $17 million to the state, and my taxpayers have asked me not to do that unless I absolutely have to,” Price explained.

Fairfield has a series of partnership deals like the one with Mildred in order to shed that much money. Mildred’s entire annual operations budget is less than $7 million.

Under the old deal, Mildred sold the credits to Fairfield, and the difference between the state average and the lower cost to educate a student in Mildred was shared between the two districts. Under the new deal, the profits will go to the Education Service Center in Waco, and the proceeds will be distributed to all the schools in the area, not just Mildred.

“This way, Mildred will get some gain,” Price said. “But I can’t give them cash gain. Last year, it was much cleaner because we replaced the money the state took away in February, and in August we gave them some gain.”

Having it go through the service center keeps the tax money local, and still allows Mildred to receive some benefits, just not directly, he added.

“If we were in the Mafia, we’d be laundering money,” he joked.

It’s a perfectly legal arrangement, and one the state recommends, explained Lisa Dawn-Fisher, director of school finance for the Texas Education Agency in Austin.

“They can either share it with a technology consortium, or a juvenile justice program, or we’ll reduce their state aid by that same amount,” Dawn-Fisher said.

It’s unclear what other districts around the state will do, she said. Districts don’t have to tell the state until Nov. 1, although the new arrangement has made deals like the Mildred-Fairfield bargain less appealing, she said.

“In the past, (wealthy districts) can get rid of some of their wealth by helping educate students in other districts,” she said. “In House Bill 1, school districts could still have these arrangements but they cannot keep the gain anymore. That’s made the arrangements less attractive for the (poorer) districts.”

Last week, Price, accompanied by Tom Morris, with the Region 12 Education Service Center, came to Mildred to ask for Mildred’s credits, Lane said.

Part of the bargain is that Lane becomes a member of the Service Center consortium board that doles out the funding to local school districts.

Under the agreement worked out with Fairfield, Mildred will sell about 17 percent of its education credits. When the state inevitably cuts the district’s funding, probably around February, Fairfield will pick up the slack and replace that money, to the tune of $162,735. Another $1 million will go to the service center for redistribution.

Fairfield can keep about $400,000 in local tax money as an “efficiency credit” that would otherwise go to the state.

“I could send it directly to the state, but nobody would get any gain,” Price said.

“We’ve been blessed with some good assets,” he explained. “We want to be good stewards, to keep the money in our region. We don’t want that money to go away. It’s generated here, and we think the money should stay here.”

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Janet Jacobs may be contacted via e-mail at jacobs@corsicanadailysun.com