Can MISD sue its way out of Robin Hood payments?

What happened: Midland ISD Board President Josh Guinn says he wants the district to sue the state over recapture, commonly known as Robin Hood. Guinn called the state’s recapture system “an unconstitutional statewide property tax” that violates Article VIII of the Texas Constitution, and said he placed an item on the July 21 agenda asking trustees to authorize a lawsuit against Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath.

Recapture is a real constraint on property-rich districts like MISD. But before taxpayers fund another recapture challenge, we should ask what such a lawsuit could realistically accomplish. The most recent 2016 Texas Supreme Court ruling called recapture imperfect but constitutional and left changes to the Legislature. Even if a new challenge succeeded, the likely outcome would be a formula adjustment rather than the end of recapture.

When elected officials argue they need more money, the conversation is usually about how to keep more of it. Rarely is it about spending less. As the chart later in this story shows, MISD’s inflation-adjusted spending per student has risen roughly 86% since the state created recapture.

Catch up quick: Recapture has been part of Texas school finance for more than 30 years. Created in 1993, it is the state’s method of equalizing school funding between property-rich and property-poor districts.

The state determines how much funding each district should receive. When a district’s local property tax collections exceed that amount, the excess goes back to the state through recapture. Today, about 23% of Texas school districts pay into the system while roughly 77% receive money from it.

Why it matters: MISD has paid recapture since 2013-14, as Midland’s local mineral values have risen. Before that, the district received recapture funding from the state for several years. By the end of this fiscal year, MISD estimates it will have returned more than $1 billion to the state. Payments peaked at about $164 million in 2022-23. This year, the district expects to send roughly $44 million.

The big picture: The Texas Supreme Court first upheld recapture in 1995. In 2005, the court ruled that the state’s school finance system had effectively become a statewide property tax, prompting the Legislature to compress tax rates and revise the funding formula while leaving recapture intact. In 2016, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected another constitutional challenge brought by more than 600 school districts.

Go deeper: Even if MISD convinced a court that the current system is unconstitutional, the court could not simply eliminate recapture. The most it could do is tell the Legislature to rewrite the funding formula, which is essentially what happened after the 2005 ruling.

As attorney Keith Stretcher noted in our April reporting, the larger political obstacle is that most Texas lawmakers represent districts that receive recapture funding. Convincing the Legislature to eliminate a program benefiting the majority of districts is likely the much greater challenge.

The bottom line: Recapture is only one piece of the district’s growing financial footprint. Since the state created recapture, the district’s spending has grown substantially faster than enrollment. Between 1995 and 2025, after accounting for inflation, the district’s spending per student has increased by roughly 86%. Enrollment has not grown at the same pace, increasing by only about 28%.

This raises a fundamental question: how much funding is actually required to deliver better outcomes?

← On mobile: scroll to view full table →