Houston Independent School District (HISD), is an incredibly large public school district, among the largest throughout all of the United States. On June 4, 2025, Governor Greg Abbott legislated and signed into law $8.5 billion in added funding for HISD, about $4 billion of which was meant to go directly towards the salaries of teachers and staff within these school districts. 

However, HISD is directly responsible for carrying out said task, and the district is currently refusing to pay out their dues to the teachers. Texas House Bill 2 mandates that all teachers and staff receive a flat pay raise of at least $2,500 dollars, and HISD has refused to do so, instead running a proclaimed compensation plan that plans to impose pay based upon performance, which their own board gets to decide how well they think each teacher is performing, directly influencing their pay. 

Students within the district have already felt the effects of this decision. “Our teachers seem to care less than they should, and I don’t blame them,” responded Oluwadamilola Samuel, a student at Westside. The problem with this is that HISD as a system is already bent on ‘saving’ money. Their board is able to dictate a teacher’s pay, and in turn, may report a teacher as underperforming or other things of the sort in order to artificially deflate teacher paychecks.

Although The Village School does not rely on government funding, this behavior could affect the Viking community. Since fewer people within the state of Texas will be inclined to step into the teaching profession knowing that their pay will never be their desired amount, fewer teachers will be available. It could affect future students at The Village School due to the already prevalent teacher shortage only becoming larger. The Village School is a growing community, and has multiple planned expansions. A teacher shortage in Houston would most definitively affect The Village School in a negative sense.