A couple of legislation issues are taking place. There is a group of legislative staff from Senator Ratcliff's education committee assigned to go around the state and look at special items. SFA has done well on special items. There is consideration in the legislature that they do away with all special items that exist which is about 17-percent of the money higher education gets in Texas. This money may be spent into formulas instead of having special items.
Some institutions do very well with special items.
However, SFA could probably do better under formula funding if all special item funds were included. SFA did spend its special items money on special items, and we did significant things with the money. Significant means that the project improved the economy in your area, received federal dollars as a result of the project, or developed a major educational benefit that suited the university mission. The two legislative staff that visited SFA were convinced that we had accomplished valuable things with special item funding. Chair McDonald asked Dr. Angel about the formula reevaluation started by a committee appointed by Commissioner Brown.