LiveBlog: TribLive with Rob Eissler

Evan is doing his introduction.

First question: any reason to believe you won't be chairing Public Education this time around? Eissler: Well I put it on my preference card.

It's a very important time in public education, Eissler says, but he doesn't think it's going to be as bad as everyone thinks.

Assuming $10 billion is the number — that would be $1,000 per student. Do you believe there's that much to be cut? Eissler: At this point, that's what you're looking at, but it might not end up that way.

Eissler says he's open to the idea of new revenue. What about the Rainy Day Fund? He's open to it, but "it'll probably be more handy in the current budget."

What about that structural deficit? "I'm willing to look at anything," — including tweaking the business tax.

Eissler says enrollment growth will be included in final budget: "What are we going to do, close the doors?"

Now we're on to unfunded mandates. Eissler says he's in favor of raising the class size limit, which he doesn't believe will lower educational quality: "If you do the math, if we added one child per class we'd save $1.088 million."

What about flexibility to furlough or reduce teacher pay? Eissler says that could help save jobs.

Any other mandates? The 45 day notification rule in laying off teachers.

Eissler says Rep. Riddle's bill that would require schools to check citizenship of students would be "another mandate." "We're required by law to educate whoever shows up," he says.

Eissler's views for the future of the budget: "We need to move to a revenue based cost system, rather than a cost based revenue system. Instead of just adding on, we need to start replacing things that don't work with things that do work."

"We aren't going to delay the implementation of the new testing system," Eissler says.

And here's a pun. First of the morning? "It's pruning the garden, and even when you prune the garden, you have thorny issues."

What about that Doggett money — that $820 million in federal funding for education? Eissler says he's for taking it, and that he believes it's still coming to state.

The floor's open for questions now. Carl Parker, former Sen. Education Chair, asks about class sizes. Have you thought about lowering class sizes at the youngest levels, and raising them at the high school level?

I'd like to look at that, Eissler says, let's see what we can do and save. "This is an opportunity to change things for the better."

Fun fact: one in 10 American school children is a Texan.

A question about bullying-related suicides. A dozen bullying bills have been pre-filed in the Lege, do they have a chance? Eissler says yes.

Talking about teacher effectiveness now. Question from the audience: We want effective teachers, but training them is very expensive. Can we afford that?

Eissler responds: "Can we afford not to?"

Evan asks, if we recognize that we do need to invest in certain programs, why are we not willing to have the conversation we need to about revenue?

"Everyone knows education is the most important thing we can do," Eissler says. But because of that we've "just said, let's add this, let's add that," without looking at what works. For instance: "how many dropout prevention programs do we have, and which one is most effective?"

"We're in a period in our finances, and near future finances where we can't afford to keep supplementing. We need to start making decisions on what is good."

Brad Shields asks about the possibility of relaxing the regulatory burden on high performing districts. Eissler says yes, he's in favor of carrots.

"It's always good to have carrots because it is crunch time." And with that final pun, this TribLive is over.