AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- A judge has removed the legal threat the state had been under to fix its school financing system or risk having its schools shut down.
Judge John Dietz on Thursday granted the state's request to drop an injunction ordering the fix.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled last year that using mostly property taxes to pay for the $33 billion school system is unconstitutional, and set a June 1 deadline for changing how schools are funded.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders have said they thought a school funding package passed in a special session late last month would satisfy the courts.
Attorneys for the plaintiff school districts said in court filings that the $3.4 billion business tax expansion the Legislature approved is a good-faith effort to begin to address the education funding problem.
But they warned of several potentially serious problems on the horizon.
"The primary focus of the legislation was property tax relief, not putting the school finance system on firm financial footing," the plaintiffs' attorneys wrote. "No new long-term, stable revenue sources was created for public education."
In the special session, lawmakers passed a package aimed at reducing school property taxes by billions of dollars. The money will be replaced with a revamped business tax, an increased cigarette tax, money from both the state's budget surplus and a new way of taxing used car sales.
The package also included some additional money for schools and a $2,000 teacher pay raise, among other items.