as a resident of west lake hills and an eanes property tax payor (25% property value increase yoy this year holla!), i suspect the one of the contributing factors is that dallas and houston have some much more extreme poor ass areas that austin just does not have. austin has extremely high property value areas but with the gentrification of the east side and even dove springs, north east austin is the only truly ghetto ass area left in austin from a property tax perspective. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and El Paso all have some extremely nice areas but the extreme on the other end for them is far more extreme than austin. austin has somewhat insulated itself from those extremes. hisd doesn't just serve the areas west of 45, the also serve the areas east of 45. so they probably even out a bit more.
the other thing is places like frisco fucking gaming the system and resetting their the tax % regularly to ensure they are not in a net payor position. that is the shit that needs to be revised.
but the thing about it that pisses me off by far the most about it all is not the concept of recapture as a principle. i grew up in poor ass east texas and we would have probably had school in a creek bed if it weren't for it...but it is that it is not being utilized for education necessarily but instead is absconded with by the general fund and held hostage by politically motivated pieces of shit who are hell bent on pushing through voucher bullshit so their p.e. buddies with their boiler room charter schools can make a fortune. and that money very well may go to putting up razor balls for performative bullshit on the rio grande as opposed to actually funding schools in economically challenged communities. fucking makes me irate and i with nothing but pain and misery on every fucking cocksucking piece of shit involved in texas politics that allows this horseshit to go on.