AUSTIN, Texas -- State lawmakers can agree that their top priority is fixing the beleaguered school finance system this session. Both the House and Senate budget proposals unveiled this week spend more money on public education funding. But there’s about a $3-billion difference between the two chambers.

"Originally when we started talking about this it was $5 billion total,” said Rep. John Zerwas who serves as Chairman of the House budget-writing committee. “We just started to look at the way the tea leaves were lining up and said we could do more."

The House’s draft budget would pump about $7 billion in new state funds into public education. The Senate’s version proposes about $4 billion with a significant chunk of that going to across-the-board teacher pay raises.

“The Senate has identified a very specific part of what I would call school reform to focus in on. And that is, let’s try to do things that keep teachers in the classroom,” Zerwas said. “We may very well end up there on the House side with something like this.”

In an interview on Capital Tonight, Zerwas said he thinks the House and Senate are not far off and the draft budgets give lawmakers a good starting point.

“What I like to say, is we’re all looking at the same book. We may be on a different page, but we’re all looking at the same book on what we need to do,” Zerwas said.

Zerwas added that being able to sustain an increase in funding is the big question.

“The people that look at that need to be able to have those conversations without there being a sense of any real political recourse on them,” he said.

Click the video link above to watch our full interview with Zerwas, including his take on tapping the Rainy Day Fund and property tax relief.