By Cole Gee | Staff Writer
They say the third time is the charm, and in the case of his school voucher legislation, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is looking to prove it.
School vouchers, also known as school choice, have been a controversial subject in Texas education for the past four years. The program uses Texas’ state funds to help parents pay for their children’s homeschooling or private school education. Many educators on both sides of the political aisle have spoken against the program. Other politicians argue that it gives Texas children the opportunity to learn in the best quality environment.
The Texas House and Senate proposals for vouchers would create an education savings account that would be used to support a child’s education. The main source and amount of money given to students differs. The Senate bill would propose around $10,000 in an education account to be used for a student’s schooling tuition, textbooks and school supplies. The House bill would give school voucher participants around 85% of the funding a public school receives for each student through state and local funding.
Both bills, however, bring up an issue that educators have with the proposed system: if a student joins the program and then leaves for a public school, the public school district would lose access to whatever funding they would have received from enrolling the student. Which brings up the worrying question for many Texas teachers: how much public school funding will be lost if the bill goes through?’
Crystal Dillard is an 8th grade U.S. history teacher in Houston ISD. Beyond her teaching profession, she’s also an activist for teachers in Texas and ran for a Texas State Representative. Dillard, like many other teachers, worries for the future of their classrooms underneath the voucher program. She said they made every attempt to have their voices heard, even going down to the Texas House in Austin to protest and speak to representatives.
“There was not one conservative lawmaker, not one who would talk to the teachers who were down there — there were probably over 1,000 teachers down there, maybe 1,500 teachers from districts all across the state,” Dillard said. “Make no mistake, this voucher bill is something that has been very much rejected by small red counties as well as the largest school districts.”
Many public schools are facing funding deficits, such as Houston ISD’s $250 million deficit. Dallas ISD has a $152 million deficit, and Waco ISD faces a $8 million deficit. Underneath this new system, it’s highly likely that schools will receive less funding and possibly campus closures, Dillard said.
“Now my situation is a little bit unique because I am a public school teacher who has taught Title 1 schools my entire teaching career, but I am the product of private Christian schools,” Dillard says. “And standing in those shoes I can tell you that these vouchers are not going to be positive for public education, simply because we are lacking so much already.”
Small towns and red counties are the main groups that may be primarily affected by this school voucher program. This is why there was a united front from Republicans and Democrats to push back against this new system; since many of these counties don’t have their own private schools in the area, the voucher system might siphon out the few dollars these schools use to support private education outside of their districts, Dillard said.
“Voucher bill is something that has been very much rejected by small red counties as well as the largest school districts,” Dillard said. “It’s been very much rejected by them because in smaller, basically Republican, voting counties it’s probably the largest employer in that county. Now if you start taking money away from that school district, you lose jobs not only in the classroom, but you’ve got transportation, you’ve got extracurricular activities, you’ve got all types of clubs and things. If the money is taken away and that is the main source of income in that town, what will happen to that town?”
Last year, Democrats and Republicans united for an 84-63 vote against the voucher program. Now supported by voucher interest groups and state donors, Abbott has spent an estimated $13 million to take back the seats of anti-voucher Republicans.
Pat Flavin is the interim chair of Baylor’s political science department, with much of his work focusing on the impact public policies have on citizens’ lives. On the topic of school vouchers, he believes there are some alternatives to reform school education rather than push for a voucher system that may uproot public education funding.
“I think one alternative to a voucher system is it increasing the per-student allotment to schools,” Flavin said. “That’s been a proposal that’s had bipartisan support. In the previous session, that increase in the per-student allotment was tied to the voucher proposal, which ultimately failed. There are some in Texas, particularly in the House, that would like to see that as an alternative to vouchers. And on top of that, providing funding to pay teachers more.”
Allotment helps determine the amount of funding a school can acquire per student, and in the state of Texas, the current allotment is $6,160. By increasing the allotment, schools could expect to get increased funding, higher teacher salaries and better resources for school programs and classrooms.
