School tuition battle playing out at polls
Both sides focused on at least five GOP runoffs for Texas House seats.
The battle over whether public money should be spent on private school tuition played out at polls across the state this month and will continue in runoff contests on May 22.
Public school teachers, who launched a noteworthy get-outthe-vote campaign, and support- ers of so-called private school choice ended the March 6 Texas House primaries in a draw.
Both sides are now focused on at least five GOP runoffs for Texas House seats in districts from San Antonio to North Texas.
Private school choice, described as a voucher-like system by opponents, died during last year’s regular legislative session amid opposition from Democrats and rural GOP House members, concerned that making public money
available for private school tuition would siphon off funding that otherwise would go to pub- lic schools.
Public education advocates also oppose measures to boost funding for charter schools and home-schooled students.
But state Republican leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, strongly support private school choice, and GOP leaders could push the idea again when lawmakers reconvene next year.
Public school educators and advocates organized social media
campaigns to encourage voting for
Patrick’s primary opponent, Scott Milder, a former Rockwall City Council member and co-founder of Friends of Texas Public Schools. Patrick won with 76 percent of the vote.
Some Democrats participated in a GOP primary for the first time, according to posts on online forums, to vote against Patrick. In at least a handful of counties, including Travis, Harris, Tarrant, Collin and Montgomery, the Patrick-Milder race drew the most votes, unusual for a race that appeared fourth on most ballots.
“My original reaction was disappointment, but when you sit down and look at the numbers and you see that we targeted 98 (Republican) races and we won almost 80 percent of them and we may exceed 80 percent if we can take four of these five runoffs, that’s an amazing record,” said Troy Reynolds, founder of Texans for Public Education, a 25,000-member Facebook group of mostly educators who mobilized to vote in the primaries.
Stacy Hock with Texans for Education Opportunity pointed to the 78.7 percent of GOP voters who voted yes on the private school choice measure on the Republican primary ballot — Proposition 5 — as one of the reasons why the results of the March primaries have already leaned in the favor of private school choice supporters.
“I’m wondering in what ways someone would argue that the opposite position was victorious. They saw 79 percent of primary voters explicitly support a private school choice, not just any school choice. By and large, incumbents were successful across the board,” Hock said.
Five ‘critical’ seats
School choice proponents would need to gain more than two dozen GOP House members sympathetic to their cause — assuming Democrats don’t chip away at the overall GOP majority in the November general election — to garner enough votes to pass legislation, based on two school choice votes in the House last year.
In the March GOP primary, public education advocates claimed victory in GOP-held House Districts 45 and 126, represented by Reps. Jason Isaac and Kevin Roberts, respectively, neither of whom ran for re-election and whom public education supporters don’t consider allies.
Sam Harless, who supports increasing the state’s share of public school funding, won in District 126 in northwestern Harris County, and Wimberley school board member Ken Strange won in District 45, which covers Hays and Blanco counties.
Strange, who also serves as director of Wimberley Emergency Medical Service, credits his win in part to the turnout of public education supporters.
“I appreciate teachers and school people standing up and being heard because I think that’s what it is going to take to fix this (public education) system,” he said.
Private school choice advocates Jonathan Boos and Lisa Luby Ryan won in GOP-held House Districts 113 and 114, respectively, which are currently represented by public school advocates Reps. Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale, and Jason Villalba, R-Dallas. Burkett ran unsuccessfully for a state Senate seat.
There are at least five GOP runoffs that supporters of both education philosophies are watching — House Districts 4, 8, 54, 62 and 121, all of which are represented by lawmakers who advocates say are public education supporters.
Representatives with Texans for Public Education and Texans Parent PAC told the American-Statesman they will endorse Forney school board member Keith Bell in District 4 which covers Henderson and Kaufman counties; Cody Harris in District 8 in the Corsicana area; Scott Cosper in District 54 which covers Bell and Lampasas counties; Reggie Smith in District 62 in the Sherman area; and former Alamo Heights school board member Steve Allison in District 121 in the San Antonio area.
“These runoffs are critical,” said Carolyn Boyle, head of Texas Parent PAC. “The timing is bad for this runoff because it is right at the end of school — May 22 — and it’s when parents and school employees are really busy, so that’s job one — to tell people there are still plenty of important races to come in those targeted areas.”
Focus on GOP primary
Nobody tracks voters’ occupations so it’s not clear whether teachers voted in larger numbers in this primary than in previous years. Overall turnout the March primary increased by 34.6 percent compared with the 2014 primary.
“From all evidence of people posting pictures and districts encouraging voting, I think that educators ... must have been a part of it,” said Laura Yeager, head of Texas Educators Vote, which partners with school districts to boost teacher voter participation.
Groups like Texans for Public Education committed to vote en masse in the Republican primary, using the hashtag #blockvote to organize online. For some educators and school leaders who typically vote Democrat, that meant voting for the first time as a Republican.
“I believe that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the folks in the Senate that he leads — the social conservatives — are bad for public education, and I wanted to take a shot, albeit a long shot, at doing what I could to change that,” said Eanes school board member John Havenstrite.
Kayla Kromer, a fourthgrade teacher in the Hays school district, said she voted in the GOP primary for the first time to cast ballots against some Republican incumbents whom she sees as not doing enough to bolster teacher retirement plans, fix the school finance system and reform standardized testing.
“We want more centrists,” Kromer said. “We want more people who are going to take care of kids on both sides.”
For months, such bloc voting tactics as well as that of Texas Educators Vote prompted conservative activists and state leaders to question whether school tax dollars were being used to illegally electioneer.
Days before early voting in the primary began, Attorney General Ken Paxton sent cease-and-desist letters to the Brazosport, Holliday and Lewisville school districts, accusing officials there of using school resources to advocate for political candidates and measures. (On Friday, Paxton also sent such letters to the Elgin and Galena Park school districts.)
Reynolds said Paxton’s actions were meant to intimidate educators from voting but they only emboldened educators to vote.
He hopes the same fervor for voting carries through November, when many of the pro-school choice Republicans will face Democratic opponents.
“Primaries were defense, and it looks like we defended well. Now, we go on offense,” Reynolds said.
Contact Julie Chang at 512-912-2565.