Legislature beyond bounds of reason on bathrooms, vouchers
Molly Ivins liked to say that when the Texas Legislature convened for its biennial sessions, every village lost its idiot.
This session, they think we are the idiots.
I usually take a more respectful tone in my criticisms of lawmakers than the legendary columnist did. I can’t compete with her wit anyway. But I also believe that most of the men and women who leave their homes, their jobs and their families to do the people’s business in Austin genuinely care about the folks they serve.
Reasonable people — Republican, Democrat, what have you — can disagree on solutions to complex problems. That’s a lawmaker’s job.
But these days, you don’t even need a problem to have a solution.
Take the so-called bathroom bill, which was resurrected a few days ago after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, threatened to hold the Legislature hostage, and push for a special session, if the more moderate House didn’t pass some version of his pet project.
What exists now is indeed a compromise. It has garnered at least some business support, and it may not lead to the massive boycotts North Carolina suffered after its broader bathroom bill.
But here’s why it’s so, well, idiotic.
Last fall, Patrick acknowledged that transgender Texans pose no special threat to public safety.
Still, he said, we shouldn’t allow any state laws or local ordinances that give those Texans permission to choose bathrooms aligned with their identities because “sexual predators” could take advantage.
As I explained in a Facebook post Sunday night: I gather Patrick is concerned that a male sexual predator would put on a dress to enter a women’s bathroom — even though doing so is already illegal if that predator attacks or even bothers somebody in that bathroom.
But the “compromise” measure passed by the Texas House on Sunday to satisfy Patrick affects only public schools, which, despite the disturbing number of student-teacher relationships reported these days, have a limited supply of rapists and pedophiles roaming down the halls. The provision was jammed into a bill dealing with emergency preparedness.
It prevents transgender kids from using a restroom at their school that corresponds with their gender identity unless nobody else is in there at the time. Not sure what happens if somebody walks in. Otherwise, they can use a single-occupancy restroom elsewhere.
That kind of separatebut-equal policy promotes alienation and invites bullying of a group of students who already attempt suicide at alarming rates.
This “solution” doesn’t even solve the fake problem that Patrick invented to justify it.
I wish Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, had found a way to protect children and stand up to the schoolyard bully in the Senate.
Not the answer
Then there’s vouchers — another unreasonable solution brought to you by Patrick and his allies. At least here, there’s a problem that needs addressing — underperforming schools. But a voucher scheme, using public money to pay for private school or home-schooling, is not the answer. Data in other states show lackluster results at best.
Texas lawmakers, led by Democrats and rural Republicans, have fought vouchers for years, and the House successfully blocked them this year — until a few days ago, when they surfaced in a bill intended to make modest reforms to a school finance system the state’s highest court has deemed broken.
Any good reforms had been gutted, including badly needed funding for English-language learners. Instead, we had a bill that promised to help public schoolchildren with disabilities by paying for them to go away — to a private school.
Special needs insult
Appealing to Texans who care about special education is a cunning tactic. And it’s an obvious attempt to use narrow legislation to let the camel’s nose under the tent where vouchers are concerned.
But the great insult to special needs students everywhere, and to any other thinking Texan, is the suggestion that you solve a problem of your own making by handing it off as somebody else’s burden.
State Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, who leads the Senate Education Committee, explained that the bill would help kids who struggled to get adequate services in public schools. But as the Chronicle illustrated in its series Denied, many of those struggles stemmed from the fact that Texas, in a cruel, quiet, cost-cutting measure that almost certainly violated federal law, capped the number of special education students districts could serve. This session, lawmakers banned such caps — a positive move.
I can’t say the same for the plan to send special ed students off to the private sector with vouchers that will likely only pay a fraction of tuition. What’s more, in leaving, those families will give up federal rights to due process — everything from access to basic information to the ability to appeal decisions.
And, the last perverse tidbit: Lawmakers have hinged a bit of dedicated funding for dyslexic students on the survival of the voucher scheme.
Pressure from Patrick
Will House negotiators relent on vouchers in a conference committee to reconcile different versions of the bill? I pray they don’t.
But Patrick put on the pressure in a press release Monday:
“It’s hard for me to believe any Texas lawmaker would vote against a half billion dollars for public schools, as well as voting against children with disabilities, simply to oppose school choice.”
It’s hard to believe anybody would fall for that thinly veiled attempt to exploit special needs children for political gain.
We villagers are smarter than you think.