Dueling rallies target education
Advocates for vouchers, teacher raises urge the Legislature to act
Monday at the Texas Capitol illustrated the carrot-and-stick approach from the Legislature toward public education this legislative session.
At noon, a group of activists stood before the south steps of the Capitol holding signs saying things like “protect religious liberty,” “stop gender modification” and “pass school choice.”
Lawmakers and advocates argued that the state’s public schools have become hotbeds of progressive thought and indoctrination. They told the crowd that there’s porn in the library books, Critical Race Theory in the textbooks and that children are being encouraged to become transgender.
Their proposed fix is a program allowing parents to pull their kids from public schools and receive thousands of dollars from the state toward private school tuition or home-schooling — echoing the rhetoric of Republican leaders Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who are both calling for Texas to adopt school vouchers similar to those passed in the last two years in Arizona, Iowa, Utah and Arkansas.
Advocate Corey Deangelis called voucher programs “a wildfire that has just ignited. It’s a great time to be a school choice advocate. Parents have just woken up, and they’ve become a new special interest group of sorts,” he said. “We cannot continue to let our children go to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they wake up as Romans.”
Also at the Capitol on Monday, hundreds of Texas teachers who see vouchers as an existential threat to public schools had something to cheer about.
“We have high hopes for this year. High in the sky, apple pie,” said Rep. Alma Allen, a Houston Democrat and retired educator. Allen and several other Democratic lawmakers spoke before a room of Texas schoolteachers on Monday afternoon in the Agriculture Museum at the Capitol.
Deep concerns about the teacher shortage facing the state
has built bipartisan consensus inside the Capitol for teacher pay raises, increased funding to the school system and extra money to retired teachers, all priorities of education groups.
A record $30-plus billion budget surplus means “there is no excuse this session” not to pass such policies, said Austin Democratic Rep. James Talarico, another former teacher.
The carrot-and-stick approach toward public education nonetheless leaves teachers and their supporters with the feeling of being under attack.
“This is all part of a great plan to dismantle public education, right? Demonize, then privatize. That’s the two-step they’re trying to learn. They’ve done demonize for a long time and certainly over the last two years, and now they’re ready for their final step, which is to privatize,” Talarico said.
Allen pointed to the efforts from the Texas Education Agency to take over control of Houston Independent School District, the largest in the state.
“This is not just about
Houston. … This is the state of Texas. You’re next,” she said. “It’s a movement to take over all of public education.”
In the Texas House, Speaker Dade Phelan is supporting a policy to reshape how Texas funds school districts, providing state dollars based on student enrollment instead of average daily attendance. The effect of this would be billions more overall dollars to schools. Other policies with bipartisan support include teacher pay raises; an increase in the base, per-student funding that the state provides to each public school; free pre-k for the children of teachers and a cost-of-living adjustment to teacher retirement benefits.
In the Texas Senate, where Patrick has tremendous power to coax bills along, the lieutenant governor has coupled his effort to pass vouchers with support for teacher pay raises, free pre-k and increased funding. There’s also support in the Senate for more money to retired teachers, although they prefer a onetime supplemental check for retired teachers instead of an ongoing adjustment.
“Texas can expand education freedom and lift up public schools and teachers at the same time. Anyone saying different either hasn’t read the bill, or is creating a false narrative that would be insulting to Texas families,” said Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Conroe Republican who is spearheading the voucher bill in the Senate.
Creighton’s program would not apply to smaller school districts — an effort from the bill’s drafters to win more support from rural Republicans, who have historically opposed vouchers — and it would also impose sweeping restrictions on the teaching of gender and sexuality.
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said teachers will view the session as ultimately unfavorable if a voucher program is enacted, regardless of whether pay raises or funding hikes are instituted.
“We are not interested in having a pyrrhic victory on the pay-raise issue if it means selling out our communities,” he said. “There’s no deal (to be made) on trying to pair those things together.”