Easy Come, Easy Go: The Legislative Session that Just Won’t End
Publish Date: June 2, 2023 2:23 pm
Author: Texas AFT
https://www.texasaft.org/government/legi...-just-wont-end/


This week we said “goodbye” to the 88th regular session … and then, just a few hours later, said “hello” to the first special session of the 88th Legislature. In this week’s Hotline, we recap the end of the regular session, provide an update on the first (of “several”) special sessions, and start to unpack what all this turmoil means for public schools.
The End of the Regular Session

While the last 48 hours of a regular legislative session are typically reserved for administrative tasks and ceremonial signings, this session, the Texas House and Senate were in deep negotiations up until the very last minute of session.

Unfortunately, neither side was negotiating to increase educator pay, improve school working conditions, or generally improve our state’s schools in any way. Instead, both sides were arguing two different plans for cutting property taxes.

This past weekend HB 100, the school finance bill by Chairman Ken King (R-Canadian), which would have increased the basic allotment, officially died after the Texas Senate tried to attach a private school voucher proposal to the bill.

The version of HB 100 that passed the House would have raised the basic allotment by $90 per student next year, but the Senate version of the bill would have only raised the basic allotment by $50. The Senate version also included a voucher program that would divert billions in dollars of funding away from public schools in the coming years.

By amending the bill to include a voucher, the Senate effectively held public school funding hostage to force the House into passing a private school voucher scam and senators all but admitted this on the Senate floor.

When the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill, as was the case for HB 100, the chamber that first passed the bill can either choose to accept the opposing chamber’s changes or it can oppose those changes and request a conference committee. A conference committee is made up of five representatives and five senators. These 10 legislators negotiate on behalf of their chamber to negotiate the final version of the bill.-- excerpt, rest at link above --


The forces arrayed against school choice are many and powerful.

Another one:

Editorial: Vouchers would take Texas public education backward
Express-News Editorial Board
June 2, 2023
Updated: June 2, 2023 1:01 p.m.
https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/edit...ic-18132309.php


Edgewood ISD Superintendent Eduardo Hernández has said he sees little support for public education in the Capitol. “We’re in a very scary place,” he said.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made school vouchers a top priority in the regular session. And while that effort didn’t advance, the fight likely isn’t over. Here, he meets with supporters of vouchers at the Capitol.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made school vouchers a top priority during the regular legislative session, crisscrossing the state to make his case. In making vouchers an emergency item, he cast them as a tool for parental choice and a buttress against indoctrination.

While vouchers died in the regular session, they will be roaring back to life in a special session this summer, having been tethered to school funding. Texas Democrats and rural Republicans have long resisted vouchers, concerned they would undercut public schools by shifting funding to private schools. But this is a unique moment. The state is flush with cash to improve school funding, and Abbott and the Texas Senate are undeterred.

In a May 14 statement opposing a pared-down version of a school voucher bill in the House, Abbott promised to “work around the clock” with lawmakers. He even offered to scrap the problematic State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, exam. He has promised a special session on the issue.

“Failure to expand the scope of school choice to something close to the Senate version or the original House version of the Senate bill will necessitate special sessions,” Abbott said. “Parents and their children deserve no less.”

Parents and children deserve much more than public funds going to support private schools, which lack standards for teachers, curriculum, assessments, facilities and safety. There are no requirements for private schools to comply with federal standards for students with disabilities or limited English proficiency, or report student performance or use of taxpayer funds to the public. Studies have also shown vouchers do not improve academic outcomes. If indoctrination is a concern, public funds for private religious schools should be top of mind.

Past is often prologue, and vouchers have a dark history in Texas.

Texas lawmakers began pushing vouchers after the 1954 landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the U.S. Supreme Court put an end to “separate but equal” educational facilities.

A commission created by Gov. Allan Shivers, a staunch segregationist, proposed school vouchers in 1956. Soon after, San Antonio’s state Sen. Henry B. González was part of the longest filibuster in the Texas Legislature — 35 hours — to kill a House bill that would give a “tuition grant,” part of a package of racial segregation bills. -- excerpt, rest at link above --

early and often Apr. 10, 2023
Rural Republicans Revolt Against School-Voucher Plans
By Ed Kilgore, political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
Brian Kemp takes a rare “L” on vouchers.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/...cher-plans.html


For longtime conservative enthusiasts of diverting public-education dollars into private schools (or home schools), the “parental rights” movement being embraced by Republicans across the country has been a godsend. With residual heartburn over COVID-19 restrictions on in-school instruction and fresh outrage over alleged “woke” teachers and administrators teaching kids about sex and gender identity and (gasp) racism, the hoary cause of school vouchers has received a new impetus in many Republican-controlled states. That’s despite growing evidence that vouchers don’t tend to produce good educational outcomes, while undermining funding for public schools (including charter public schools that provide significant school choice).

While many jurisdictions have approved small voucher experiments, often aimed at special-education students with few public options, Republicans are now taking vouchers to a new level. Since last year, five states have made the leap to universal vouchers, which enable parents to pay for private-school tuition and/or offset homeschooling costs: Arizona in 2022 (though the state voted for Biden and two Democratic senators, the GOP controlled all three branches of state government until this year), followed by Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, and most recently Florida in 2023.

But now, rural Republican opposition to vouchers has stopped voucher proposals being backed vocally by two of the country’s most powerful GOP governors.

In Georgia, a major expansion of vouchers that Governor Brian Kemp put his considerable political heft behind unexpectedly lost when 16 mostly rural House Republicans voted against it; the bill lost by four votes and died for this session of the legislature. For one thing, many rural communities without private schools would be on the losing end of the funding shift. For another, past efforts by voucher fans to threaten Republican lawmakers with primary opposition appear to have backfired.

And now in Texas, another private-school subsidy initiative that Governor Greg Abbott has made his signature proposal for 2023 has encountered similar Republican opposition. Last week, the Texas House approved a budget amendment prohibiting use of public funds for private schools. Twenty-four Republicans — again, mostly from rural areas — voted with Democrats to give the funding amendment an 86-52 win. While the House has not yet dealt with a Senate-passed version of Abbott’s proposal, there’s no obvious path for overcoming bipartisan opposition.

These developments reinforce two big problems with vouchers aside from their poor record of improving educational results. First, as my colleague Jonathan Chait recently pointed out, most of the beneficiaries of voucher proposals have already abandoned public schools and are simply grasping for tax money to subsidize decisions they’ve already made, undermining the very idea of educational reform via school choice: “Providing vouchers didn’t give children choices; it simply sent checks to parents who were already privately educating their children.”

But second, voucher plans, and indeed the underlying philosophy that education is simply a publicly provided service for parents, ignores the civic role that public schools often play for parents and nonparents alike, particularly in rural areas. What urban and suburban conservatives may deplore as “government schools” are the glue in many small communities, as NBC News recently explained in a report from the small and intensely conservative West Texas town of Robert Lee during a track meet that drew fans to the public high school from around the area:

It’s not just sporting events that make the school the center of the town’s identity. It’s where residents host potluck fundraisers to help pay a loved one’s medical bills, or gather for the annual Robert Lee BBQ Cookoff. There’s no gym or YMCA in Robert Lee-- excerpt, rest at link above --

Central Texas school districts face budget deficits after Legislature does not increase key funding
KUT 90.5 | By Becky Fogel
Published June 1, 2023 at 1:12 PM CDT
https://www.kut.org/education/2023-06-01...student-funding


Per student funding in Texas has been stagnant since 2019, and another legislative session ended this week without any increase to the basic allotment.

The Texas Legislature’s 88th regular session ended on Monday without any increase to the state’s building block for public education spending: the basic allotment. It’s the minimum amount of funding per student that school districts receive from the state.

The last time lawmakers raised the basic allotment was in 2019, when it went from $5,140 to $6,160. But $6,160 doesn’t go as far for school districts in 2023 as it did just a few years ago.

“They're having to cover the increasing costs of fuel, of food, of supplies, of teacher compensation, all of those increasing costs,” said Dax Gonzalez, a division director at the Texas Association of School Boards. “And the state is not offering any support to assist with that.”

For months, public education advocates and school leaders urged the Legislature to raise the basic allotment by roughly $1,000 just to make up for inflation over the last four years. There was a bill that would have modestly increased per student funding and started factoring in inflation. The version of House Bill 100 the Texas House overwhelmingly passed in April would have increased the basic allotment by $90 in the first year and at least $50 in the second.

But when the Texas Senate got its hands on the bill, it became a vehicle for a school voucher program that would have given families $8,000 per student to help pay for private school tuition or tutoring. Ultimately, state senators and representatives could not reach a compromise to get the legislation across the finish line. The author of HB 100, Republican state Rep. Ken King, said that negotiations with the Senate fell apart because senators refused to budge on creating a school voucher program — which faced bipartisan opposition in the Texas House.

“I am truly sorry HB 100 did not pass,” King said in a statement. “But in the end, I believe students, teachers and schools are better off with current law than they would be if we accept what the Senate is offering.”-- excerpt, rest at link above --

This part just drive me crazy:


“They're having to cover the increasing costs of fuel, of food, of supplies, of teacher compensation, all of those increasing costs,” said Dax Gonzalez, a division director at the Texas Association of School Boards. “And the state is not offering any support to assist with that.”

It never seems to occur to them that taxpayers are having to cover the same costs in their lives and that maybe, just maybe, everybody has to spend less!

This group is all over twitter advocating against school choice:


Christians Who Care About Education Should Avoid Pastors for Children
Pastors for Children
By John Patton|October 11, 2021
K-12 Education
https://www.texaspolicy.com/christians-w...s-for-children/

It is no secret that the pandemic has been particularly hard on our children. Data shows a catastrophic learning loss among K-12 students across the country—a crisis that threatens the future of a great number of America’s school children who are struggling mightily. Many Christians across denominations and confessional frameworks are asking how they can help as the movement for to provide more options for parents to educate their children grows. However, one group that Christians who want to get involved in education should avoid is “Pastors for Children.”

Pastors for Children, operates in eight states and proclaims its mission is to build a nationwide network of faith leaders and community partners dedicated to school service and fair and equitable public school funding.

In fact, their goal is to block school choice programs even when children are trapped in failing schools. While they are registered as a non-profit organization, their funding sources include almost all of the major and highly partisan teacher unions. In the last election in Texas, they boasted on Twitter that they would be recruiting candidates to run against legislators who supported the expansion of charters and school choice.

Public Schools and “God’s Plan”

In Tennessee, Pastors for Children’s website says they “believe that public education is a human right, a constitutional guarantee, and a central part of God’s plan for human flourishing.” That is a bold, sweeping claim. It’s also false. Neither the Old or New Testaments, nor the historic Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox traditions are directive in such a specific manner. Deuteronomy chapter 6 and many Proverbs along with the words of Jesus himself in the Gospels give us insight into what the God of the Bible thinks of children and how we ought to raise them. Most of this involves teaching them to love God and his Word. There is precious little specificity beyond that. Any single system or method that lays claim to God’s design for how to teach millions of different children anytime or anywhere should be met with deep skepticism.

Public Schools and the Constitution

As for the constitutional guarantee, it should be noted that nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is education of children addressed. There are state-level constitutional guarantees and these carry weight, but Tennessee’s constitution, as well as many other states, does not mandate how the state is to administer this “system of free public schools.” A state naturally has interest in seeing its citizens educated, but why should this public system dominate the way that it does?

And if a substantial portion of this system is failing to educate children, which is sadly the case, then why can those state dollars not follow children to where they can be best educated? Nothing in Tennessee’s state constitution precludes state dollars from being used to educate children in other ways alongside the public schools. This is precisely the basis of the Education Savings Account program currently caught up in litigation in Tennessee that seeks to give families choices for their children.

Public Schools Should Be a Choice

Most students will continue to attend public schools, but private choice programs, charter schools, and generous open enrollment policies help families whose children may be trapped in failing schools. Lower-income families, far more than any other group, are most positioned to benefit from educational options because they currently have the least options. They cannot simply buy a house in a zip code with “good schools” and so are excluded from school choice by the size of the mortgage they can or cannot afford.

As for the “fair and equitable funding” Pastors for Children talks about, while there are some schools that are underfunded, the widespread failure of public education cannot be explained by lack of money. We spend roughly three times more per pupil than we did 50 years ago, inflation adjusted, and the results have been scant. Add to this the many billions of COVID-19 relief dollars for K-12 education currently pouring into states. We can say unequivocally that for the foreseeable future, money is not the problem. The problem is putting most or all of our weight behind schools and systems that do not work for such a large number of families and children.

What children need are more advocates including pastors, church, and religious leaders who are uniquely positioned to advocate for the dignity of all children.

The American Federation for Children is not a faith-based organization but as a person of faith I am proud that its mission encourages schools where parents can ensure their values are at the least not undermined during the school day. I admonish groups like Pastors for Education to reevaluate their position if they actually want to help families. If we take seriously Jesus’s command to “Let the children come to me” then we won’t stand in their way by blocking the schoolhouse door.

Rural School Districts Are Facing Financial Ruin. Some State Officials Prefer It That Way.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politi...tm_campaign=SND
The conservative, gun-toting superintendent of Fort Davis Independent School District is fed up: “I’m not patient enough to spend time with assholes in Austin, and I’m not rich enough to buy any votes.”
By Forrest Wilder
June 6, 2023


Texas doesn’t have a mile-high city, but Fort Davis comes close at 4,892 feet. The tiny unincorporated town is nestled in the foothills of the Davis Mountains, where bears and mountain lions and elk stalk among pine-forested sky islands. Fort Davis is the seat of Jeff Davis County, whose population of 1,900 is spread among 2,265 square miles, 50 percent bigger than Rhode Island. The sparsely populated desert country of Mongolia has nearly seven times the population density of Jeff Davis County. Odessa, the nearest city to Fort Davis, is two and a half hours away. The state Capitol is six and a half.

For Graydon Hicks III, the far-flunged-ness of Fort Davis is part of its appeal. He likes the high and lonesome feel of his hometown—the “prettiest in Texas,” he says. But these days, it has never felt further from the state’s political center of gravity.

For years, Hicks, the superintendent of Fort Davis ISD, has been watching, helplessly, as a slow-motion disaster has unfolded, the result of a flawed and resource-starved public-school finance system. Over the last decade, funding for his little district, which serves just 184 K–12 students, has sagged even as costs, driven by inflation and ever-increasing state mandates, have soared. The math is stark. His austere budget has hovered around $3.1 million a year for the past six years. But the state’s notoriously complex school finance system only allows him to bring in about $2.5 million a year through property taxes.

Hicks has hacked away at all but the most essential elements of his budget. More than three-quarters of Fort Davis’s costs come in the form of payroll, and the starting salary for teachers is the state minimum, just $33,660 a year. There are no signing bonuses or stipends for additional teacher certifications. Fort Davis has no art teacher. No cafeteria. No librarian. No bus routes. The track team doesn’t have a track to train on.
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The Fort Davis High School football field.Photograph by Maisie Crow

But Hicks can’t cut his way out of this financial crisis. This school year, Fort Davis ISD has a $622,000 funding gap. To make up the difference, Hicks is tapping into savings. Doug Karr, a Lubbock school-finance consultant who reviewed the district’s finances, said Fort Davis ISD was “wore down to the nub and the nub’s all gone. And that pretty much describes small school districts.”

“I am squeezing every nickel and dime out of every budget item,” Hicks said. “I don’t have excess of anything.” When I joked that it sounded like he was holding things together with duct tape and baling wire, he didn’t laugh. He said: “I literally have baling wire holding some fences up, holding some doors up.”

The district’s crisis comes at a time when the state is flush with an unprecedented $33 billion budget surplus. Hicks is a self-described conservative, but he thinks the far right is trying to destroy public education. For years, the state has starved public schools of funding: Texas ranks forty-second in per-pupil spending. And yet Governor Greg Abbott is spending enormous political capital on promoting a school voucher plan, which would divert taxpayer funds to private schools. Public education, Abbott has repeatedly said, will remain “fully funded,” though public-education spending is lower now than when he took office in 2015, and the Legislature recently passed a $321.3 billion budget with no pay raise for teachers and very little new funding for schools. Unable to get his voucher plan through the regular legislative session, Abbott is threatening to call lawmakers back to Austin until he gets his way.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, long a champion of vouchers, is backing legislation that would attempt to appease rural Republican legislators—a bloc long wary of vouchers—by offering $10,000 to districts that lose students to private schools. Hicks can barely contain his anger when he hears such talk. He has been lobbying state leaders for years to fix the crippling financial shortages that plague districts like his. “Take your assurances and shove ’em up your ass,” he says, before softening a bit. “I’m so tired. I’m so frustrated. We have tried. I have fought and fought and fought.”

With each passing month, his rural district inches closer to financial ruin. If nothing changes by next summer or fall, Fort Davis will have depleted its savings. He doesn’t know the exact day that his school district will go broke, but he can see it coming.-- excerpt, rest at link above --


The snark is strong in this one.

And, apparently it never occurs to anyone on the public teat to even consider cutting spending. Like the taxpayers are having to do.

Quote: Tinker wrote in post #10

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Woke up to find this happy news in my inbox this morning;

https://texasscorecard.com/state/school-...ction-campaign/

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