School vouchers fail for the 4th(!) time in special sessions called by Texas Gov. Abbott.
Posted by
Qale
Nov 20 '23, 11:24
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The Texas House rejected a school voucher proposal Friday, dealing an emphatic blow to Gov. Greg Abbott’s top priority after months of negotiations and political threats from the third-term Republican.
After a brief, impassioned debate, a coalition of Democrats and mostly rural Republicans joined to strip vouchers from a wide-ranging education funding bill, saying the policy would quickly become too expensive and mostly help families that can already afford to send their kids to private school.
"I believe in my heart that using taxpayer dollars to fund an entitlement program is not conservative and is bad public policy," said state Rep. John Raney, the Bryan Republican who filed the anti-voucher amendment.
The vote was 84 to 63. Twenty-one GOP members supported the move, as did all Democrats who were present, according to a preliminary vote tally. After lawmakers struck vouchers from the bill, its author withdrew the entire package from consideration.
The defeat leaves Abbott with an unclear path forward to pass the policy he has fought for harder than almost any other throughout his eight years in office. Though the bill went further in the Texas House than previous attempts, Friday’s vote showed that Abbott’s efforts had ultimately yielded little progress, as the margin was similar to an anti-voucher test vote earlier this year.
In a statement Friday, Abbott took aim at the Republicans who opposed vouchers and described the vote as “just another step on the path to provide school choice for parents and students across Texas.”
“The vast majority of Texans — and Republicans in the Texas House — support school choice,” he said. “The small minority of pro-union Republicans in the Texas House who voted with Democrats will not derail the outcome that their voters demand.”
Abbott promised to continue “advancing school choice in the Texas Legislature and at the ballot box,” but offered no details about whether he will call lawmakers back for a fifth special session or follow through on promises to help mount primary challenges against Republican House members who opposed his priority.
In addition to the voucher program, the bill included billions of dollars in new public education funding, teacher pay raises, reforms to the A-F school rating system and other provisions designed to win over Republican holdouts.
Raney, in a floor speech Friday afternoon, said he was aware that removing the voucher policy would doom the omnibus legislation and its “historic” promise of additional school funding.
"I hope and pray that the governor calls us back and separates these issues, so we can make sure we give the teachers the pay raises they need,” Raney said, adding that public school officials in his district had told him they would forgo the extra money if it meant blocking vouchers.
Abbott has said he won’t support teacher pay raises or added public school funding without a voucher plan that caters to all students.
The measure had the potential to transform how children are educated in the state by subsidizing private institutions that have little government oversight and can enforce religious messaging. It would have created a program where families could apply for $10,500 for K-12 students in education savings accounts that could be spent on private school tuition, tutoring or other expenses.
Texas House leadership and Abbott’s office spent months negotiating the legislation, which House members began debating after 1 p.m.
When he introduced the bill Friday afternoon, state Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, argued that vouchers would not lead to a loss of funding for public schools, charging critics with framing the debate as "too much of an either-or discussion."
He said vouchers would help parents move their kids out of schools when "things just aren't working." He mentioned students with disabilities, while other proponents gave examples of children who were bullied or sexually assaulted in public schools.
"Think about the times when you weren't sure that things were going the way they should for your child in school," said Buckley, the bill’s author and top education policymaker in the House. "When that happened to me, we had the resources to pick up and go elsewhere. Not every Texan is that privileged. Not every Texan has those options."
There are less than 100 private schools that provide special education in the state, mostly in urban areas, according to the Texas Tribune.
Discussion over Raney’s amendment spurred an unusually open and acrimonious discussion between fellow Republicans on the House floor. Democrats, who universally oppose vouchers, stayed quiet.
"The choice is very simple,” said Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian. “Vote yes with the liberal teacher unions who oppose every conservative value your voters hold dear, or side with parents, students and teachers.”
Teachers unions have opposed the measure, saying it will drain critical dollars from public schools. In Texas, public schools are funded based on attendance, so each departing student represents a budget hit of about $10,000 on average.
State Rep. Drew Darby, a San Angelo Republican who is one of his party’s staunchest voucher critics, pointed to projections from state budget officials that the cost would balloon to about $2 billion a year by the next budget cycle — similar to the budgets of major state agencies.
“Is this the conservative thing to do, to create another entitlement program, in effect to create a third education system?” Darby said, referring to school districts, charter schools and state-funded private schools.
The governor has frequently pointed to a ballot question last year that found that 88% of GOP voters supported private school choice programs. He has attempted to persuade skeptical rural Republicans by promoting those numbers, as well as through sheer force: He vetoed a number of bills this summer penned by Republicans that opposed vouchers, and he threatened to support their primary election challengers.
He also called lawmakers back to Austin for multiple overtime sessions as part of his months-long pressure campaign.
He prioritized vouchers in his reelection bid last year and has fought hard to coax them through the lower chamber, tying the legislation to a nationwide push for alternatives to traditional public education. At least 30 other states have some form of private school voucher, and several have expanded the programs in recent years.
In a rarity for the Texas Capitol, Democrats actually had something to celebrate after the vote.
A large group congregated outside the office of the Democratic floor leader, Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio, for a news conference punctuated by much celebratory whooping.
“If it wasn't clear already, Texans don't want voucher scams in this state,” said Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat. “We call on the governor to finally support a clean school finance bill that actually fully funds our schools.”
When the House convened Friday morning, much of the gallery was full of people wearing navy blue shirts saying “parents matter,” who came to advocate for the voucher program.
By the time the House voted on the issue later in the Friday, only a smattering were left.
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