Disgraceful. House Bill 21 started out as a decent, do-able school finance bill, but now that its in the Senate, it has become a voucher bill. This Texas Tribune piece by Aliyya Swaby (below) does a pretty good job of detailing the 11th-hour derailing of this bill by the Senate. Succinctly, it allows for our hard-earned taxpayer dollars that would otherwise go to public school funding and gives it to private schools. Very, very sad and shameless, to boot.
Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and many of our pro-privatization senators are bad news for public education and democracy in Texas. Committee on Public Education Chair, Dan Huberty and many others put a lot of time and effort into this bill, only to see it deformed beyond recognition. Good, closing quote from within:
House Speaker Joe Straus shot back later that day, arguing that the Senate's budget proposal reduced the state's share of public education funding, leaving local property taxpayers with a heavier financial burden. "The House made a sincere effort to start fixing our school finance system, but the Senate is trying to derail that effort at the 11th hour," he said.
Check out one of my earlier posts on vouchers from this legislative session titled, Challenging the School Privatization Agenda: Let's Grow, Not Kill, Our Democracy. It lays out the argument why vouchers and school privatization are really bad policy.
I just called my representative in the House and urged him to put a stop to this bill. Please consider doing so, as well. Time is of the essence. Contact your legislators right away and consider doing the same. If you do not know who represents you, click here to find out.
Let's also be forward looking and let's get these people who are not particularly fond of the public good out of office.
Angela Valenzuela
@vlnzl
Texas Senate puts voucher-like program in school finance bill
The Texas Senate voted to
approve a bill that would simplify funding formulas for public schools
and let parents use state money to send their kids with disabilities to
private schools or pay for homeschooling.
Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
The Texas Senate on Sunday night approved a bill that
would both simplify the formulas for funding public schools and allow
parents of kids with disabilities to take state money to leave the
public system for private schools or homeschooling.
Senators voted 21-10 to approve House Bill 21,
which the House originally intended to reform a complicated system for
allocating money to public schools and to provide a funding boost for
most public schools.
Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, changed the bill to include a provision the House hates and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick
very much wants: education savings accounts, which are state subsidies
for parents who want to send their children with disabilities to private
schools or need money for services to educate them at home.
"We're trying to fill a lot of different needs in the
bill, and we're trying to keep our costs down," Taylor said while
introducing the bill.
The bill now goes back to the House, where it will hit a major roadblock: Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, the bill’s House author, has said he won’t accept a version that includes education savings accounts.
Patrick promised the House an extra $530 million for
public schools if the education savings account program becomes law; he
has been unsuccessfully advocating for similar voucher-like programs for
the past decade. The House had originally budgeted a $1.5 billion boost
for public schools, and with the promise of $530 million, the Senate
went from offering little extra funding for public schools to meeting
the House partway.
If the House doesn't approve HB 21 as amended by the
Senate, public schools won’t get the extra $530 million, Taylor said.
Under the Senate's version of the bill, about 93 percent of school
districts would see more revenue by 2019, with 7 percent seeing no
change in revenue, he said.
Taylor stripped the bill of several of the original
tweaks from the House that were intended to either simplify the funding
formulas or allocate money to specific student groups, saying they would
cost too much money.
At the same time, he packed HB 21 with provisions
from other bills in the House and Senate — including $100 million in
first-time facilities funding for charter schools, $20 million in grants
for schools running programs for kids with autism and a 15-member
commission for long-term school finance reform.
Democrats challenged Taylor to explain why state
money should be used to pay for private schools when they are not
subject to state accountability, are not required to take all students
and are not subject to federal law when it comes to offering services
for students with disabilities.
“We don’t want someone to be forced to take a student
they’re not set up to handle,” Taylor said. He argued private schools
are subject to a higher level of accountability because parents can
decide to leave a school that doesn’t fit them.
He said he didn’t understand why a small program that
would affect just 5,000 students would stop legislators from approving
half a billion dollars for public schools.
“This whole [education savings account] is a mouse,
and this elephant is just freaking out,” he said. “The whole world is
coming to an end over this little bitty thing.”
Sen. José Rodríguez,
D-El Paso, unsuccessfully proposed an amendment to the school finance
bill that simply crossed out the education savings account language.
Taylor succeeded in convincing rural conservative
senators to vote for the Senate’s version of the bill despite the fact
that they generally have fewer private schools in their legislative
districts and serve constituents who are skeptical of “private school
choice.”
Sen. Robert Nichols,
R-Jacksonville, said the 101 public school superintendents in his
district dislike the education savings accounts but like the provisions
that would save small, rural schools money. Nichols ended up voting yes
on the bill.
Public education advocates did an about-face on the
bill once they saw it included education savings accounts, with about 40
organizations sending letters to all Senate offices asking them to vote
against it.
“In the middle of the night, the Texas Senate voted
for a voucher scheme that will rob taxpayer money from public schools
and give it to private schools,” said Ann Beeson, executive director of
the left-leaning policy group the Center for Public Policy Priorities.
“What started as a good school finance bill in the Texas House turned
into a voucher bill that does not help remodel our state’s school
finance system.”
Patrick on Wednesday listed the bill as one of the
priorities he wants the House to pass. In exchange for a vote on HB 21,
he promised to concur with the part of the House's proposal for the
school accountability system that would delay implementation of a
controversial A-F grading system for schools and districts until 2019.
House Speaker Joe Straus
shot back later that day, arguing that the Senate's budget proposal
reduced the state's share of public education funding, leaving local
property taxpayers with a heavier financial burden. "The House made a
sincere effort to start fixing our school finance system, but the Senate
is trying to derail that effort at the 11th hour," he said.
- A Senate committee passed the House’s major school finance reform bill, after adding a controversial provision subsidizing private school tuition for special needs students — a move unlikely to go over well in the House.
- The Senate Education Committee discussed a bill that would radically simplify the state's school finance formula, stripping it of some antiquated provisions. Parents and educators who testified wanted a few new provisions added in.
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