Greg Abbott Failed to Persuade Lawmakers on School Vouchers. Now He’s Threatening Them. | Texas Monthly

Gov. Greg Abbott is desperate and going against the public will. He has just called a fourth special session of the legislature to both pass vouchers and his racial profiling bill to beat up on immigrants and asylum seekers with penalties that will result in eye-popping profits for the prison-industrial complex.

As you can see in this October 4, 2023 piece by Alexandra Samuels in the Texas Monthly, he's been bullying members of his own party to accomplish this. Vouchers not only represent horrible, self-serving, de-democratizing policy, but is not all research-based. Here is but one policy brief that is based exclusively on peer-reviewed research that says as much: Will School Vouchers Benefit Low-Income Families? Assessing the Evidence," by Jabbar, H., Holme, J., Lemke, M., LeClair, Sanchez, J., Torres, E.M. & Pernetti, M. (March, 2023).

Gov. Abbott isn't interested in this research as he is party, like Florida governor Ron DeSantis, to an extremist agenda for our country from which he will surely profit where public education, environmental protections, public lands, and so on, are at enormous risk. Moreover, as cited below, he masquerades his false agenda as an "ethical" response to "right-wing outrage over alleged “woke” public school administrators teaching kids about sex and racism, public school administrators."

If elections this week are any indication—and they are—this characterization of both public schools is wildly off base. For example, read about results of school board elections where far-right Moms For Liberty candidates overwhelmingly flopped per the following news items:

Moms for Liberty and the ‘parental rights’ agenda flopped in this week’s elections

On Tuesday, Voters Rejected Moms for Liberty and Its Agenda of Cruelty and Hate

Texans and Americans, generally, are wisening up to these well-heeled, anti-democratic, white supremacist, fascist organizations, thankfully, as they should. 

Do always take a close look at that glossy flyer in your mailbox and do your research before voting. Organizations like Moms for Liberty, Right Turn, and America First—the latter of which has a notoriously anti-Semitic history that you can read about in The Atlantic—are anathema to democracy.

All told, Senate Bill 1 is moving quickly in this fourth-called special session of the Texas State Legislature. 

Do not be deceived by phrases like "education freedom" or "education savings accounts" as these are euphemisms for school vouchers. This is nothing more than taking our hard-earned, taxpayer dollars and diverting them to private schools that will seriously damage an already under-funded public education system and diverting these dollars into private schools that actually do indoctrinate and are not at all accountable to the public in the way that elected school boards are. Hence, a loss of governance with public dollars!

Plus, there's nothing holding back these schools from raising their private school tuitions meaning that these schools will segregate by class—and because class and race overlap, racial segregation will increase, as well. 

As for rural education, the price that rural schools will pay should SB 1 become law, is both declining funding and opportunity, considering that private schools mostly do not exist in rural communities—Tyler, Texas, notwithstanding.

Go to this link if you want to know who represents you in the Texas State Legislature so that you can reach out to them as soon as possible.

-Angela Valenzuela

Greg Abbott Failed to Persuade Lawmakers on School Vouchers. Now He’s Threatening Them.

 

Ahead of a special legislative session, the governor has implied there will be political consequences for those who get in his way.

by Alexandra Samuels | October 4, 2023 | Texas Monthly 

Governor Greg Abbott on September 9, 2023.

Vasha Hunt/AP

After a busy legislative session in Austin, Travis Clardy was ready for a lazy Saturday morning. It was mid-June, and the Republican state representative was finally back home in Nacogdoches, sipping coffee on the balcony of his downtown loft and watching his constituents amble about El Camino Real de los Tejas, a.k.a. Main Street, the central artery of the East Texas city. He had all but forgotten that one of his bills, regarding occupational licensing, remained unsigned on Governor Greg Abbott’s desk. Traditionally, the governor’s approval is automatic for minor proposals such as his that pass with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Then Clardy’s phone began to ring. A staffer for the governor was on the line, telling him Abbott was going to veto the representative’s bill, which would’ve made continuing education programs for state-certified fire alarm technicians mandatory rather than voluntary. The governor’s staffer explained that the bill, in Abbott’s estimation, presented an unjustified obstacle to maintaining an occupational license. But those qualms, Clardy said, could’ve been fixed in a matter of minutes during the session. “If that had been a concern,” he recalled asking, “why am I hearing about this now, after he’s already signed the veto?” The answer became clear to Clardy later, when Abbott published a missive explaining his decision. In the second paragraph of the letter, Abbott wrote: “This bill can be reconsidered at a future special session only after education freedom is passed.”