Ahead of the November election, teachers in Texas are already calling on state lawmakers to refuse school vouchers when they return to Austin. The next legislative session starts in January.
In 2023, school voucher bills passed the Texas Senate but failed in the House during the regular session and special sessions. Governor Greg Abbott then supported the opponents of Republicans who voted against vouchers during their primaries in the spring.
Six of those eight Republicans lost their bid for the party's nomination.
"While we did not win every race we fought in, the overall message from this year's primaries is clear: Texans want school choice. Opponents of school choice can no longer ignore the will of the people," Abbott wrote in a statement after the primaries.
The Texas American Federation of Teachers says the state already ranks among the bottom ten in per-student funding and has not increased funding levels since 2019. Advocates say districts are now having to close schools and cut jobs to balance their budgets.
"Public schools, just like families, are feeling the stress of inflation," says Jaime Puente, director of economic opportunity at the non-profit, Every Texan. "Textbooks and instructional materials, that all has gone up, yet our state legislature chose last session to not do anything."
Abbott says one measure that would have included school choice last year would also have brought $6 billion more for public schools.
"Please do not fall for the hype where they say they've put more money into public schools than they ever have in the past because all that money went straight out the back door in a property tax cut," says the Texas AFT President Zeph Capo.
Capo says vouchers would benefit richer families because they would not cover the full cost of tuition at a private school, but they would also hurt lower income families because public schools would lose money.
"His upside down priorities that are laying off librarians and running teachers out of the profession are a detriment to our schools," he says.
AFT says teachers in Texas make $9,000 less than the national average and says turnover is 21%, twice the level from 14 years ago. Adam Bull, a teacher in Plano ISD, says districts are losing more money because they are having to spend to recruit and integrate new teachers.
"Texas public education is embedded in my family, and now I see the profession I love dying on the vine just so politicans like Governor Abbott can please their big-money donors," he says.
In July, the University of Houston and Texas Southern University released a poll showing 65% of parents in the state would support vouchers for all families; 59% would support vouchers only for low-income families.
Broken down by party, Republicans were more likely to support vouchers, but a majority of Democrats supported vouchers as well. However, the same poll showed 66% of Texans agreed vouchers would "funnel money away from already struggling public schools."
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