Vouchers will destroy public education in South Texas
Many South Texas school districts are in the nation’s poorest zip codes and Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher bill threatens to put quality education even further out of reach.
This past week Texas Republican lawmakers near-unanimously approved Senate Bill 2 with an 86-61 vote, marking the first time in recent Texas history that a school voucher program has passed the lower house. This voucher program is a long-time priority of the Texas GOP and Gov. Greg Abbott. Following the approval of the bill in the lower house, the Abbott promised to sign the bill into law and said, “This is an extraordinary victory for the thousands of parents who have advocated for more choices when it comes to the education of their children.”
Abbott’s “victory” however, was a massive defeat for students, teachers, and public education advocates. There’s not a single person who would argue that public schools, especially those located in South Texas are perfect—far from it. However, the solution to the public education crisis is not mass-privatization. Instead, the Texas Legislature could have finally approved long-anticipated improvements to the public education system in Texas, rather than turning a right (education) into a commodity to be bought and sold by charter school executives.
Senate Bill 2 is a blatant money laundering operation designed to funnel public tax dollars into the pockets of executives and investors of private charter schools. These unelected business executives will be responsible for providing education to millions of students, without any accountability to parents, voters, or even state officials.
Under Senate Bill 2, school districts that don’t lose a single student next year can still expect to lose critical funding compared to prior years. This would absolutely devastate rural school districts which will no-doubt contribute to the hollowing out of our small towns. These funding shortfalls will threaten the last pillars of community our small towns have. For example, school sports are a staple in every community from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio and now many of these school districts may be forced to shutter sports programs if there are no longer enough students enrolled or funding raised. Where once these school districts provided stable employment for small towns, now these jobs may disappear forever. Even if a private school opened nearby, who’s to say it would remain profitable and not shut down in the future.
Texas House Democrats tried one final attempt to stop this bill, by introducing an amendment to bring this bill on the ballot to a full vote before the Texas public, but it was soundly rejected by Texas Republicans. Texas AFT President Zeph Capo released a blistering statement following the passage of SB2, “Republican leaders are poised to put the nail in the coffin of our public schools, and you’ve never seen such gleeful pallbearers. To deny the voters–their own constituents–a say in what happens in their communities and to their schools is unconscionable.”
Senate Bill 2 undoubtedly creates chaos in our public education system and it threatens to completely gut rural Texas once and for all. This short-sighted “victory” for Greg Abbott may come back to haunt the party in the future.
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