Abbott’s School Voucher Momentum Seems to Slow

And school advocates mobilize against it


Gov. Greg Abbott is pushing hard for vouchers (art by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images / Abbott photo by John Anderson)

Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher bill was supposed to be fast-tracked and nearing approval by now. But it’s moving at the same pace as most bills – ploddingly.

Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows promised last week that the House’s Public Education Committee would send the voucher bill, Senate Bill 2, to the floor of the House in a vote Tuesday morning. Ten hours before the meeting was to begin, committee chairman Brad Buckley announced the vote was being reset to Thursday afternoon, so committee members could digest changes to SB 2 and to the school funding bill, House Bill 3. “I look forward to meeting with each committee member to discuss the impact this legislation will have on their district ahead of Thursday’s meeting,” Buckley said in a statement on X.

The resetting of the vote came after the House’s voucher bill, HB 3, was replaced by the Senate’s version, SB 2, and changes were incorporated. Committee member James Talarico told the Chronicle that House leaders agreed to postpone the meeting when a bipartisan group of representatives shared concerns about a lack of transparency on the voucher and school funding bills. Talarico said the meeting had been scheduled to go forward “without public testimony or a public livestream, despite last-minute multibillion-dollar changes.”

In his statement on X, Buckley said the meeting was postponed so committee members could digest the changes and review just-released “district runs” – data crunched by state agencies predicting what financial impacts the voucher and school funding bills would have on individual school districts.

Critics of vouchers have been urging Texans for weeks to tell their representatives to oppose SB 2. They reacted to news of the vote rescheduling with exhilaration, seeing it as proof that Republican support for vouchers is growing shaky. But SB 2 is still expected to pass the committee, which consists of nine Republicans versus six Democrats.

Daphne Hoffacker of the Austin Council of PTAs is one of those who expects the committee to approve the bill. Still, she believes the postponement shows the bill has only shallow support and says the House shouldn’t be wasting time on it. “This chaos does not engender confidence in the parents who are counting on this committee to take care of our kids after the politics of the last session,” Hoffacker said. “We need the politics to stop, and we need them to get to work and do right by our schools.”

As the public ed committee considers the voucher and school funding bills Thursday, the nonpartisan school advocates Raise Your Hand Texas will be holding a rally to support public education. “We’ve got about 150 of our advocates coming in for our School Funding Day,” the group’s senior director of policy, Bob Popinski, said. “It’s kind of perfect timing. We’re going to be talking about the need to fund our teachers – we’re 30th in the nation on teacher pay, $8,800 below the national average, and 46th in the nation in per-pupil spending,” he said, referencing numbers from the 2023 report from the National Education Association.

School advocates will gather again on Saturday for the Save Texas Schools rally, the second such rally this year. The first drew 1,200 people, despite freezing temperatures and rain. Organizer Allen Weeks expects the April 5 rally to draw more and has arranged buses to bring in supporters from across the state. He said legislators must increase the amount of money the state provides to school districts, known as the basic allotment, by $1,300 per student, just to get schools funded at the same level as 2019. And he wants to amplify the message that Abbott is pushing vouchers not because they are popular with voters but as a way to serve his wealthy donors.

“We’re focused hard on just making sure people understand Governor Abbott’s role in this,” Weeks said. “We’re going to keep making clear that the only reason he wants this is he’s got that handful of billionaire donors. The majority of Texans don’t want this and aren’t asking for it.”

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KEYWORDS FOR THIS STORY

89th Legislative Session, 89th Legislature, vouchers, school choice, Greg Abbott, James Talarico, Raise Your Hand Texas

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