Is it a transitory blip on Texas’ political radar or something more interesting – the beginning of a movement?
Last week, a group of conservative Texans traveled to Austin to stand behind Democratic Rep. Gina Hinojosa, one of the state’s most progressive lawmakers, as she introduced House Bill 5419, a bill to downsize the Texas Education Agency and redirect money from its budget to the state’s public schools.
Hinojosa called it a DOGEing of the TEA: “It is a zero-based budgeting bill to cut through the nonsense and the bureaucracy and the vendor contracts, and reprioritize that money to what matters – teacher pay, school safety, and closing the special education funding gap.”
Zero-based budgeting has been championed by conservatives since the Reagan era as a way of reducing the growth of government agencies. Hinojosa’s Republican allies echoed her criticism of TEA’s growing bureaucracy and questioned the value of some of its core work, like its supervision of standardized testing in the schools. They also criticized the leaders of their own party for expanding TEA’s budget while simultaneously refusing to provide more funding for the public schools, creating a statewide budget crisis in public education.
“Paying the vendors, the public/private partnerships, the contracts, the consultants – all of that has taken priority over funding our classrooms,” said Lynn Davenport, a Dallas conservative. “And that starts at the top. That comes from the state level. And my own party has been in power for the last couple of decades.”
According to The Texas Tribune, TEA is the 16th largest of the state’s 100-plus agencies in terms of employment. It oversees over 400 contracts valued at approximately $1 billion, which handle things like STAAR testing, curriculum development, and services for disabled students. Hinojosa presented state budget data going back to 2016 that she said shows TEA has grown by about 50% over the last decade under Gov. Greg Abbott, while the percentage of students who pass the state’s assessment tests has declined.
“Paying the vendors, the public/private partnerships, the contracts, the consultants – all of that has taken priority over funding our classrooms.” – Lynn Davenport, Dallas conservative
A TEA spokesperson told the Chronicle that the agency has grown but said the employee increases were authorized by the Legislature and most were made to serve students needing special education services, as the number of these students has grown rapidly in recent years. The spokesperson said the agency has also hired new employees to consult with schools on safety measures, to maintain a Do Not Hire registry for public school staff who have engaged in inappropriate relationships with minors, and to help create instructional material. The spokesperson added that the Sunset Advisory Commission, which periodically audits all state agencies, examined the TEA in 2015 and will do so again in 2029.
HB 5419 would move that Sunset Advisory Commission audit up two years, to 2027. It would require a review of the contracts TEA has signed since 2016 valued at $100,000 or more. It would also mandate that lawmakers prioritize funding the public schools over the agency.
Chandra Villanueva of nonpartisan education advocates Every Texan said she’s unsure how much support Hinojosa’s bill will draw but believes now is a good time to audit the TEA. “Public education, it’s billions upon billions of dollars,” Villanueva said. “So when you have that kind of money in a budget, you’re going to see these contractors wanting their slice. We want to know that the government is being a good steward of our tax dollars. And right now, I don’t feel like we’re getting that level of transparency from TEA.”
Suzanne Bellsnyder, a newspaper publisher from Spearman, which sits at the very top of the Texas Panhandle, said she drove nine hours to support Hinojosa’s bill because schools in small towns like hers are in crisis. “I attended a school board meeting on Tuesday night in our community where our school board passed an initiative to move to a four-day school week,” Bellsnyder said. “Those are the kinds of decisions that rural communities are having to make, because the money is not where it’s supposed to be, which is in the classrooms, supporting teachers.”
Hinojosa’s bill comes at a chaotic moment for public education. Donald Trump is dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, an agency created in 1979 to ensure that states provide equal education to economically disadvantaged students, minorities, and those who are disabled. A group of Gov. Greg Abbott’s far-right allies have floated a bill to dissolve the TEA altogether, though that appears to be at odds with the governor’s main priority – the creation of a school voucher program, which TEA would have a large role in administering. Meanwhile, grassroots Republicans are coming together with Democrats to oppose Abbott’s voucher plan.
Bellsnyder calls the opposition to vouchers and support for public-school funding from the right and the left a “movement,” an example of bipartisanship the Capitol hasn’t seen for many years. “It has created strange bedfellows,” she told the Chronicle, “but public education is not a partisan issue. It’s like roads. It’s like water. There are certain things that the state needs to be doing, and partisanship should not be involved.”
This article appears in March 28 • 2025.