Texas legislators passed over 90 bills related to local schools in this year’s 89th legislative session, education wonks estimate. Chandra Villanueva of policy experts Every Texan said several of them, including Senate bills 10, 11, and 13, could be described as Christian Nationalist bills.
“They keep screaming about indoctrination, but that’s exactly what they’re doing with these bills, is they’re forcing kids to be subjected to Christian ideals,” Villanueva said of the lawmakers who approved the bills. “They’re basically pushing one religion over another.”
Senate Bill 10 will require a poster of the 10 Commandments to go up in every public school classroom in the state. Senate Bill 11 will require teachers to set aside a portion of the school day for kids to pray and read the Bible or doctrinal material from other religions. Senate Bill 13 will give school boards, not librarians, control over the books in school libraries, something that far-right groups like Moms for Liberty claim is necessary because the libraries contain what they consider pornography.
Senate Bill 2, the school voucher bill which many educators consider the biggest attack on public education in recent memory, also has a religious angle. SB 2 will let parents take between $10,000 and $30,000 per child out of the public school system to spend on private schools. Observers expect that many of these will be Catholic schools, which have experienced declining enrollment in recent decades. After Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 2 into law in April, reports surfaced that some Catholic schools are already working to add capacity.
Senate bills 2, 10, 11, and 13 were each passed by Republicans over the dissent of Democrats. SB 13, the bill giving school boards control over library books, can also be considered an anti-LGBTQ bill, since many of the books conservatives want to ban deal with queer themes. Senate Bill 12 is another anti-LGBTQ bill. It prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender and it bans queer clubs in schools. “We’re not going to allow gay clubs and we’re not going to allow straight clubs,” Republican Rep. Jeff Leach said during debate on the bill.
Democrats responded to the proposal with fury. “The real monsters are not kids trying to figure out who they are,” Rep. Gene Wu said on the House floor. “The monsters are not the teachers who love them and encourage them and support them. They are not the books that provide them with some amount of comfort and information. The real monsters are here.”
“It’s too little, too late. Schools will still close all over Texas.” – Rep. James Talarico said of the school funding bill
Public school supporters began the session pleading for more money from legislators, saying school districts were being forced to close schools and reduce staff because they hadn’t received a funding increase since 2019. The House and Senate had very different approaches to the funding crisis but finally approved a compromise, House Bill 2, with a week left in the session. The bill will provide $8.5 billion more for schools over the next two years but limits how districts may spend the money, requiring most of it to go to special education, school security, and pay increases for some, but not all, teachers.
Educators are relieved that schools will get additional support – they had feared that after school vouchers passed, Republican legislators would break their promises to increase funding. But they say schools need at least $10 billion more to bring them up to 2019 funding levels. “This bill doesn’t meet the moment,” Rep. James Talarico said after the deal on HB 2 was announced. “It’s too little, too late. Schools will still close all over Texas.”
Two other notable bills that passed during the session are House Bill 1481, which will ban students from using cellphones in schools, and House Bill 6, which will reverse reforms adopted in 2017 and 2019 and allow schools to suspend students more easily, particularly those who are young and homeless.
And then there’s the promising bill that Texas legislators didn’t pass – House Bill 4, which would have gotten rid of the STAAR test, the end-of-year assessment given to students from the third to 12th grades. STAAR is widely loathed and it seemed there was a chance it could be abolished after the House voted 143-1 to replace it with three shorter, less stressful tests spaced throughout the school year. But the Senate insisted on their own approach, which would have renamed STAAR but continued to allow it to be controlled by the Texas Education Agency and TEA’s Abbott-appointed commissioner, Mike Morath. The two chambers were unable to find a compromise on HB 4.
“We sent out a perfect bill to the Senate, and the Senate basically gutted it,” Austin Rep. Gina Hinojosa said to reporters after negotiations on HB 4 died. “It was a power play.”
This article appears in June 6 • 2025.
