Texas, Our Texas

All hail the mighty state.

 This is what Greg Abbott doesn’t understand:

Vargas said she is against school vouchers because it takes aim at the sense of community that is integral to the fabric of rural Texas. During the good and the bad times, New Boston residents and the school district take care of one another. She believes that without the long-term success of the school district, there might not be a New Boston. 

“Our public school system is our town,” she said. “[Vouchers] would create all types of division — a racial divide, a social status divide, monetary divide as well as academic and extracurricular division.”

I grew up in a small town, not a rural area of Texas; but the public schools were still a source of profound cultural pride and identity. There was one prominent private school, a Catholic school (Tyler now has its own Bishop, still surprises me. The culture was overwhelmingly Southern Baptist.). A few others popped up after school desegregation was ordered in the early’70’s. But to be in a private school was to be pretty much invisible. You went, eventually, to one high school, or the other (there were, and still are, only two). That mattered a lot.

In rural areas, it may be only one high school.

School vouchers in Texas have been proposed, in one form or another, since the’50’s (probably since just after Brown). They have always foundered on this bedrock of life in Texas. The small towns don’t hate their schools, and don’t have (or imagine they have, more truthfully) alternatives. Nor do they want them.

24 Republicans this year have repeatedly rejected school vouchers across one regular and three special sessions. In the current fourth one, Abbott got four  to vote in favor; but one shifted to vote against. The record holds; vouchers are done.

Abbott has pledged to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. School funding remains broken, and a hostage to Abbott’s insanity. Meanwhile, school districts face the reality of Abbott’s pursuit of this white whale. He threatens primary challenges to those who don’t accept his rule, but where it matters, those threats look particularly hollow. As the reality of no school funding sets in, those threats may well turn toxic. Toward the one making them, I mean.