The View From 30,000 Feet

NEW: Late Tuesday, Texas Senate passes HB 100, a drastically changed school funding bill that now includes education savings accounts (school vouchers.)

It is expected that the House will reject these changes. https://t.co/gEuNtIgONC

— Brian Lopez (@brianlopeztx) May 24, 2023

Here we go again (me on Texas schools, I mean):

 But Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, said the upper chamber is playing politics with critical funding — and offering a measly increase to the basic allotment in exchange for vouchers.

“Fifty dollars is an insult, and they’re trying to make fools out of us,” she said. “We won’t pass a full-on voucher.”

When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.

Hinojosa expects lawmakers won’t reach an agreement on the bill and will have to be back for a special session later this year. For now, a bump to school funding — which many districts desperately hoped for at the beginning of the year — hangs by a thread.

“There is a full-on assault on our public schools by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick,” the leader of the Senate, Hinojosa said. “I’m not just a no; I’m a hell no on that bill.”

I just don't think that sentiment can be expressed enough.

Earlier this session, Senate lawmakers tried to pass a voucher program open to most Texas children through Senate Bill 8, authored by Creighton. It would’ve established a similar program as the one outlined in HB 100, but the House Committee on Public Education changed the scope of the program by limiting its eligibility to only certain students, like those with disabilities or those who were enrolled at a campus that recently got a failing grade in the state’s accountability rating. The change was an attempt to make education savings accounts more palatable for House members who oppose school vouchers.

That version of the bill never got a vote in the House’s Public Education Committee. Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, chair of the committee, told The Texas Tribune last week that he questioned whether it was worth bringing the bill up for a vote after Abbott’s threat to veto that version of the bill.

Abbott may call a special session to pass school funding.  If he vetoes a school funding bill because it doesn't include vouchers, he's not gonna be real popular in Texas, or in the Texas House.

Some Republicans have tried to pass voucher-like programs for decades with no success, historically hitting the same wall: the Texas House. But the bill’s supporters felt they had a shot this time around as they thought some parents’ frustration with health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the way race and gender identity are taught in schools — something Republicans have seized on in the last couple of years — would give them the swell of support needed to get vouchers over the hump.

Right there with their fingers on the pulse of the voters, is the Texas GOP.

In the House, Democrats and rural Republicans have formed a coalition to defeat such programs, fearing they would siphon funds away from public schools, which serve as important job engines and community hubs across the state.

The Senate’s latest play is seen by some as an effort to hold school funding hostage, essentially telling the House that if members want more school funding, the lower chamber has to agree to pass vouchers.

Word to McCarthy:  be careful what you wish for.

The basic allotment has not changed since 2019, and raising it has been a priority for school officials after the pandemic rattled their finances and inflation diminished the value of the money they get from the state. At the beginning of the legislative session, school districts expressed hope that lawmakers would direct a portion of the state’s historic $32.7 billion surplus to help them.

 A reminder: $10 billion of that surplus is school taxes collected by the 1200 school districts of the state. They have absolutely no chance of getting it back. Which is honestly still not general knowledge; and the Texas Senate, especially, likes it that way. (For a concrete example, the local school district paid $75 million in “recapture” to the state in 2023 (that fiscal year ends in August.) The district will barely get any of that back. That’s roughly 16% of their budget.)

But trading vouchers for funding is a bargain some schools are not willing to make.

“So you want me to make a deal with the devil? Absolutely not. I’m not making that deal,” said Stephanie Elizalde, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District.

King, the author of HB 100, told the Tribune last year that he would stand against voucher-like programs.

“If I have anything to say about it, it’s dead on arrival,” he said. “It’s horrible for rural Texas. It’s horrible for all of Texas.”

King did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Other provisions

The new bill would also raise the portion of the state dollars that school districts are required to use to pay for teacher raises from 30% to 50%. The rest can be used for other school expenses, such as maintaining school buildings and buying school supplies. The small increase would likely not help provide substantial pay increases or make a significant impact on school budgets.

But Texas senators will say they gave the schools money for teachers!  What they won't say (and even this article doesn't say) is how much money they take from schools and never give back.  That's the story nobody is telling, but should be.

HD Chambers, executive director of the Texas School Alliance, an organization of 45 school districts in Texas that educate 41% of the state’s K-12 students, said the Senate is “holding any meaningful improvements to our school finance system hostage until they get ESA vouchers, which ultimately is unfair to Texas students and teachers in our public schools.”

“This bill positions private schools as an alternative for families unhappy with their public schools,” Chambers said. “However, the reality is that Texas has not made the investments in public education that would enable schools to fully meet the needs of every student.”

The revised bill also adds provisions from other bills that either died or have yet to be voted on. It would expand and give more funding to the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a program that promises to pay teachers up to six-figure salaries if they meet certain performance requirements. About 13,000 teachers, or about 4% of the state’s educators, are part of the program.

"Performance requirements" means, basically, scores on standardized testing.  We don't want students to learn to think, just to learn to fill in bubble sheets. Teachers who teach best to the test are rewarded.  After 20 years in teaching myself I can tell you the old adage is true:  you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.  If I were a public school teacher being assessed on student outcomes, I'd quit.  It ain't worth that shit and all the other shit you have to eat.

The latest version of the bill also increases the base amount of money that teachers should make depending on their experience. And it seeks to tackle the state’s teacher shortage by allocating funds to help school districts pay for more teacher residencies, which are programs that place would-be teachers in classrooms with mentors for about a year, teaching them how to do the job before hiring them as full-time educators the following year. According to the National Center for Teacher Residencies, teachers who go through residency programs are more likely to stay in the profession, with 86% still teaching in the same school after three years.

The way the Lege is screwing the schools, expect that retention number to drop sharply as funding for schools, and so teachers, runs out. Also expect the Lege members to blame school districts for mismanaging funds.

In addition, the bill would allow teachers to send their children to pre-K for free in the districts where they work, if the service is available. Pre-K is not mandated in Texas, but the state helps cover the cost only for students who don’t speak English, are homeless or have parents who are active members of the military. Teachers’ children are not included.

HB 100 would also waive the costs of certain teacher certification exams when people take them for the first time.

The bill would add funding for school districts to rehire retired teachers who, if they can be convinced to return to the profession, are seen as a promising workforce that can help stem the teacher shortage.

After this session?  Even if that provision became law, the appearance is far worse than any reality.

“I must admit I have been closely following the activities of the Texas Legislature for the past couple of weeks, which has highlighted to me some potential risks that were not in the front of my mind at the outset of this process,” he wrote.

“What I saw is signs that the institution was maybe being politicized in a way that might undermine the mission of the university and what I would want to do there,” he told the Tribune. “If I moved from my current job, which is a decent job, to UT, what kind of intellectual community can I build there?” 

That's from an e-mail by a professor recruited to a faculty position at "Civitas Institute,” the new center at UT-Austin that focuses on 'individual rights and civic virtue, constitutionalism, and free enterprise and markets'” (the brain child of Dan Patrick), declining the offer because of what was going on in the Lege this session.  It's my understanding (from Professor Vladeck) that tenure was ultimately preserved, but this candidate didn't so much as want to put a toe into that water.  How many other candidates to state schools are going to make the same decision, despite the law not being changed that dramatically? (Why buy trouble if the Lege May try again?)

School funding is likely to be undetermined until late in the summer at this rate.  School districts are already planning their school year for the fall.  If they find in August they have to lay off staff and faculty to pay the bills, it will be utter chaos.  What does the Lege care, though?  They'll be back home in their "real" jobs and not called back to Austin for another 2 years.

Finally, the bill seeks to allocate $300 million in special education funding.

Evenly divided among the Texas school districts, that's about $240,000 per district.  It's a rounding error in a school budget, in other words.

Still, take the wins where you can. HB100 isn't going to pass the House this session, and I think vouchers are dead: again. And there's this:

Legislation that would have required Texas classrooms to display the Ten Commandments died in the House Tuesday night.

The bill was one of several legislative attempts by conservative Christians to center public life around their religious views.https://t.co/z6m4PGzfWX

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) May 24, 2023

Could be worse.