Abbott, House Deadlocked Over School Choice, Teacher Pay
Gov. Gregg Abbott and the Texas House are at loggerheads over which will come first – vouchers for parents to pay for private school tuition, or funneling more money to public schools, The Dallas Morning News reported.
The House wants money for teacher bonuses and a revamp of public-school accountability passed at the same time as Abbott’s proposed education savings accounts, often referred to as ESAs. The governor insists the House first pass a voucher program. A version of his voucher program has already passed the Senate. The Legislature can’t consider increased school funding or teacher bonuses unless Abbott adds it to the special session agenda.
This third special session ends by Nov. 7, though Abbott has indicated he would call another one if this one ends without a decision on vouchers.
“I think there is still significant opposition to any school finance bill that includes an ESA,” Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, told the Texas Tribune. “I’m comfortable we have enough like-minded rural Republicans, and urban Republicans, to stand against that in numbers sufficient to defeat it.”
Abbott has dismissed the House’s compromise proposal, House Bill 1, which would create a limited voucher program while increasing spending on public education, calling it “insufficient.”
House Passes Three Border Security Bills
The House passed a trio of bills that increase border wall funding, increase the penalty for smuggling migrants, and allow state and local police to arrest migrants living illegally in the state, The News reported. The votes came last week after a lengthy heated discussion among Democratic and Republican lawmakers. The anti-smuggling bill has already passed the Senate and now heads to Abbott’s desk, while the other two bills are going to the Senate. Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, D-Dallas, who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said the plan would undercut the U.S. Constitution so that the state could “flex its muscle with the power that it does not have,” according to The News. Democrats unsuccessfully tried to change the bill by filing nearly four dozen amendments. Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, filed a successful motion to limit amendments, which led to a confrontation between him and Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston.
“This is an emotional issue,” Walle said in a statement late Wednesday evening. “This affects my family and puts so many families like mine at risk.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration, claiming Border Patrol agents are illegally destroying state property by cutting through concertina wire placed by the state on the banks of the Rio Grande to deter illegal immigration.
The state has spent $11 million in the past three years placing 70,000 rolls of the wire along the Texas-Mexico border, according to the Texas Tribune. “By cutting Texas’s concertina wire, the federal government has not only illegally destroyed property owned by the State of Texas; it has also disrupted the State’s border deterrence efforts, leaving gaps in Texas’s border barriers and damaging Texas’s ability to effectively deter illegal entry into Texas,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
The Department of Homeland Security, under which the Border Patrol operates, said it doesn’t respond to pending litigation.