The Voucher Issue
To the Editor:
Here we go again with the School Voucher issue. The 89th session of the Texas Legislature began on Tuesday, January 14th. The #1 priority on this session’s agenda for Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is school funding. We need to be sure our legislators understand that, after several years, much politicking and many failures to pass, most citizens STILL do not want to finance The Buckley Bill, which creates the dreaded school vouchers. Vouchers favor private schools with OUR money and leave our public schools struggling and declining for lack of funds. Gov. Abbott says that he now has enough legislators in his pocket to pass his dreaded Buckley Bill. We, the citizens, need to prove him wrong about that.
It’s really all about money, and it’s complicated. In March of last year Texas Monthly published a 21-page article by Russell Gold and cover picture of Tim Dunn with the introduction of “Meet the billionaire bully who wants to turn Texas into a Christian Theocracy.” It says “The state’s most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn’t an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman and lay preacher is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians.” As a result, Dunn has bought and paid for Abbott and Patrick to do his bidding. They actually seem to want the decline of public schools, although they won’t admit it.
The State of Texas has many BILLIONS of dollars in surplus funds, whichAbbott has been deliberately holding hostage “until education freedom” (his euphemism) is passed, by refusing to fund public education. Some of that surplus could be used to fund vouchers. Actually parents have always had freedom of choice to enroll their children in private schools, without the Buckley Bill.
Vouchers would give parents something like $10,400 per student to pay tuition and other expenses for their access to a religious or any other private school, maybe even home schooling. That amount would come out of funding for public schools. Texas’s basic per student annual allocation of $6,106 has not changed since 2019. Do the math. If the Buckley Bill does pass, the money needs to come from some place other than public school funds.
According to National Education Association’s statistics, the total annual per student funding in Texas is $4,000 below the national average. Texas is a proud and prosperous state, and we should be ashamed that we have not done our job of sufficiently funding public education. Vouchers would make matters worse. They would not help rural and small-town, middle - and low-income families who have little access to private schools.
Texas Constitution’s Article 7, Section 1 requires the Legislature to “establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” Article 3, Section 52 generally prohibits the expenditure of public funds for a private purpose. If a Constitutional violation of the Texas Constitution comes to pass, perhaps the State Supreme Court should become involved.
Public schools are the beating hearts of communities. A good education benefits our children, our society, our businesses and our standard of living. If this bill passes, the face of public education will be changed forever, at the expense of 5.4 million public school kids in the State of Texas.
That’s our money for our public schools that vouchers would be giving away. If you agree with this, please let your legislators know how you feel before the vote comes up.
June Helmer Fayetteville