Grading Texas

State Comptroller Don Huffines, who is asking the Legislature to double the amount of tax funds spent on the new school voucher program during the next budget period, believes the state has a “moral imperative” to help children pay for tuition at religious and other private schools.

At least that’s what he said in the $2.3 billion voucher budget request his office recently submitted to the Legislative Budget Board — “The state has a moral imperative to serve these children.”

He is wrong. The state doesn’t have a moral imperative to spend everyone’s tax dollars to help a group of families pay their children’s private school tuition or homeschooling expenses. There is nothing moral about taking tax money from underfunded public schools to subsidize tuition payments for parents whose children were already attending private schools — as most of the first year’s voucher recipients apparently were, based on state data.

Huffines is simply answering a political imperative shared by Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, school privatization allies and decreed by their billionaire contributor-puppeteers.

The governor and the Legislature, however, have an education imperative. It is a constitutional imperative to adequately fund public education, a mandate the governor and the legislative majority consistently fail to meet.

The Texas Constitution says nothing about funding private schools. Yet Abbott bragged about Texas creating the largest tax-funded giveaway for private schools in the country while Texas remains one of the stingiest states in funding public schools. It spends about $5,000 less per student in average daily attendance (ADA) than the national average, the National Education Association reports.

This leaves many public school districts struggling with budget deficits, closing campuses and cutting back on critical education programs for millions of kids. There is a word to describe that — immoral.

Clay Robison

TSTA’s teacher-members now pay an average of $841 a year on classroom supplies for which they are not reimbursed, according to the latest teacher moonlighting and morale survey conducted for TSTA by faculty at Sam Houston State University.

These payments basically are an educational subsidy that underpaid teachers donate each year to school districts and the state of Texas.

Collectively, how much is that? The Texas Education Agency says there are about 320,000 teachers in Texas public schools. Many shell out various amounts for school supplies, and others don’t. But using $841 as a statewide average, that is a $269 million subsidy for public education costs that should be covered by taxes.

That is $9 million more than the $260 million budget adopted by Lubbock ISD for the upcoming school year. It is $12 million more than the combined budgets for Del Valle ISD ($142 million) and New Braunfels ISD ($115 million). The subsidy is more than the individual budgets of hundreds — probably most — of Texas school districts and would more than cover Austin ISD’s projected deficit.

Teachers aren’t making those comparisons though. They are digging into their pockets because their students need the supplies and school budgets don’t cover them. In some cases, a teacher’s shopping list may even include sweaters or coats for poverty-stricken kids coming to school cold.

Every time state budget-writers fail to adequately fund public schools, they are taking these teachers for granted.

Clay Robison

Gov. Greg Abbott trotted out another campaign gimmick this week. This one is called the Texas Classroom Commission.

The governor said the commission, also endorsed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Dustin Burrows, “will bring together exemplary public school educators to identify innovative solutions that help students succeed, improve the learning environment in classrooms and strengthen our schools.”

Wow. What a load of empty rhetoric.

If Abbott really listened to educators, he wouldn’t have spent most of his time as governor chronically underfunding public schools. And he wouldn’t have rammed through the new voucher law that soon will be diverting billions of tax dollars from public to private schools.

Yes, Abbott and his legislative allies added several billion dollars to the public education budget last year, and they like to brag about it. But it was the first noticeable increase in six years, wasn’t even enough to cover inflationary losses and many school districts are still closing schools and taking other steps to deal with deficits.

The Texas Classroom Commission is a political gimmick that Abbott believes is necessary because he is facing a reelection challenge from a real public school advocate. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa has been fighting for more school funding for years and, if elected, will deliver. She listens to educators and will continue listening to educators. Unlike Abbott, she also respects educators.

Abbott has appointed education study groups before. In 2022, the last year he was on the ballot, he created the Teacher Vacancy Task Force. That study produced House Bill 1605, which the Legislature enacted in 2023.

That law opened the door to Commissioner Mike Morath and the Texas Education Agency creating the controversial, but optional Bluebonnet Curriculum with its numerous biblical passages that don’t belong in public schools. That same law also called for mandatory classroom reading lists that the State Board of Education approved last month. These lists also include biblical stories proposed by TEA.

Both the Bluebonnet Curriculum and the reading lists have created controversy over putting religion into public schools. But they have done nothing to address one of the biggest concerns of educators — more funding for Texas’ deficit-plagued public schools.

Teachers and other educators are an afterthought for Abbott, people to court during campaign season, then ignore.

Clay Robison

Luis Fernando Cabrera, 18, a senior at Northeast Early College High School in Austin, attended his classes, played on the school soccer team, took his nephew to daycare every morning and still had time to manage the 40-plus-hour-a week night shift at a fast food restaurant as he prepared for his approaching high school graduation.

In the words of his soccer coach, Cabrera’s potential “to be a productive member of our society was very high.”

But Cabrera is now confined to the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center about 100 miles south of Austin, another victim of a cruel, racist-driven immigration policy that is the antithesis of what this country is supposed to stand for.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Cabrera’s nightmare began when a state trooper pulled him over for an expired vehicle registration on his way home from his night job. Following a state policy demanded by Gov. Greg Abbott, the trooper then turned him over to federal immigration agents.

Although President Trump would like Americans to think that his aggressive deportation program is all about deporting violent criminals – and many of his MAGA supporters may believe that — studies have shown that most deportees are people like Cabrera, immigrants with no criminal record, many of whom are awaiting asylum hearings and pose no danger to public safety.

Cabrera was 11 when his Honduran parents brought him to the U.S. from Mexico seven years ago. The family asked for asylum, the American-Statesman reported, seeking refuge from a death threat from a Mexican legislator.

Cabrera and his older sister, with whom he was living, were awaiting a December hearing in their asylum case. They were playing by the rules, as have many other detained and deported immigrants.

Meanwhile, the perpetrator of this immigration reign of terror, the only convicted felon to be elected president of the United States, continues to pick and choose which laws and rules to obey. With his capricious, often illegal actions, President Trump poses a greater threat to the security of the United States and the well-being of Americans than most of the everyday, hard-working people he continues to try to dehumanize.

Austin high school senior detained by ICE after traffic stop rattles Northeast campus

Clay Robison