Grading Texas

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

President Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter declaring a “wall of separation between Church & State” was written in response to a group of Connecticut Baptists, a religious minority in their state seeking Jefferson’s support in their fight for religious freedom. At the time, Congregationalism was the established state religion in Connecticut, a distinction that was later abolished.

Now, there is a Texas Baptist, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, working overtime to tear down that wall, declaring in a recent political email blast: “It is time to set the record straight: there is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the Constitution.”

One thing about Patrick. He is always adamant, even when he is wrong.

Patrick, of course, wasn’t there at the birth of our nation, but Jefferson was one of the more prominent founders. And Jefferson would have disagreed with Texas’ lieutenant governor, noting in his letter to Patrick’s Baptist ancestors that the “wall of separation” was built by the First Amendment’s language providing that Congress shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

But Jefferson is gone, the “establishment clause” is being reinterpreted by some judges, Christian nationalism is on the rise and Patrick is very much alive and politically active. Aided and abetted by Gov. Greg Abbott, the state education commissioner, the majority of the State Board of Education and most Republicans in the Legislature, he continues promoting Christianity and increasingly stamping it on our public education system, which is supposed to equally serve children of all religions or no religion, not substitute for Sunday school.

Within the past few years, we have seen the Texas Education Agency develop and the State Board of Education adopt the Bluebonnet reading curriculum with Bible stories and passages scattered throughout it. The State Board of Education also has given preliminary approval to required reading lists for grades K-12 that include biblical material.

Then there is the new law pushed by Patrick requiring copies of the Ten Commandments, the Christian version, to be displayed in public school classrooms. A closely divided 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld this law as constitutional with a majority opinion that the San Antonio Express-News, in an editorial, described as “tortured and oppressive.”

And, sad to say, many Christian schools, including some Baptist institutions, will soon begin receiving millions of dollars a year in tax funds distributed among students participating in Texas’ new private school voucher program. The schools will be allowed to continue discriminating in admissions policies, including giving preference to members of their own faiths or refusing to accept LGBTQ applicants.

Initially, the state refused to allow Islamic schools to participate in the voucher program, under an unproven, Republican claim that some of the schools could be linked to terrorists. The state relented and admitted a handful of Islamic schools only after being sued.

This is what you can call a selective view of the “religious freedom” that Patrick and his Christian nationalist allies allegedly are promoting.

“We have faith voters will one day feel moved to check a state government that has gone too far,” the Express-News wrote. “Perhaps that day will come in November.”

The problem is which November. This November would be great. Abbott, Patrick, about half the state Senate and all the Texas House will be on the ballot.

So far, teachers and other educators are more affected by these laws than most people, except for concerned parents. Educators can lead the way to change if they all make public education their top voting issue this year.

If they don’t, there is no telling what Patrick, Abbott and their allies will come up with next.

Mandatory chapel attendance in the school cafeteria? Anyone want to bet?

Appellate court: Thou shalt violate the separation of church and state, Texas

Clay Robison