Texas doesn’t have a “moral imperative” to send tax dollars to private schools; it does have a constitutional imperative to adequately fund public education
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.
