Author: suem

Gov. Greg Abbott wants the Legislature to take steps to “ensure our schools teach students the civics knowledge they need to be engaged productive citizens.” It is important, he says, that students “be educated in how to participate in our democracy.”

There is nothing wrong with a good civics education, provided it is not used as cover for an ideological immersion. But the most important participation in a democracy is voting, and this is where the examples and actions of elected leaders are more important than a classroom.

If Abbott really is concerned about voting and the democratic process, he would actively encourage every eligible voter to cast a ballot AND publicly honor the election results. Instead, he seems quite comfortable with Texas’ history of voter intimidation, and his silence following the recent election was a lousy example for school kids.

The best example for anybody, including children, after the election would have been for Abbott to have spoken up publicly and forcefully to refute the lies that Donald Trump and his allies were spreading about the election having been “stolen” from the former president, lies that ultimately contributed to the Jan. 6 riot at the national Capitol.

But Abbott didn’t make any public attempt to honor democracy by setting the record straight. The democratic example that the governor should have set then for the school children he now wants to impress was missing. Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz behaved badly. But Abbott was complicit in his silence, as his political allies attacked the very essence of the democratic process.

Now, the governor is undermining faith in democracy even further by declaring “election integrity” an “emergency” for the Legislature to address, even though election fraud is a very minor problem.

Texas instead has a sad history of voter intimidation, including under this governor, and Abbott now is seeking more laws to intimidate people who are inclined to vote the “wrong” way. That is not election integrity, and it is not democracy.

And guess who is eager to help the governor? None other than Rep. Briscoe Cain, another democracy denier who went to Pennsylvania after the election to help Trump’s fraudulent cause, and now has been appointed chair of the House Elections Committee by Dade Phelan, the new speaker.

In truth, the governor and many of his political allies are woefully in need of their own civics education. Maybe some of our young people can teach them. No one else has been able to.

Clay Robison

“Hard-working Texans are at the forefront of our agenda this legislative session,” Gov. Greg Abbott declared in the first-ever State of the State address delivered from a chemical-processing technology firm in Lockhart.

Sounds good. But is it true?

How about the hard-working Texans we call school teachers, who have heroically worked to protect their students during a deadly pandemic and reinvent the delivery of public education? They haven’t even been given priority for a COVID-19 vaccine, but thousands of them are being forced to risk their health and perhaps their lives in classrooms every day.

So are thousands of bus drivers, cafeteria workers, clerks and other school support staff. They distributed free meals to countless hungry kids while schools were closed over the summer, kept facilities clean and secure and are now risking their health taking many of those children to school and feeding and keeping them safe on campuses.

They haven’t been given priority for a vaccine either. Well, there aren’t enough vaccines to go around yet, the governor may say, and that may be true. But why doesn’t he allow schools to end in-person instruction if local school and health officials believe that is best for safety?

What will the governor be doing for these hard-working educators this session? So far, he hasn’t even promised not to cut funding to school districts over attendance losses this spring as the pandemic continues to rage across Texas. Lost funding will cost many educators their jobs.

In his address, Abbott said “we must continue to fund education as we promised,” suggesting he will maintain funding for House Bill 3, the school finance law enacted two years ago. But school districts may need more money than that just to meet the extra pandemic expenses that will end up not being covered by the federal government.

And despite the additional school funding, including teacher pay raises, approved last session, average teacher pay in Texas still trails the national average by $6,500 and per-student funding is an estimated $2,800 behind.

Public schools and educators are essential to Texas’ post-pandemic economic future, but Abbott didn’t even declare public education an emergency item for lawmakers to consider. For that matter, he didn’t declare the pandemic an emergency item either. That designation allows the Legislature to give an issue expedited treatment, but it often has more political than practical impact.

The governor did put an emergency tag on the expansion of broadband internet access, something that has been a major need for many schools and students seeking remote instruction during the pandemic.

The other designated emergencies are conservative political priorities of the governor, including providing civil liability to businesses affected by COVID-related legal claims. This proposal could help some hard-working small business owners, but it also could be abused to deprive hard-working educators and other consumers of judicial relief to which that are entitled.

Abbott also declared election integrity an emergency, even though election fraud has been shown time and again to play an inconsequential role in the American political process, including in the recent presidential election. A lot of hard-working Texans of both parties, including the governor, know the truth, but the governor still is playing what can be a dangerous political game.

Clay Robison

In a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded that schools, despite the presence of COVID cases on campuses, have not been major sources of spreading the coronavirus.

Their conclusion, however, is not an endorsement of the lax school opening process in Texas because they also made it clear that school openings should be accompanied by strong safety requirements, including social distancing and mask use, important things that Texas’ state government hasn’t been enforcing.

Masks, social distancing and ventilation of school buildings are among an encyclopedia’s worth of COVID safety guidelines listed on the Texas Education Agency’s website, but neither TEA nor Gov. Greg Abbott has done anything about putting teeth in them.

Some school districts have attempted to enforce them, while others haven’t. One school superintendent in North Texas all but bragged to the media about refusing to enforce the governor’s so-called mask “mandate,” and the state hasn’t challenged him. A “mandate” isn’t a mandate if it is not enforced, and guidelines are mere words if they are ignored.

You may recall that TSTA conducted a campus safety survey of our members last fall. By early December, shortly before the winter break, our members in more than 150 school districts had reported more than 6,000 violations of various safety standards in their school buildings. These included more than 400 violations of the mask mandate, more than 600 violations of social distancing, more than 600 reports of inadequate ventilation and more than 500 reports of inadequate protective equipment.

Small wonder that many Texas districts have had to temporarily close their doors for periodic COVID outbreaks.

To my knowledge, the Texas Education Agency hasn’t penalized any school district for violations of COVID safety standards. But it is quick to pounce on districts, with the threat of funding cuts, that entertain the idea of closing school buildings for student and educator safety, as it did when Austin ISD suspended in-person instruction for a week after the Thanksgiving break, on the advice of local health authorities.

There is something wrong with that approach, and I think the scientists at the CDC agree.

CDC researchers find “little evidence” of major school outbreaks, with precautions

Clay Robison

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick didn’t condone the violence at the U.S. Capitol, but as President Trump’s campaign chairman in Texas, he fanned the flames and the lie of the “Stop the Steal” movement that resulted in the insurrection. He even offered rewards of as much as $1 million for people with proof of voter fraud.

Patrick and the “Stop the Steal” movement wrongfully claimed that democracy was being “stolen” in the presidential election, when in truth they were undermining to a dangerous extent the democratic process.

Now, the Texas Legislature is in session, and Patrick is back to promoting his own version of theft in the state Senate. In his zeal to neutralize the influence of Democratic (upper case) senators, he has engineered another rule change to undermine democracy (lower case) in that chamber.

For many years before Patrick took office as lieutenant governor in 2015, the Senate had operated under what was called the two-thirds rule. That provided that no bill could be brought up for debate by the full Senate without the approval of at least two-thirds of the senators who were present. If all 31 senators were present, 21 had to approve debate. That meant only 11 senators could block and ultimately kill a proposed law.

The two-thirds rule served an important democratic (lower case) purpose. It promoted more deliberation, compromise and accommodation in the Senate and helped protect the interests of the political minority, which for many years in Texas were Republicans. It also gave more power to individual senators, sometimes at the expense of the lieutenant governor.

Even before Patrick became lieutenant governor, the two-thirds rule had started to fall victim to increased Senate partisanship. Under Patrick’s predecessor, David Dewhurst, a new Republican majority had occasionally bypassed the two-thirds rule on selected partisan issues, such as redistricting and voter identification bills.

But that wasn’t enough for Patrick, who considers deliberation, compromise and accommodation obstacles to his political and ideological agenda. And Republican senators, who are supposed to have more control over the Senate’s rules than the lieutenant governor, have let Patrick be the boss.

In 2015, GOP senators replaced the two-thirds rule at Patrick’s behest with a three-fifths rule. Republicans had a 20-11 majority that year, and the new rule allowed only 19 Republicans to approve debate on a bill with Democrats unable to stop them.

That 19-vote requirement was all Patrick needed for the next two sessions. Last session, the GOP majority was 19-12. But one Republican senator was unseated by a Democrat in November, so Patrick had the rule changed again this week. With an 18-13 Republican majority now, all it will take is 18 votes to advance a bill. That means if all 18 Republicans are united on a vote to debate a bill, Democrats will be powerless to block it, eroding the democratic process even more.

It is time to stop the real steal, Dan.

Clay Robison