Grading Texas

While in Texas last week, Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and brother of former President George W. Bush, was bemoaning the inability of Republicans to connect with the vast majority of Hispanic voters. He believes the GOP has a conservative, profamily message that could appeal to Hispanics. But it isn’t the message being delivered by Governor Rick Perry and the immigrantbashing, antipublic education, Republican legislative majority.

A solid public education is a strong profamily value, particularly for millions of Hispanic children who, for better or worse, will form Texas’ economic backbone in the nottoodistant future. Slashing $5.4 billion from the public schools and cramming thousands of Hispanic children into overcrowded classrooms is a loud, antifamily message in the Hispanic community. So are cuts in student financial aid for college and rising tuition costs.

“You need to speak a language of inclusion,” Bush said in an appearance at the University of Texas at Arlington.

But the Republicans running the Texas statehouse believe “inclusion” begins and ends with the rightwingers who dominate Republican primary elections, and those voters give little thought to Hispanic family values or the future of this state.

Jeb Bush can make all the speeches about Hispanic voters that he wants, but the people who need the message aren’t listening.

-From The Dallas Morning News

The antigovernment activists who couldn’t care less about the future of Texas’ public schools smell blood in the water. Fresh off their success in winning deep budget cuts in the class room, health care and other public services from the governor and the legislative majority last year, they have their sights set on even deeper cuts in 2013. They outlined some of them in a news conference at the state Capitol this week. (See the link below.)

The only thing standing between them and more damage to a host of public services that the vast majority of Texans consider essential is the upcoming round of legislative elections, starting with the party primaries on May 29. If the 2010 legislative elections are any indication – and they will be these rightwing ideologues will be out in force, intimidating candidates, playing on prejudices and misleading uninformed voters with inflated tales of government waste.

Their goal is to all but dismantle state government as we know it. The end result for education would be more profit for private school operators and charters and a weakened system of public schools for the vast majority of Texas children. Teachers in traditional public schools would continue to lose jobs and suffer pay cuts, and class sizes would continue to grow.

Teachers, most of whom don’t qualify for Social Security, also would be forced to give up their stable, defined benefit pensions for riskier 401(k)s. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas is one of the soundest public pension systems in the country, and school employee members contribute a big chunk of the premiums, but it is in the crosshairs of those who belittle public service.

Talmadge Heflin, a former legislator and now guru of the shrinkgovernment Texas Public Policy Foundation, is among those promoting the change from defined benefit pensions. Interestingly enough, Heflin, who had a 22year career in the Texas House, enjoys a very nice defined benefit pension from the state, something that pays much more than the $600 a month he got as a legislator.

“Raising taxes and seeking new revenue sources is off the table for Texas taxpayers and voters,” said antigovernment rabblerouser Michael Quinn Sullivan. He speaks for a vocal group of Texas taxpayers and voters. The group is smaller than Sullivan would have you believe, but its members will turn out and vote in legislative races.
Although loud and active, the antigovernment crowd is swamped in numbers by teachers and other public education employees alone. Add to them the additional Texans who depend upon or value public health care programs and other services that were harmed by last year’s budget cuts, and you have the potential to change the electoral math in many legislative districts.

But numbers have to be accompanied by action. People have to get motivated to educate themselves about their legislators and legislative candidates, learn how to differentiate between the real supporters of public education and the lipservice imposters – and they have to vote.

Because of lawsuits over redistricting, the primaries have been delayed until May 29, one day after Memorial Day. Early voting will start May 14. This is a poor time to have an election, when many people will be busy with the end of school and beginning of summer vacation. But the antipublic education, antipublic services crowd will turn out to vote. So must educators and everyone else who values the public schools and the other critical services that state government provides.

http://www.statesman.com/news/texaspolitics/fiscalconservativesseekmorestatebudgetcuts2250570.html

Texas teachers who haven’t lost their jobs, at least so far, in the wake of last year’s legislative carnage may have noticed their paychecks are a little lighter this year. That’s because the average teacher salary in Texas fell by $264 for the current, 201112 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency. This is the first cut in average teacher pay in Texas in a dozen years or more. The new average salary is $48,375, down from $48,639 in 201011, which was almost $7,000 less than the national average.

The next time a candidate for the Texas Legislature tells you he or she is a friend of education – and a lot of them will be doing that once our delayed primary season gets underway – don’t be too quick to believe it. A whole lot of legislators and legislative candidates ran as “friends of education” two years ago, and many of them got elected and then proceeded to slash $5.4 billion from public school budgets. With “friends” like these, Texas’ public schools are heading for disaster.

The pay cut is only the latest fruit of their “educationfriendly” legislating. Just before spring break, in case you didn’t notice, the Texas Education Agency calculated the total school job losses since this time last year at about 25,000, including almost 11,000 teachers. You can find out how each school district fared by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post.

The job losses mean that more than 8,400 elementary classrooms (kindergarten through fourth grade) are larger than the 22student cap set by state law. That is almost four times as many classrooms as were granted waivers from 221 last year.

Several school board or former school board members are running for the Texas House this year, quickening heartbeats and prompting speculation that maybe some new, legitimate friends of the public schools will be seated in the statehouse. Maybe, maybe not. Several votes for the $5.4 billion gash in school funding were cast by former school board members.

Vet your legislative candidates carefully, including those who come as “friends.” TSTA will be.

For starters, invite them to sign TSTA’s petition urging the governor to call a special session to appropriate $2.5 billion from the Rainy Day Fund to reverse the budget cuts for 201213. A petition signature, at least for starters, would be a very friendly gesture.

http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/schooldistrictftetotals/

Unlike some of his colleagues, Thomas Ratliff, a Republican member of the State Board of Education, actually values the public schools. In a recent speech (linked below), he refutes much of the ideological nonsense that we have heard ad nauseam from the governor and most Republican legislators.

The socalled “Moneyball” speech, delivered in Lufkin a few weeks ago, draws parallels with the book, which was adapted into the recent movie, about changing the way major league baseball evaluated talent. Ratliff’s message essentially is that alleged “experts” – or ideologues with a political agenda – who refuse to remove their heads from the sand can block real progress in any endeavor, public education as well as baseball.

He challenges standardized testing – ‘’a blunt instrument used to beat up teachers and students” – and the rightwing myth that the public schools are drowning in administrators.

Ratliff also refutes the budgetcutters who claim that class size, including the 221 cap for kindergarten through fourth grade, isn’t an important factor in educational quality. Thanks to those budgetcutters (the governor and the legislative majority), more than 8,200 elementary classrooms throughout Texas are more crowded than state law allows.

“Those who want to starve our schools to death…want you to believe that class size doesn’t matter,” Ratliff says. “I am going to tell you that the data is undeniable that class size matters.” That is why, he notes, the Texas Education Agency denied some 221 financial hardship waivers for school districts with low performance ratings. And it is why, he adds, that private schools use small class sizes as a selling point to parents.

Neither does Ratliff buy the baloney, dished up by some Republicans, that the Legislature actually increased funding for the public schools last year. If you count enrollment growth and factor in an inflation factor of 2 percent annually in the costs borne by schools since 2009, the new public education budget for 201213 falls $10.8 billion short, he believes.

Finally, he points out that many elected officials and political candidates are merely masquerading as education advocates. “We can do better,” he says. “What we need to do is elect more people who are willing to prove that education is their first priority, not just give it lip service.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1e1Je9qotLWGK6sjpMI8_g0_GaVhrvTb7R88gh0kxGj0