Grading Texas

Now comes news that major Republican political donors, including some of Gov. Greg Abbott’s contributors, have signed an open letter supporting congressional action to increase gun restrictions following the Uvalde school shootings.

The Texas Tribune reported that more than 250 self-styled gun enthusiasts signed the letter, which calls for the enactment of “red flag” laws, expanding background checks for gun purchasers and raising the age to purchase any gun, including assault-type rifles, to 21.

The 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde killed 19 elementary school children and two teachers with an assault rifle that he had legally purchased.

The letter, which also commends U.S. Sen. John Cornyn for his leadership role in bipartisan negotiations over gun reform in Washington, is a step in the right direction. But it is only a step. Cornyn has made it clear that any new gun laws from Congress will be limited.

We have seen letters before, and we have heard the cries of anguish when mass shootings happen. Even Abbott has uttered words of despair over this shooting tragedy and others, while doing absolutely nothing of substance to address any of them, just as he did nothing of substance to keep them from happening.

Abbott’s political contributors need to expand their call for action on gun reform to include Texas, as well as Congress, and to make it clear to the governor that he must stop holding hands with the gun lobby and actually take action on gun reform.

The best way to get his attention is to stop giving him money, the money that pays for the political mirage depicting Abbott as a caring, successful leader who can be entrusted with public safety. Stop funding his reelection campaign unless or until he leads the Legislature into action to enact laws to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. While they are at it, they also should cut off funding for the other major obstacles to gun reform — Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Abbott’s other allies in the Legislature.

The governor is not going to listen to people, even his donors, who merely sign a letter endorsing gun reform. Instead, he will continue taking his donors for granted because they always have been there for him and he always has been there for them.

His donors may be concerned about gun violence, but they have never made it a priority issue. These wealthy business and financial leaders keep Abbott in office for other reasons that have always been more important to them. They know that Abbott will keep protecting the weak regulatory climate that protects their business interests. School privatization advocates among them like Abbott because he is for vouchers and more charter schools. Other donors have other special interests that Abbott and his team protect.

Do they really want to force real results from Austin for school and community safety with reasonable gun laws? We will know they do only if they quit adding their millions to the mountain of campaign cash – more than $60 million — they already have helped Abbott stockpile.

Clay Robison

Some Texas GOP donors urge Congress to act on gun control measures like “red flag” laws, expanded background checks

Years ago, in my previous life as a newspaper reporter, I was interviewing a school superintendent in a small West Texas town when the conversation turned to school consolidation. With hundreds of rural and small-town school districts scattered all over the state, that issue comes up periodically.

At one time or another, people have suggested that consolidations of some of these small districts would make for a more-efficient, more cost-effective school system. This superintendent opposed that idea and old me why.

“When you lose your local school or school district, you lose your sense of community,” he said, or words to that effect.

That is because a public school is more than a place of learning. It is the heart of a community, where not only students but also their parents and other community members feel welcome and can come together to support each other and unite in a common cause. It may be a football or basketball game, a PTA meeting, a tutoring session, a graduation ceremony or a potluck fundraising dinner. Whatever the occasion, people identify with the school community, support the students and their teachers and take pride in their accomplishments.

This is especially true in small towns, but schools also can be the hearts of urban and suburban neighborhoods, where identity with schools runs high and community support contributes to student success.

It was true in Uvalde, where community pride was suddenly stricken with overwhelming grief when a gunman killed 19 elementary school children and two of their teachers. They were the latest victims in a plague of senseless mass shootings that cowardly policymakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, refuse to address with reasonable gun control laws. They are cowardly because they fear the wrath of the gun lobby and voters who wrongly interpret the Second Amendment, which calls for a “well-regulated militia,” not a gun in everyone’s hand.

Abbott, Patrick, et al avoid the main issue – lax gun laws – by talking about beefing up mental health services, which they have largely ignored, and “hardening schools” – making schools physically more difficult to enter with things such as high fences, more locked doors, more security officers, more security cameras and maybe metal detectors.

One particularly impractical idea, especially for most urban and suburban schools, would be to limit entry to campuses to only one door. Some high schools in Austin have more than 2,000 students, and some schools may be even larger in other Texas cities. How early are the kids supposed to start lining up to pass through the one security entrance? Three a.m.?

Parents would love that, wouldn’t they? And taxpayers would choke on the cost of erecting all the barriers.

Increased campus security may have some merit. But many of these hardening proposals, as well as the dangerous idea of putting more guns into schools by arming teachers, are cop outs. They are excuses for ignoring the real problem policymakers refuse to address – keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Texas can start by repealing the law that lets an 18-year-old legally purchase a military-style assault rifle, as the 18-year-old Uvalde shooter did.

Turning public schools into fortresses or prisons would destroy the sense of community, described above, which is so important to the learning and socialization process. It would destroy what public education is supposed to be.

And it wouldn’t stop gun violence. It would simply shift the violence to other venues, wherever an armed assailant with an urge to kill and an easily acquired firearm chose to strike next.

Clay Robison

Whose child or family is Gov. Greg Abbott going to terrorize next?

First, he attacked transgender children and their families by ordering state investigations, which could lead to prosecution, for families that provide gender-affirming treatment for their kids. These are some of the same kids, not so incidentally, whom Abbott and his legislative cronies already had kicked off their school sports teams.

The governor’s order to investigate families over private family health care decisions was based on a non-binding and politically motivated “legal” opinion by Attorney General Ken Paxton that gender-affirming care could be considered a form of child abuse. The real child abuse in this instance, however, was committed by Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton.

Now, Abbott is attacking undocumented migrant children by threatening to cut off their life-changing public educations, the difference for many kids between a lifetime of poverty and real opportunity. This is shameful and is also a form of child abuse.

Forty years ago, in issuing its decision in Plyler vs Doe, a landmark case from Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the importance of giving all our children, regardless of immigration status, access to a free public education. The court decision nullified a state law that had allowed Texas districts to refuse admission to undocumented children or charge them tuition, which their families couldn’t afford to pay.

Last week, Abbott, in an interview with a right-wing radio host, suggested the state of Texas should try to get the current Supreme Court to overturn this decision, just as the high court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, another longstanding landmark case from Texas that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion.

After the governor’s radio comments created an uproar, he has since said the federal government should pay for the costs of educating undocumented immigrant children. But he didn’t completely back off his original statement.

Let’s be clear. Migrant families, including undocumented families, pay their fair share of school taxes. They pay sales and gasoline taxes like everyone else, and when they pay their rent, they are helping their landlords pay their school property taxes. They and their children are not getting a free ride.

Instead of blaming migrant kids and President Biden for Texas’ school budgetary problems, the governor should look in the mirror. He and the legislative majority are to blame for under-funded public schools. During the 2020-21 school year, the state of Texas spent, on average, more than $4,000 less per student in average daily attendance than the national average. This was only two years after the Legislature enacted House Bill 3, the 2019 school finance law that had boosted school funding but just shows how far Texas still has to go in making public education a real priority for every child.

It is sad that the governor of Texas thinks he can win votes for reelection by bullying vulnerable children and their families. It is sadder still that he probably will, unless more voters suddenly find their own kids and families under attack from Austin because the governor found another group of kids to pick on for some political reason.

Clay Robison

As a new state task force prepares to study the teacher shortage, I — as TSTA’s designated spokesperson — am still getting inquiries from reporters about why there is a shortage. It is an important question whose answers extend well beyond the pandemic.

Texas, in fact, has had a shortage of teachers certified for the subjects they teach, especially difficult-to — fill and fast-growing areas such as STEM and bilingual courses, for several years, way before COVID-19 became a household word.

I don’t presume to know the reason that every teacher has for making an early exit from the classroom and trying another career. But based on what TSTA leaders hear from our membership around the state, probably the single biggest reason overall is inadequate pay, and that was true before the pandemic struck.

Even after the pay raises ordered by the Legislature in 2019, average teacher pay in Texas still lags more than $7,000 per year behind the national average. This figure is based on the National Education Association’s ranking of average teacher salaries for each state during the 2020-21 school year. Using data from state education departments, NEA ranks states and the District of Columbia on various school funding issues each year, and the 2020-21 report is the most recent.

Rising health insurance premiums for teachers and other school employees, which the state has done nothing to address in more than a dozen years, is a related issue.

And, of course, the pandemic has made educator turnover worse. Many teachers got burned out by the stress of risking their health and the health of their families every time they went to school. Adding to that burnout was the extra teaching load many teachers had to take on – in the absence of enough substitutes — when colleagues got sick or had to quarantine.

Gov. Abbott added to the teachers’ health risks and their stress when he ignored the advice of health experts and issued his order prohibiting school districts from requiring students and school employees to wear masks. Some districts defied the governor and issued mask mandates anyway, but teachers felt the governor was playing politics with their health and safety and the health and safety of their students, especially during the delta and omicron surges.

Many teachers also were turned off by overt political meddling in the classroom, beginning when the governor promoted and the legislative majority enacted the two so-called critical race theory laws. Critical race theory is not taught in Texas public schools, and teachers recognized the laws for what they were — an effort to whitewash or soft pedal classroom discussions of racism and race relations.

Educators considered the laws an attack on their schools and on them, and they were particularly outraged that the attack came during a health emergency when they needed more support and more respect, not political attacks that drove a wedge between them and many parents.

The problem got worse when the governor attacked them again by suggesting pornography is a problem in Texas schools. It isn’t. Most school districts already had procedures in place to deal with parental complaints about books, but the governor made school books, mainly books about diversity, political as he campaigned for right-wing votes in the weeks leading up to the Republican primary.

After winning the primary, the governor moved quickly to have the Texas Education Agency assemble a task force to investigate the teacher shortage. Maybe Abbott was trying to make nice, but his olive branch — if that is what it was — didn’t erase the disrespect that he had spent months heaping on educators and public schools. And teachers felt another slap when the initial task force membership of 28 included only two teachers. The state now plans to add more teachers, but only after teacher groups made an issue of it.

The attacks and disrespect still sting for many educators. TSTA plans to cooperate with the task force study as long as we are convinced the governor, TEA and the Legislature are serious about finding real solutions and as long as they listen to what teachers have to say.

Many teachers or former teachers may have their own, different explanations for the shortage. Some may have quit because they were weary of STAAR, of having to waste class time year after year prepping students on how to pass a test, instead of teaching them critical learning skills. Inadequate retirement benefits, or excessive paperwork may be issues for others. The task force also needs to take a look at teacher preparation and certification programs.

It is time for the state to address all of these issues — and quit playing politics with educators.

Clay Robison