Grading Texas

For sometime now, environmentalists have been unhappy with Gov. Rick Perry’s probusinessatjustaboutanycost appointees on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Now, educators – even those who don’t consider themselves particularly green – also have reason to be concerned.

According to a story in the Houston Chronicle, Valero Energy Corp., one of the country’s largest oil refiners, is asking TCEQ to expand the rules and give the company a full property tax break on equipment at five refineries it operates in Texas. If TCEQ agrees, school districts – which already are suffering serious budgetary problems – stand to lose untold millions in tax revenue. The potential loss to Houston ISD alone would be $2.5 million a year, the newspaper reports.

A provision in the Texas Constitution allows companies to receive tax exemptions for equipment that reduces pollution at the refinery. Valero is asking the TCEQ to grant it an exemption for equipment used to remove sulfur in the production of gasoline and diesel, but local officials say that reduces pollution from auto tailpipes, not at the refinery, as the constitutional provision requires.

The TCEQ’s staff has recommended Valero’s request be denied, but the Perryappointed commissioners have asked the staff to take another look at the issue.

“The three voting commissioners have expressed a willingness to give some tax relief to the company,” the Chronicle reported.

“It’s bigger than Valero,” Texas City ISD Superintendent Bob Brundrett told the newspaper. “With the exemption, then this also becomes BP and Shell and ExxonMobil.”

In other words, if the Valero request were granted, it would set a precedent that could produce a flood of tax breaks for refinery equipment that reduces pollution offsite. That would be very bad news for school districts, other local governments, homeowners, educators and school kids.

Here is a link to the Chronicle story:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6959428.html

Tuesday’s Republican runoffs proved once again that a political minority – in this case, the antigovernment Tea Party movement – can have a major impact in lowturnout elections. The runoffs, however, didn’t establish whether the Tea Baggers will remain a minority or have taken their first steps to emerging as a major force on the Texas political landscape.

Educators better hope for the former. When a group is out to slash public services, as the Tea Baggers are, the public schools and teachers – which justifiably account for a large share of the state budget – have a lot to fear. If you’re not happy with your pay or classroom resources now, wait and see what happens if the homeschoolers and voucher champions take over the statehouse.

Tea Party coalitions of antiestablishment voters were instrumental in Charles Perry’s unseating of longtime state Rep. Delwin Jones in Lubbock and the Republican victories of John Frullo and Van Taylor for open Texas House seats in Lubbock and Plano. Only Frullo will have a Democratic opponent in November.

Fewer than 8,000 votes were cast in the race that Frullo won, and only about 8,500 votes were cast in Taylor’s race. They won in conservative districts where the Tea Party has some clout, and the Tea Baggers turned out. The PerryJones race attracted about twice as many voters, but Jones has had a target on his back for several years now, mainly because of his opposition to former House Speaker Tom Craddick.

Tea Baggers were not as successful in runoff races with more voters. Their favorite candidate, Rick Green, lost a statewide race for a Texas Supreme Court nomination after more mainstream Republicans became alarmed and rallied around his opponent.

Another farright candidate, Brian Russell, lost a Republican nomination for the State Board of Education. He had even been endorsed by incumbent Cynthia Dunbar, a retiring leader of the rightwing bloc that has made the board a national laughingstock. But more moderate Republicans rallied behind Russell’s opponent, Marsha Farney, in a race that attracted four times as many voters as most legislative runoffs.

The only clearcut Tea Party victory in the March 2 Republican primary was David Simpson’s upset of state Rep. Tommy Merritt in East Texas. Many Tea Baggers undoubtedly voted for Gov. Rick (whatever happened to secession?) Perry, but their favorite candidate, Debra Medina, went down in flames.

State Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston is betting (and hoping) that Tea Baggers are the wave of Texas’ political future. And so, apparently, are the other 57 Republican legislators listed as charter members of the new group, Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas, which Patrick announced the day before the runoff with fond words of tribute to the Tea Party movement.

Patrick is (politically) right. But is he correct? Time will tell.

From conservative talk show host to state senator and, now, founding father. It must be difficult for Dan Patrick to keep up with himself. His latest political endeavor, which he announced this morning, is a new organization called Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas, or ICROT (an interesting sounding acronym) for short.

Patrick lists himself as the founder of the group, which, so far, includes 14 Republican state senators, 44 Republican members of the Texas House and five Republican nominees for House seats. Membership will be by invitation only, he says.

But how independent is independent? Maybe, I suspect, as “independent” as the teabaggers allow it to be

At first blush, ICROT seems more than anything else to be an effort to give some mainstream political legitimacy – while protecting nervous Republican officeholders to the extremist “Tea Party” movement. This is the same political force that put the word “secession” back in our political vocabulary and helped Gov. Rick Perry win the Republican primary.

Patrick’s announcement gives prominent mention to the movement, which started making headlines on the political fringe in Texas about a year ago. And ICROT’s “core principles” recite a lot of Tea Party rhetoric – protecting our borders, protecting the “sovereign rights” of Texas, supporting strong family values and upholding JudeoChristian beliefs.

Educators, however, should be particularly concerned about one other principle – the new group’s pledge to “limit the size of government.” That may very well mean things like tying teacher pay to test scores, larger class sizes and property tax cuts over quality public schools.

Educators also should note that both the Senate Education and House Public Education committees are liberally (sorry, Dan) populated with ICROT charter members. IckRotters on the Senate Education Committee include Patrick, the vice chairman, and Sen. Florence Shapiro, the chairwoman. Those on the House Public Education Committee include Chairman Rob Eissler and Reps. Jimmie Don Aycock, Jim Jackson, Mark Shelton and Randy Weber.

Here is a link to ICROT’s website:
http://www.icrepublicans.com/welcome

It is always good to hear news about students excelling, even if the measurement is on standardized test scores. And it is nice to hear praise for public schools and their teachers, even when it comes from Gov. Rick Perry’s administration. But a Texas Education Agency study about the academic progress of Hurricane Katrina refugees who relocated to Texas has raised questions, nevertheless.

According to the TEA, 46,504 young evacuees from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida enrolled in Texas public schools, mainly in the Houston area, after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, causing extensive damage, in August 2005. About 18,000 of the refugees were still enrolled in Texas schools in 2007.

The TEA study, released this week, tracked a group of Katrina students who were in grades 3, 5 and 8 in 2006 and were still enrolled in Texas schools in 2009. The study, based on TAKS scores, concluded that the Katrina students had made “significant academic progress” during the past four years and were performing slightly better than a demographically and economically matched set of Texas students.

State Education Commissioner Robert Scott, a Perry appointee, said he was proud of the schools and educators who took the refugees in because “they have made a real and lasting difference in the lives of these children.”

The findings were quickly questioned by Ed Fuller, a University of Texas researcher, who, in an interview with the Austin AmericanStatesman, said the study had serious “methodological flaws.” For one thing, he noted, using the Katrina students’ firstyear scores as a starting point may have overstated their gains because the firstyear scores probably were lowered by the trauma of the hurricane and their relocation. Many of the evacuees also may have missed a significant chunk of the school year.

Fuller’s concerns may be valid, but most of the Katrina students in the study are prospering now, and that is good news for them, their parents and their teachers. It also is a bit of positive educational news for a governor whose overall record of support for teachers and the public schools has been dismal.

Perry’s Democratic opponent, Bill White, was hammering the governor this week on one of many critical education issues – the state’s high dropout rate. On that one, Perry’s head remains firmly stuck in the sand. If the governor’s office is to be believed, the dropout rate is as low as 10 percent. But as a story in the Houston Chronicle points out, more knowledgeable groups say the student attrition rate is 30 percent or more and even approaches 50 percent in urban school districts with heavy concentrations of minority students.

One more Katrina note: Perry, you may recall, received (mostly) positive reviews for his response to the evacuees in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. So did Bill White, then the mayor of Houston. While FEMA, the federal disaster agency, was sitting on its hands, the Astrodome in Houston was being opened up to refugees and buses were being dispatched to Louisiana to pick them up. And, that was just the beginning of the chore, particularly for Mayor White and Houstonarea school districts.

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/studies/KatrinaAnalysis2010.pdf

http://www.statesman.com/news/texaspolitics/teasstudyonkatrinastudentsraisesquestions535792.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6948676.html