Grading Texas

Calling school vouchers and other so-called “school choice” privatization efforts a “civil rights issue” is worse than spreading a simple political lie. It is an affront to the real civil rights heroes who lost their lives and freedom in the war against Jim Crow and to thousands of children of color who were deprived of decent educational opportunities before and during that era. The first vouchers actually were used to prolong school segregation as local officials in the South chose to circumvent, rather than comply with, court orders to integrate public schools.

But the “school choice-civil rights” claim has been made in recent years by, among others, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Sen. Ted Cruz and President Donald Trump. In a particularly offensive bit of timing, Trump called “school choice” the “civil rights statement of the year” at a White House briefing at the height of the demonstrations against police brutality following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in police custody.

Economist Milton Friedman usually is credited with the privatized “school choice” idea for education, which he explained in an essay published in 1955. But as recounted in a report published by the Center for American Progress, southern segregationists first put the idea into general practice. The first voucher system was believed to have been created by the Virginia General Assembly after the board of supervisors of Prince Edward County refused to levy local school taxes for the 1959-60 school year. The supervisors closed the school system, rather than integrate it, a few years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling of 1954.

The General Assembly called the new voucher system a “tuition grant program,” which offered elementary students $125 and high school students $150 to attend a nonsectarian private school or a high school in a nearby community. About the same time, private citizens raised the money to build and operate a private school, the Prince Edward Academy, to educate white children. It would become known as the first “segregation academy” and serve as a model for similar academies that soon would sprout up across the South. Black children were not allowed to attend this new academy or receive tuition grants to attend other schools.

Within a few years, after students protested against the public school closures, black and white community members in Prince Edward County agreed on a plan to temporarily operate free private schools for black students, which white students could attend. Private donations, including a contribution from the National Education Association, helped operate these Prince Edward Free Schools, as the black schools were called.

When the Supreme Court forced Prince Edward County to reopen its public schools in 1964, the board of supervisors appropriated $189,000 for the integrated public schools and $375,000 for tuition grants (vouchers) that white children could use in private schools in the county or public schools charging tuition outside the county.

By 1969, according to the American Prospect report, more than 200 private segregation academies had been set up across the South, and seven states – Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana – had voucher programs encouraging white students to leave integrated public schools. Between the 1969-70 and 1970-71 school years alone, tens of thousands of white students enrolled in the segregation academies.

Eventually, the federal courts ended those programs. But the report noted, “Even contemporary race-neutral voucher programs can have the effect of exacerbating racial and socio-economic segregation.” And voucher programs as well as cherry-picking corporate charter schools take tax dollars from under-funded public schools, where the vast majority of students of all races and ethnicities are educated.

This isn’t a civil rights issue. It’s a hijacking spree.

The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers

Clay Robison

In these days of the coronavirus pandemic, it looks like the latest symbol of “liberty” – Gov. Abbott’s term, not mine – is the COVID mask, or, more precisely, the decision not to wear one. Liberty is a perfectly good, all-American word, which unfortunately is sometimes hijacked to put politics over public safety, as in claiming the “liberty,” as some do, to walk down the street with a fully loaded automatic rifle.

In this case, Abbott was responding to Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff of San Antonio, who had asked the governor to issue a new executive order allowing local officials to require people to wear masks in their cities and counties if they felt masks were necessary for public safety. What prompted Wolff’s request was a new upsurge in COVID-19 cases, following Abbott’s decision to prematurely “reopen” Texas.

Abbott turned down Wolff’s request, explaining, “I believe in individual responsibility.”

“With every interview I’ve had on TV, I’ve talked about the individual responsibility to wear a face guard to make sure you don’t transmit COVID-19 or that you don’t get it,” the governor said. “It’s up to every individual in this state to make sure that we slow the spread of COVID-19…(But) it’s wrong to deprive someone of their liberty just because they’re not wearing a mask during the course of this challenge.”

That is a copout.

As Wolff pointed out, once a local requirement in San Antonio that residents wear masks in public was repealed by Abbott several weeks ago, fewer people are wearing masks and COVID-19 cases are increasing. Social distancing also is apparently becoming an afterthought on beaches and at many gatherings.

People who claim they have a right not to wear a mask and risk their own health miss the point. It isn’t just their health at risk. If they become infected and contagious, it also is the health of the grocery store clerk they may encounter or anyone else who crosses their path. The people they encounter, who have been wearing masks and taking other precautions, have a right to try to stay healthy without other people posing threats that could have been avoided.

Abbott was scolding people this week about not wearing masks, zeroing in on people in their 20s, a group that has seen a significant rise in COVID-19 cases. But they aren’t alone. Abbott can scold all he wants, but without an order backing him up, his message is weak.

The governor isn’t so much promoting “liberty” as he is pandering to President Trump and Trump enablers, who want to ignore this pandemic, pretend it is going away, give the American public a false sense of security and somehow revive the president’s troubled reelection chances. Abbott’s eagerness to reopen schools prematurely is part of this effort.

The charade also plays to a long-held American sense that our “liberty” also includes a right not to be terribly inconvenienced, not even by a deadly pandemic.

Clay Robison

By COVID necessity, school graduations are coming in various forms and degrees of ingenuity this spring. There are the motor speedway variety, the football stadium version, the major league ballpark venue, the drive-in theater event and the Zoom virtual, maybe more.

Last Saturday morning, at Murchison Middle School in Austin ISD, there was the “Drive-Thru Graduation Extravaganza” for daughter Caroline and her eighth-grade classmates. During a two-hour window – with staggered time slots based on where last names fell in the alphabet – family cars, with the graduates’ names displayed in the windshields, drove slowly around the corner, up the line and then around the school’s front circle driveway past the front door, the normal drop-off spot for students every morning during a normal school year.

The last three months of this school year, of course, weren’t normal, but the drive-thru graduation was fun and greatly appreciated by my graduate, who wore a new red blazer for the occasion and rode shotgun, while her mother took video from the back seat.

The front lawn of the school was decorated with rows of colored photos of the graduates, courtesy of the PTA. Teachers and school staff, wearing masks, lined the driveway, holding signs and calling out to the graduates, and the kids returned their greetings. As we slowly drove past the front door, a school counselor with a microphone — and aided by the signs in the windshields — called out each graduate’s name.

The emailed instructions to the parents had been clear: “You may absolutely drive slowly/leisurely to enjoy the good vibes, but there will not be stopping and getting out.” And there wasn’t.

Through the open window, Caroline called out to teachers and administrators she recognized behind their masks and held out a sign reading, “We miss you guys.”

Our part of the drive-thru graduation lasted five minutes at most. We spent a lot longer in a Starbucks’ drive-thru line afterwards. But Caroline got a kick out of it, and so did her parents. We thank Principal Beth Newton, Assistant Principal Anthony Bromberg and all the Murchison teachers, staff and PTA for the thoughtfulness and hard work making it possible.

We returned to the school that afternoon to collect Caroline’s souvenir graduation photo from the lawn. Honor roll and other special recognitions will be emailed later.

No, a promotion from eighth grade is not a graduation from high school or college, but it is an accomplishment and a big deal for eighth graders. And I feel for the high school and college graduates who didn’t get to walk across the traditional stage or enjoy the real proms and real parties normally associated with these landmark accomplishments.

But I congratulate all of them and hope they and their families have stayed safe and well during this health crisis. I also hope everyone will be able to enjoy a more-normal graduation season next year.

Clay Robison

Some of you may recall that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton misused his office two years ago to try to intimidate educators from actively supporting pro-public education candidates in state elections. He failed then, but he is at it again now, on a larger and, in the current pandemic, a potentially deadly scale.

You may not be thinking about voting yet because you have more pressing needs at present: keeping yourself and your family safe from the coronavirus and, if you are an educator, adjusting to distance learning. But because of the coronavirus and its devastating effect on our economy, this election cycle, especially the general election in November, is extremely critical, and that is why Paxton is trying to suppress voter turnout again. And he is not alone.

Partly because of the premature political reopening of Texas and other states, health experts are warning that the pandemic may still be posing a serious health threat in July and even in November, the next times Texans go to the polls. This is why many Texans (63 percent, according to a recent poll) are concerned about voting in person and would like to have the option of voting by mail. But Paxton, with the obvious support of Gov. Greg Abbott and other state Republican leaders, says no and is fighting the mail-in alternative in court.

Many states make wide use of mail-in ballots. But under Texas law, you can get a mail-in ballot only if you are older than 65, are a member of the military, have a medical condition that makes voting in person dangerous or impossible or will be away from your home county during the early voting period and on Election Day.

In a lawsuit brought by the Texas Democratic Party, a state district judge in Austin ruled that the medical condition provision applied to people who were concerned that voting in person would put them at risk of contracting the coronavirus and endangering their health. He said anyone who felt that way could legally apply for a mail-in ballot.

But Paxton is appealing that judge’s order and has warned local election officials of “criminal sanctions” if they advise voters to seek mail-in ballots. As far as Paxton is concerned, let educators and other voters who want to exercise their constitutional right to vote put their health and maybe even their lives at risk.

Paxton is following President Trump’s lead. Trump has said publicly that he expects to lose reelection if too many people vote.  If too many people start voting by mail during this pandemic, he said, “all of a sudden you lose elections you think you’re going to win.”

Paxton doesn’t want educators, health care advocates and other Texans who value public services to vote for president or in this year’s legislative races. The legislative winners, when they convene in January, will deal with a huge revenue shortfall because of the millions upon millions of tax dollars being lost during this pandemic.

The lower the voter turnout, the greater the likelihood of electing legislators who will attack education and health care budgets with chain saws, rather than writing new budgets based on serious thought about the future of public education in Texas and the critical needs of millions of Texans. Being an ideologue, Paxton prefers chain saws to serious thought – or serious, capable leadership, in Austin and at the highest level of government.

Clay Robison