Grading Texas

You have demonstrated and tweeted for education, but nothing will change if you don’t vote

You are an educator. All year you have been reading stories about underpaid and under-appreciated educators. You have been watching video clips of angry teachers marching, demonstrating and walking off their jobs to protest low pay and underfunded classrooms and tell politicians they are not going to take it anymore.

You have applauded their courage and empathized with their plight. You have tweeted your own outrage and spent hours expressing your frustration on social media. You have shared your own stories about the extra jobs you have been forced to take to meet family budgets. Maybe you have attended pro-education rallies in your own communities. And you have registered to vote.

You have been engaged, and that is great. But if that is all you do, nothing, absolutely nothing, will change.

Now, you need to vote. You need to vote in large numbers and vote for candidates who truly support public schools and the people who teach and work in them, people like you. You, of course, have a right to vote for whomever you want and for any issue of your choosing, but if you don’t make education your No. 1 issue and vote for legitimate, pro-public education candidates, nothing will change.

You will continue to be underpaid, you will continue taking extra jobs during the school year and you will continue to be angry, frustrated and feeling used.

Education is your livelihood, but maybe another issue is your main political concern. Maybe it is immigration, an issue over which President Trump and many anti-education candidates continue to fan the flames of fear and racism, often with half-truths and lies. Their goal is to confuse and deceive.

I got a campaign flyer from one of those anti-education candidates the other day, spreading fear about immigration but saying not a word about public schools or the needs of educators and students. This candidate was taking the votes of educators for granted or hoping educators would be so discouraged they would not bother to vote.

You may find another issue competing for your vote. But remember this. Per-pupil education spending in Texas is $2,300 per year less than the national average, and teacher pay is $7,300 below the national average. Active educators and retirees struggle with rising health care costs. Many classrooms are overcrowded and under-equipped, students take too many standardized tests, and political ideologues are still trying to rewrite the history and science our kids are taught. None of this will change if Texas educators don’t vote in large numbers and in the best interests of their professions and their students, and that means voting for candidates who make education a priority.

Voting turnout in Texas traditionally has been low, and if educators don’t do their part to change that, anti-public education policies won’t change. You can march, demonstrate and tweet for education all you want, but if you don’t vote for education, you can’t finish the job. Voting is what politicians respect – and fear. Without it, they will keep taking educators for granted.

TSTA-PAC has endorsed candidates of both parties throughout the state on their stands and/or records on education alone. To find out which candidates TSTA has endorsed on your ballot, go to the link below, click on “Customized Ballot” and fill in your home address. Marching, demonstrating and tweeting your outrage may make you feel better. But voting is the only really effective political activity you can perform.

https://educationvotes.nea.org/state/texas/

Who pays a bigger price for public service? Judges or teachers?

Texas teachers, it is time to cue in some sad music for Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, who is complaining that he is underpaid. “Public service…should not be public servitude,” he told a legislative committee, according to an item in Quorum Report.

Pay for Texas Supreme Court members, after all, ranks only 29^th among justices on the highest state courts around the country, the same national ranking as average teacher pay in Texas.

Before anyone gets carried away with that comparison, though, please know that Hecht’s annual salary is about $168,000, according to the National Center for State Courts. It may even be a little more because he is chief justice. That is more than three times the average teacher pay in Texas of $53,167.

Hecht is seeking raises for all state judges, but even state district court judges, the main trial judges in Texas, make about $149,000 a year. Servitude, indeed.

Hecht may feel underpaid compared to many lawyers in the private sector, but I doubt that the chief justice or any of his robed colleagues are spending their weekends tutoring students, waiting tables or taking the assortment of other extra jobs that about 40 percent of Texas teachers are taking during this school year to make ends meet for their families.

Sure, judges have very important responsibilities, but they are no less crucial than the work that teachers perform every day. Without the educational services that teachers provide, we, of course, wouldn’t have judges, lawyers, doctors, dentists, scientists, CEOs, etc. etc.—or not very good ones anyway.

Texas legislators need to pay teachers more and provide more classroom resources for their students before they start raising judges’ pay. One reason the legislative majority continues to under-pay teachers and under-fund public education is because the Texas Supreme Court, under Hecht, refused to strike down our lousy school finance system a couple of years ago and force the Legislature to improve it.

The justices admitted the funding system was awful, but they let the Legislature off the hook, and teachers and their students are still paying the consequences.

Still want to play some sad music for Chief Justice Hecht? I didn’t think so.

Paxton trying to remove health care from millions of educators and other Americans

The current crop of state leaders gives educators a lot of bad choices on this year’s election ballot, but one of the worst, especially for retired educators and everyone one else who values their health care, is Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Paxton, who was slapped with a criminal indictment for securities fraud shortly after taking office, has spent most of his term as the state’s chief lawyer avoiding a trial and a possible prison sentence. But he has found time to promote policies that are hurtful to educators and other everyday Texans, even as he hypocritically portrays himself as a champion of Christian values.

Perhaps his worst offense though is his effort to deprive millions of Texans and other Americans of middle-class, modest means of basic health care coverage. That is a potential end result of a lawsuit that Paxton has filed, using our tax dollars, against the federal government in still another effort to kill the Affordable Care Act.

The lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, was filed earlier this year by 20 states, and Paxton is the lead lawyer. If the suit is successful, all the protections of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, if you prefer, would be invalidated, including the provision that forbids insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing medical conditions.

If Paxton is successful in destroying that consumer protection, insurance companies could resume their previous practice of charging sick people higher premiums for health coverage or denying them coverage altogether. Older Americans would be hit the hardest, but anybody who had ever suffered a heart attack or suffered from a chronic condition such as diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure or whatever would be affected.

To make matters worse, the Trump administration is refusing to defend the Affordable Care Act against Paxton’s suit.

“It is time that Americans are finally free from the stranglehold of Obamacare, once and for all,” Paxton said when the suit was filed.

Actually, it is time for Texans to be free of the callous piety and anti-family, anti-democratic values of Ken Paxton. Earlier this year, Paxton also misused his office to suggest falsely that it was illegal for educators to support and campaign for candidates for the Legislature and other elected offices.

Paxton is entitled to due process and his day in court, which he continues to avoid. The state of Texas also is entitled to its day in court, and every American is entitled to affordable health care.

The honorable thing for Paxton to do would be to quietly leave office and get his own legal affairs in order. But since he doesn’t plan to do that, since he intends to stay in office on straight-ticket Republican votes, the sensible thing for educators and every other Texan – Democrat, Republican or independent — who values education, health care and other important public services is to show Paxton the door on Election Day.

You can do that by voting for Paxton’s opponent, Justin Nelson. Nelson wants to serve the people of Texas, not make their lives more difficult.

Twenty U.S. states target protections for pre-existing health conditions

Paxton surrenders in securities fraud indictment

Sen. Don Huffines fears educators, not immigrants

Voter registration is up, and state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas, who has made a political career of attacking public schools and promoting privatization, is worried. He is worried because he knows he has done nothing to generate that much enthusiasm for his re-election, and he has a pro-public education opponent, Nathan Johnson, who is running a very strong campaign against him.

So what does Huffines do? He doesn’t have a legitimate campaign issue. So he borrows a tactic from Donald Trump and lies. He lies about a horde of imaginary undocumented immigrants who have descended upon Dallas and registered to vote. And he calls on a Senate committee to conduct an emergency hearing to help him out by lending a stamp of “authenticity” to his charade.

According to an article on Quorum Report, Huffines said he had heard of “allegations of illegal voting by non-citizens and officials’ failure to adequately respond.”

Baloney.

Undocumented immigrants don’t come to the United States to vote. They come here for economic opportunity or to escape political persecution or crime in their home countries. They want to avoid detection, and trying to vote is a sure-fire way to get caught.

But it is easier for Huffines to promote hysteria and hate against immigrants than it is to defend his own record in the state Senate. Educators should be reminded that it is a record that includes:

# Killing a $1.9 billion increase in public school funding during a special session last year.

# Voting for every private school voucher bill that has come his way.

# Supporting the so-called “bathroom bill” that would have discriminated against vulnerable children in public schools and encouraged bullying.

# Voting for public education budgets that have steadily transferred the lion’s share of school funding to local property taxpayers.

Don Huffines purports to represent state Senate District 16 in Dallas. In truth, he represents an extreme political ideology.

Educators, parents and taxpayers in District 16 who truly care about public schools have a clear choice in this election – Nathan Johnson, an education advocate, school volunteer and community leader. Nathan has been endorsed by TSTA-PAC and, unlike Huffines, isn’t afraid of people voting in large numbers.

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