Grading Texas

Who is going to pay for more school counselors?

In his recently announced school safety plan, Gov. Greg Abbott recognizes the potential importance of school counselors in preventing campus violence. But I wonder if he ever gave school counselors a second thought before the Santa Fe shootings. As governor, he certainly hasn’t made much of an effort to pay for them.

At present, Texas doesn’t even require schools to have counselors. We are one of 20 states that don’t. So, our schools on average have 684 students for every counselor, the fifth highest student-to-counselor ratio in the country, according to information from the American School Counselor Association that was reported in the Texas Tribune.

As the state’s share of public education funding has steadily declined under Abbott, school districts have had to cut corners on counselors and a lot of other important student programs. And many of the counselors who districts have been able to hire are focused on academic issues, including STAAR-crazed student assessments, leaving little time for student behaviorial screening.

Abbott hints that he may recommend the Legislature increase funding for more counselors, but he also may prefer to leave the lion’s share of that big-ticket item to school districts and local property taxpayers. In the meantime, he suggests changes in funding restrictions so districts can “pool (existing) resources to better prioritize students’ emotional and mental health needs.”

If the governor is serious about this proposal, he will come up with a plan for increased state funding to help districts hire the additional thousands of counselors who will be needed for student behavioral as well as academic issues.

After Santa Fe shooting, Gov. Greg Abbott wants to put more counselors in schools. Educators say that’s not enough.

Abbott has a school safety plan. Now what, governor?

Gov. Greg Abbott has a school safety plan. Now what? More specifically, how is he going to pay for it? Or maybe more to the point, who is going to pay for it?

So far, Abbott has identified about $110 million, including federal funds. But his proposals, if adopted and carried out to any meaningful degree, will cost billions, a very pricey proposition for a governor who has been tight-fisted about education spending.

Here are a few of the big ticket items:

# Improving the infrastructure and design of Texas schools to reduce security threats. Texas has more than 8,700 school campuses. Not all of them will be redesigned or “hardened,” as the security people say, but if the governor’s plan is carried out, many will be, and some may get metal detectors at several thousand dollars apiece. This item alone could easily cost many times the $110 million the governor has identified.

# Hiring more professionally trained school security guards, a worthwhile, but recurring expense that many school districts and local taxpayers may not be able to afford.

# Hiring more school counselors to improve school mental health services and identify students who may pose a danger to themselves and others. This idea also can save lives, but thousands of additional counselors are needed across Texas, and, like the security guards, they will have to be paid and receive benefits every year, year in and year out.

There are other costs, including training costs that would be associated with the governor’s proposed expansion of the school marshal program to arm more teachers and school employees, which TSTA opposes.

Twenty of the governor’s proposals, half of the 40 pieces of his plan, will require funding, according to an analysis by the Texas House Democratic Caucus. And so far the governor hasn’t identified a funding source for 13 of those 20.

Phillip Martin, the caucus’ executive director, also pointed out that most of the funding the governor has proposed, $62.1 million, comes from federal grants for the Student Support and Academic Enrichment program. Congress appropriated some of this money for school safety but also intended for some of the funding to pay for STEM education for girls, minority students and low-income kids.

Abbott needs to begin making plans now for the Legislature to raise substantial amounts of state funding to carry out his plan. School districts and local taxpayers alone simply cannot afford the cost associated with it, partly because the governor and his legislative allies have persisted for years in under-funding public education.

Part of the Rainy Day Fund, the state’s multi-billion-dollar savings account, can be used to help school districts improve the security of their facilities. The Rainy Day Fund is taxpayer money, and Abbott needs to quit hoarding it.

For the longer term, the governor needs to insist that the School Finance Commission come up with an improved, adequate school funding system, not only to improve school security but also to improve learning opportunities for all of Texas’ school kids. And if he is still in office in January, he needs to demand that the Legislature enact it.

Otherwise, the school safety plan will amount to little more than playing politics in an election year.

Teachers deserve more than nice words from the education commissioner

Participating in a conference on education and the economy at Southern Methodist University this week, state Education Commissioner Mike Morath said Texas doesn’t have enough dedicated high-quality teachers.

“Have we organized the teaching profession so that it’s the desired destination for all of the highest-performing kids currently in high school? Unfortunately, the answer is not ‘yes’ at anything close to the rate that it needs to be,” he said, according to a report by KERA radio.

Morath said state leaders and the public need to change how they view teachers in order to attract the best and brightest young people into the field.

So, what is Morath doing to make that change? Not much.

Is he using his leadership position as the state’s highest-ranking public education official to promote higher pay and better benefits for Texas teachers? No. As far as I know, he has said nothing publicly about the governor and the Legislature needing to change the fact that the average teacher pay in Texas is about $7,000 below the national average.

Nor have I read anything about the commissioner promoting more affordable health care for teachers and retirees or more state education funding so teachers don’t have to dig deeply into their own pockets for classroom supplies.

Instead, he is promoting more charter schools, most of which pay teachers even less and don’t provide the employment safeguards that teachers in traditional public schools get.

Treating teachers with more respect and professionalism, Morath suggested, will change the “trajectory of the state in a fundamental way, and if we don’t do that, then every other issue that we talk about won’t really matter.”

Words are words, Mr. Commissioner, even from people in high places, and teachers deserve more than that.

Abbott proposes unlocking guns on school campuses

Not only does Gov. Greg Abbott want to arm more teachers and other school employees, he also wants to unlock their guns during the school day. This is one provision of the governor’s proposal to expand the voluntary “school marshal” program that allows schools to designate a limited number of teachers and other employees to have firearms at school.

At last count, about 170 school districts, many in rural areas, participate.

Under current law, however, guns brought to school by teachers or other employees who have direct contact with students have to be kept locked up, unless there is a life-threatening emergency. If the Legislature goes along with Abbott’s new plan, the locks would be removed.

The governor apparently believes that if you are going to arm teachers or principals to confront armed intruders, it makes no sense to require those teachers or principals or whoever to waste precious minutes trying to unlock a drawer or a safe after mayhem already has erupted.

Abbott would rather take a chance with the very real dangers – accidental discharges, thefts, etc — that unlocked firearms in classrooms, gyms, cafeterias or elsewhere on school campuses would pose for students and school employees each and every school day.

But how many parents really want to send their children to a school where there may be a pistol – either loaded or with ammunition stored nearby — in an unlocked classroom drawer?

TSTA opposes arming more teachers or other school employees because, even with firearms training, most would be no match for a heavily armed intruder who has planned his attack, has the element of surprise, is probably suicidal and is determined to kill.

As TSTA President Noel Candelaria said this week in response to Abbott’s proposal, “Teachers are trained to teach and to nurture, not double up as security guards.”

In a recent national survey, 82 percent of educators told the National Education Association they will not take guns to school because they don’t believe that is the answer to gun violence.

TSTA supports the hiring of more professionally trained, fulltime security guards for school campuses and strengthening school facilities against intruders, which the governor also has proposed. TSTA also supports the governor’s call for increased mental health services and other steps to identify students at risk of hurting others. TSTA also believes the state should provide more funding to pay for all these proposals, an issue that the governor’s plan doesn’t fully address.

Abbott apparently is thin-skinned about TSTA’s opposition to arming teachers. In a tweet yesterday, he accused TSTA of not reading his plan before criticizing it. He said he doesn’t “mandate” arming teachers. We read his plan, and we know he doesn’t “mandate” more guns for teachers, but he certainly has proposed it. And it is a bad idea.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30