Grading Texas – Page 57 – Texas State Teachers Association

Trump, DeVos target college loan forgiveness program

Despite all his ill-informed hyperbole, President Trump’s knowledge about the lives and concerns of everyday Americans, including young school teachers and other college graduates, is hugely deficient. I don’t think he comprehends, for example, what it means to be saddled for years with student debt.

He never had any. So he apparently doesn’t care if millions of other Americans do. If the president did care, he and Betsy DeVos, his education secretary who is equally out of touch with the needs of the middle class, wouldn’t be trying to end a college loan forgiveness program that is a lifeline for more than 600,000 teachers, firefighters, law enforcement officers and other public-service employees.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, created 10 years ago, forgives large portions of college loans for graduates who take public service jobs and make loan payments on time for a required number of years.

The National Education Association story linked below cites the example of Greg Cechak, a 31-year-old teacher in Pennsylvania who is married to another teacher and owes about $80,000 for his state university education. Under the program, Cechak will see much of his debt erased after making 10 years of monthly payments on time.

According to the article, the average student loan borrower in the U.S. has more than $30,000 in student debt after graduating from college. Some graduates with advanced degrees have more than $100,000.

This is a major challenge for teachers and other public employees on modest salaries who perform jobs that are essential to our country’s future. They deserve and have earned a break on their loan repayments, and that is why the loan program was created.

If the program is axed, many of these teachers fear they will be forced for economic reasons to leave the classroom, a consequence that apparently is of no concern to Trump and his anti-public education partner.

NEA has joined a bipartisan congressional effort to save the loan forgiveness program. This story includes a link on how to take action by contacting your own members of Congress.

http://educationvotes.nea.org/2017/10/04/public-service-loan-forgiveness-thrust-peril-trump-devos-budget/

School kids once had role models at the top

Let us count the titles emanating from the West Wing: Tweeter-in-chief, bully-in-chief, liar-in-chief, pouter-in-chief, narcissist-in-chief, moron-in-chief. Outrageous and demeaning.

Commander-in-chief. Terrifying.

Role-model-in-chief? No way. And that is shameful.

There was a time when just about any school teacher would have been overjoyed at the prospect of the president of the United States – of either party — visiting his or her classroom or campus. Maybe not so much anymore.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/us/politics/trump-corker-feud-tweet-liddle-bob.html?emc=edit_th_20171011&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=72943954

Two judicial views of education, school kids

This is an abbreviated tale of two judges. One was a legal and civil rights giant who opened the doors of public schools to millions of children. The other is better known as a conservative Tweeter who has neglected the needs of school kids.

It may be absurd to contrast Don Willett with the late Thurgood Marshall because the historical deck overwhelmingly is stacked in favor of Marshall, but that’s the way my mind works some times. I am prodded by the coincidence of Willett’s nomination by President Donald Trump to a federal appellate court coming only a few days before the 50th anniversary of Marshall taking his seat as the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even before his Supreme Court appointment, Marshall had made history as an NAACP attorney who convinced the high court to outlaw segregation in U.S. public schools in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. Marshall, the grandson of a slave, later became U.S. solicitor general and made history again when President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court. He took his seat on Oct. 2, 1967.

Because of economic discrimination, housing patterns and not-so-subtle racism, the fight over segregated schools still isn’t over, but the landmark court ruling that Marshall won has given millions of children of color access to public educations they otherwise would not have known.

Willett, one of Trump’s choices for the 5^thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was one year old when Marshall joined the nation’s high court. More recently, Willett has been a conservative justice with an active Twitter account on an all-Republican Texas Supreme Court. Last year, he and his colleagues had the opportunity to strike an overdue blow for the school children of Texas. All they had to do was uphold a strongly worded, well-thought-out opinion by a lower-court judge that the state’s woefully underfunded school finance system was unconstitutional.

Instead, Willett and his colleagues reversed the lower court and upheld the school finance law, with Willett writing the majority opinion. Willett compounded the court’s failure by admitting that the funding system was very bad but just wasn’t bad enough to order the Legislature to do anything about it. I guess you could call that a political-judicial handwashing.

The court’s free pass gave Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick all the encouragement they needed to beat back attempts by Speaker Joe Straus and the House to improve school funding during this year’s legislative sessions. School children and local taxpayers in under-funded school districts will continue to suffer the consequences.

Although Willett tweeted several criticisms of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump included the Texas judge’s name on his first list of potential Supreme Court nominees. Now, Willett is settling for a seat on the 5th Circuit instead.

He tweeted that he was “honored and humbled” by the Tweeter-in-Chief’s decision, leaving a less-than-historic judicial record behind in Texas.

Straus under attack for promoting Texas instead of the political fringe

A fringe group of Republicans – including super-wealthy right-wingers who want to turn public education and the rest of state government into a cash cow of privatization – are trying to convince local GOP governing committees around the state to censure Texas House Speaker Joe Straus.

Straus is a Republican who actually wants to govern, not bully, discriminate or regress, and that’s what this is all about. A sample resolution being peddled by his detractors accuses the speaker of abusing his authority, making a “mockery” of representative government and doing “violence” to the Texas Constitution.

Hogwash.

What the right-wing beef really is all about is Straus’ insistence on putting the priorities of all Texans over the narrow goals of a minority of ideologues who have taken over much of the GOP’s governing apparatus and have a disproportionate influence over its primary elections.

For example, the sample resolution blasts Straus for obstructing legislation to spend tax dollars on private school vouchers, an alleged “Republican principle.” In truth, there always has been strong bipartisan opposition to vouchers, which is why the House for several sessions now has killed the legislation.

The fringe element also castigates Straus for opposing and helping to kill the bathroom bill, which would have discriminated against transgender Texans and singled out transgender school children for bullying. Straus considered the bill despicable and, if enacted, a barrier to future economic development. So did hundreds of prominent business leaders throughout the state, including Republicans, and many Republican members of the House.

The resolution also faults Straus for obstructing Gov. Greg Abbott’s agenda, including vouchers, the bathroom bill and a fake property tax “relief” bill that wouldn’t have lowered anyone’s property taxes by a dime. The bill, however, would have made it more difficult for local governments to pay for the fire and police protection, safe water supplies and other public services that even fringe ideologues have come to take for granted.

Straus and the House majority passed legislation during both legislative sessions this year that could have led to real cuts in school property taxes by increasing state funding for public education. The bill would have been a down payment on a new school finance system, but it was rejected by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Senate.

Straus’ approach to school funding and tax cuts is supported by most Texas voters, 79 percent of Republican voters and 86 percent of Democrats, according to bipartisan polling commissioned by TSTA earlier this year.

But Abbott and Patrick continue to spread the lie that Straus killed property tax “relief.” And both have indicated they will support efforts to unseat Straus from the speaker’s office because of his role in defeating vouchers and the bathroom bill as well. Abbott’s agenda is also Patrick’s agenda, a fringe agenda supported by officials who would rather pander than lead.

“When I place my hand on the Bible, and I raise my right hand on the first day of the session, I pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States and of this state, and not any party convention’s platform,” Straus said.

Or any wishlist concocted by a party’s fringe.

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