Tag Archives: public education

education news, State news

School vouchers: bad deal!

Gov. Greg Abbott keeps spitting in the faces of what should be his most ardent constituency, the rural Republicans who vote overwhelmingly to keep the GOP governor in office.

That’s right. He continues to push for his school voucher plan that would take money from public school districts and give Texans the choice of sending their children to private schools.

Why is that such a spitter? Because rural Republican legislators have been arguing against the school voucher plan because of the negative impact it would have on public school systems that are the heart and soul of so many rural communities.

Public schools so often in Texas are the center of social life in many towns. GOP legislators know it better than anyone, which is why they have been battling with the governor over his desire to rob the school systems of money they need.

Abbott said that pro-voucher legislative candidates fared well in the March primary this month. He said the state is “two votes away” from making the voucher plan law. He is urging Republicans to put his plan over the top in the Texas House by electing just two more pro-voucher Republicans.

According to the Texas Tribune: “We are now at 74 votes in favor of school choice in the state of Texas. Which is good, but 74 does not equal 76,” Abbott said, referring to the number of votes he needs to pass the bill into law. “We need two more votes.”

Greg Abbott says Texas close to passing vouchers | The Texas Tribune

He tried to get the measure enacted through four special legislative sessions after the 2023 Legislature adjourned this past May. He failed every time.

This effort disgusts me, as a taxpaying Texas resident who sent his own children through public schools. They received fine educations, earned their college degrees and have become productive members of this great state’s population.

Therefore, I am going to root against the effort to put Gov. Abbott’s notion over the top.

education news, State news

They work for us … not them!

How many times am I going to say what I’ve been saying since The Flood … which is that our legislators — be they state or federal — work for the people who elect them, not for those who run their respective legislative bodies?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, throttled in his effort to rob public schools of money and handing it to private institutions, is targeting Republican legislators who had the temerity to vote against his school voucher plan. He is endorsing opponents of GOP incumbents seeking re-election in 2024.

Let’s set the record straight. The GOP legislators who oppose school vouchers represent rural districts that depend heavily on the health and livelihood of their public schools. They pledge to their constituents to support public education, given that in many rural communities the school system serves as the lifeblood of the community. Abbott wants to unseat House Republicans who oppose his crusade for school vouchers, which would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to help pay for private school costs.

They did not pledge to support every single legislative agenda topic favored by Abbott!

This is ham-handed governance at its worst.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is employing the same strategy against those lawmakers who voted to impeach him earlier this year. For the purposes of this blog post, I am going to concentrate on Abbott’s campaign of revenge.

It is absurd!

To their credit, the rural GOP legislators who dug in against vouchers have held firm in their opposition, likely signaling an end to the string of special legislative sessions Abbott kept calling in an effort to foist his voucher plan on Texans. Their resistance infuriates Abbott, to be sure.

My response to that? Big … fu**ing … deal!

These lawmakers are looking out for the interests of the folks who sent them to Austin to do their bidding, not dance to the tune called by Greg Abbott.

education news, local news, State news

Game over, Gov. Abbott

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hasn’t yet disclosed whether he plans to summon the Legislature for a fifth special session.

My hope is that he calls it a day, surrenders to the reality that his cherished school voucher program is DOA, that the House of Reps isn’t going to go along with his notion of robbing public education of money to benefit private schools.

He can wait until the 2025 Legislature to try again, even though it will remain a bad idea in two years.

Rural GOP lawmakers bristled at the notion of taking money from public schools. Why? Because the school system is the heart and soul of many of these communities. I endorse their resistance.

To that end, Gov. Abbott needs to call it quits on this notion.

Our Legislature comprises Texans who have day jobs when they’re not legislating. It’s expensive to the state to call them back. It’s also expensive to many of our lawmakers who need to put their working lives on hold.

Give it up, Gov. Abbott.

education news, local news, State news

Give up voucher fight

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he is “in it to win it” as he fights to gut the state’s public education system in search of a voucher program that would bolster private schools.

I presume that’s his way of saying he intends to call a fifth special session of the Legislature if it fails to produce a plan he wants, which would be to enable parents to use taxpayer funds to send their children to private schools.

The Legislature approved an amendment this past week that tossed the voucher notion aside. Democrats oppose the voucher program. Legislative Republicans who represent rural House districts don’t like it either and they joined their Democratic colleagues in scuttling the notion.

I happen to be a strong supporter of public education, so I will use this forum to implore the governor to give up the fight to gut our state’s public school system.

The rural Texas Republicans understand the place that public education has in the communities they represent. In many instances — even if you discount the “Friday Night Lights” aspect — public schools are the heart and soul of these communities.

Their elected lawmakers know it. It’s a shame the governor does not grasp this obvious fact of everyday life in small-town Texas.

education news, local news, State news

Vouchers torpedoed by GOP lawmakers

How ’bout them rural Republican Texas legislators for standing up for their public school systems?

They have helped torpedo a plan to allow public school money to be funneled away to enable parents to enroll their children in private schools. According to the Texas Tribune: The House voted 84-63 in favor of an amendment offered by Rep. John Raney, R-College Station, which removed the provision of the bill allowing some parents to use tax dollars to send their children to private and religious schools. Twenty-one Republicans, most of whom represent rural districts, joined all Democrats in support.

Texas House votes to remove school vouchers from massive education bill | The Texas Tribune

Is this a major embarrassment to Gov. Greg Abbott, who keeps calling legislators back into special session to enact his top priority? You bet it is.

My hope is that Abbott will surrender on this approach that he deems so vital.

The GOP lawmakers understand something fundamental about the role that public school systems play in their district. Which is that the schools are the heart and soul of their districts. Why damage or destroy them by taking money away? They won’t go there. Nor should they!

Pete Laney of Hale Center is the most recent Democrat to serve as speaker of the House. Laney always said that he wanted to let “the will of the House” determine the flow of legislation. One of his successors, Republican Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont, is following that lead.

The will of the House has spoken on behalf of our public education system.

education news

Support public education … not deplete it!

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called the Legislature back to work for its third special session this year, aiming to enact a law that allows Texans to divert their property taxes into private school systems.

Gov. Abbott can count me out!

I happen to want the Legislature to put more money into public education, not deplete its revenue stream by allowing Texans to purchase vouchers to spend on their kids’ education.

I am willing to concede that public education in Texas isn’t doing all it can do to provide our children with the best education possible. I see the test results and I am acutely aware that Texas students’ perform below the national averages on almost all educational disciplines. Much of that is cultural, some of it is economic.

It’s also because Texas public educators likely do not believe they have the support of the men and women in power who have it within their power to give teachers and administrators all the support they deserve.

Dammit to hell, anyway! Texas public education deserves better than it is getting from the state and, in some instances, from local school boards whose members have been bitten by the “anti-woke” bug. Public educators have found themselves distracted by pressure to ban books or to teach students only a “certain way” that adheres to some right-wing ideology.

I hate the notion of public education being kicked around like the proverbial political football. That is what is happening with the governor and legislators getting set to fast-track Texans away from public education.

As a believer in spending public money on public education, my sincere hope is that we can do more within government to improve the education we provide our children.

education news

School choice next up for debate

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There is something profoundly counterintuitive about asking people to pull their money out of public education and using that money to pay for others to enroll their children in private schools.

That, however, is what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants the Legislature to do when it meets in a special session next month. I cannot think of a more harebrained idea than this.

Those of us who ardent supporters of public education are going to fight this notion. It turns out that Democratic legislators along with their rural Republican colleagues oppose this idea. For the life of me I don’t understand why the state is seeking to cripple public education in this manner.

I read recently where the Amarillo Independent School District is losing students to private schools already. Texas funds its public school system based on enrollment, so now the state wants to accelerate that decline by giving parents taxpayer money to pull their children out of public schools and enrolling them in private institutions?

I don’t get it.

“There’s an easy way to get it done, and there’s a hard way,” Abbott said on a tele-town hall about the issue. “We will take it either way — in a special session or after an election.”

Abbott says special session on school choice coming in October | The Texas Tribune

That sounds like an ultimatum to me.

Public education is an investment I happen to be willing to make. That the governor would want Texas to make it easier to injure the public school systems in the state is an utterly astonishing policy decision.

education news

Farmersville ISD: ahead of curve

I am chuckling just a little as I watch the news reports of North Texas school districts considering and then approving new school calendars resulting in four-day school weeks.

Why, they just can’t believe how cool it is to give teachers an extra day off from the rigors of the classroom; it enables the districts to attract quality educators who are enamored of the four-day school week idea. Hey, not to mention the children loving the extra day off each week from school.

Well, I’ve been covering a local school district that implemented a four-day school week during the COVID-19 pandemic. Farmersville Independent School District liked it so much the school board recently approved a policy that stays with the new calendar. I see no signs of the school district turning back.

Just recently I spoke with an FISD administrator about all the hoopla surrounding other districts’ decision to follow Farmersville’s lead. She joked that it’s nice to be ahead of the curve. Indeed, the four-day week has worked well for Farmersville, as it has been able to do the very things that other districts aim to do for themselves.

I am equally impressed that a school district with which I have become familiar can hold itself up as a model for progressive education.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

education news, State news

Teachers want to bail

Finding and keeping high-quality educators is a difficult enough job even when conditions are ideal. Throw in a killer pandemic and then politics on top of that, then the public school system faces a seriously daunting task.

The Texas Tribune reports a disturbing trend: Results from a new online survey of K-12 teachers in Texas, released on Thursday, shows most “seriously considered” leaving the profession this year, a 19% increase from two years ago.

Not good, man. Not good at all.

Earlier this year we saw Dallas-Fort Worth area school districts pummeled by resignations of superintendents, some of whom were leaving districts that as recently a year ago were honored for superlative work in educating children.

What drove them away? In too many cases, it was the constant hectoring from parents over mask mandates and other restrictions made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Tribune reports:

For its third annual survey on teacher satisfaction, the Charles Butt Foundation last spring sent an online questionnaire to 1,291 Texas public school teachers who were randomly selected from the Texas Education Agency’s 2020 roster of teachers in the state. All of them responded.

The Charles Butt Foundation is a nonprofit organization named after the chair and CEO of H-E-B, the largest privately held employer in Texas. The foundation’s goal is to make public education more equitable across the state through community partnerships.

I tried my hand at substitute teaching in 2012 and learned right away I am not wired to work with other people’s children. My brief exposure to classroom work filled me with admiration for those who see it as a calling.

Therefore, I am unsettled to learn that politics is getting in the way of those who are dedicated to guiding young minds and to teaching them skills they will need to succeed.

New survey indicates more Texas teachers want to quit | The Texas Tribune

It shouldn’t need to be said, but Texas can ill-afford to let good teachers go because of political pressure. Our public school system, for which we all pay, suffers as a result.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

education news

Pols step up correctly!

My previous blog spoke well of the Texas State Board of Education’s decision to keep teaching elementary public school students about “slavery” and to forgo the use of a term called “involuntary relocation” in our curriculum.

I want to highlight one aspect of that decision. It came unanimously. Yes, 15 members of the SBOE voted as one. Why is that a big deal? Because the SBOE comprises politicians who are elected to the office. They run as Republicans and Democrats. They have constituencies to which they must appeal. They represent vastly different districts drawn across our vast state.

They come from different ideological backgrounds, bias and political leanings.

Yet on this matter, they spoke with one voice.

Make no mistake, the SBOE made the correct statement. The term “slavery” should remain in our public school curriculum to remind our children of the darkest chapter in our nation’s history.

That the SBOE locked arms on this matter is cause for high praise.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com