Here's the latest on the governor's priority for this session of the legislature.
- Texas Senate unveils its priority school voucher bill.
The Texas Senate unveiled Monday its main bill to establish an education savings account program, a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott this special session.
. . . The state comptroller’s office would establish and administer these education savings accounts. The bill seeks to allocate $500 million from the general revenue fund for the next two years to pay for the program. The comptroller’s office would also be in charge of preventing fraud and misuse of funds — a major area of concern for many lawmakers — as well as approving an organization to help process applications and approve vendors and participating private schools.
Creighton says that the program will not siphon money away from public schools as the funding comes from general revenue, not the Foundation School Program, which is the main source of funding for the state’s K-12 public schools.
The bill does not require private school students to take a state-administered academic achievement exam, something that school voucher critics in the Texas Legislature have said an education savings account proposal should have to even consider it.
If passed into law, almost any student who was enrolled in a public school last year would be eligible to apply for the program, as well as any student ready to enroll in Pre-K or kindergarten.
The bill includes a formula to prioritize entry to the program if there are more applicants than funds available. Forty percent of open spots would go to students who receive free or reduced lunch; 30% to families who earn between 185% and 500% of the federal poverty line; 20% to those with disabilities; and 10% to those who attended public, private or home-school in the last school year.
- School voucher bill gets initial approval in the Texas Senate, heads over to a more skeptical House.
A bill that would create a school voucher program to let parents use state funds to pay for private schools — a longtime conservative goal and a big concern for public education advocates — was approved in the Texas Senate on Thursday.
Senate Bill 1, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, would create education savings accounts, a voucher-like program that would allow families access $8,000 of taxpayer money to pay for private schools and other educational expenses such as uniforms, textbooks, tutoring or transportation among other things. SB 1 is nearly identical to Senate Bill 8, which passed the Senate during the regular session but died in the House.
The Senate gave final approval to the proposal Thursday with a 18-13 vote.
The Senate also gave final passage to Senate Bill 2, also authored by Creighton, which would infuse $5.2 billion into school districts to help them with teacher raises and rising costs. The bill would raise the basic allotment — the base amount of money schools get per student — from $6,160 to $6,235. This money is used to pay for the day-to-day operations of a district and can be used to increase teacher salaries. It also includes more money for schools to spend of security upgrades.
- Texas’ main voucher bill seeks to avoid other states’ mistakes but keeps ideas that attracted criticism.
The Texas Senate’s main school voucher proposal this special session, which was given approval in the Texas Senate on Thursday, closely resembles two of the biggest such programs in the country.
Like in Arizona and Florida, Senate Bill 1 would create a voucher-like program known as education savings accounts. It would give families access to taxpayer money to pay for their children’s private schooling, be open to most students in the state and prioritize disabled and poor students if there are more applicants than funds available.
In some aspects, the bill’s architects took notes from those programs’ mistakes. In an effort to prevent fraud and misuse of funds, which has been a problem in Arizona, the Texas proposal doesn’t give parents direct access to the cash and requires the comptroller’s office to audit participants’ accounts.
In other areas, Texas repeated ideas that garnered criticism in other states. Critics across the country point out that private schools receiving state funds through existing voucher programs aren’t required to show that students are succeeding academically, like public schools are. And like in other states, voucher supporters in Texas say that’s by design. Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican from Conroe and SB 1’s author, has argued that the market will weed out underperforming private schools.
