Amped-up rhetoric by Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton about taking over school districts serves as a warning the Texas GOP wants a full-scale privatization of the state’s public education system, critics charge.
Democratic lawmakers and at least one teacher union president tell the Current they are thoroughly convinced such a plan is already underway. What’s more, there’s growing consensus that Texas’ school voucher program is less about giving parents more options than it is enriching the legislation’s backers.
This month, Paxton launched an investigation into San Antonio’s North East Side Independent School District (NEISD), saying he wants to determine whether district officials approved and facilitated recent student walkouts protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Tom Cummins, president of the North East AFT teachers union, said Paxton’s threats are both unfounded and concerning.
“As far as I know, the school district was very clear about their instructions to teachers,” Cummins told the Current. “Every policy was followed properly. The most important thing was student safety.”
Paxton’s school walkout investigation also includes Dallas ISD and Austin’s Manor ISD.
“Students are utilizing their First Amendment rights, something we should celebrate, whether it’s students with progressive ideas or students who have conservative ideas. We want our students to be curious about the world, to use their voices,” State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, said during a recent campaign stop in San Antonio as part of his U.S. Senate run.
“Instead of applauding those students, our top state leaders are trying to go after them with the power of their public office, and it’s unconscionable,” Talarico, a former San Antonio school teacher, added. “Our students and our educators deserve a lot better in this state.”
Paxton’s investigations come as the Texas Education Agency (TEA) plans to take over four public school districts this year due to “low academic performance.” Those include Beaumont ISD, Connally ISD, Lake Worth ISD and Fort Worth ISD.
San Antonio ISD, which is facing a $49 million budget deficit, is also teetering on the brink of a TEA takeover, depending on the outcome of this year’s STAAR testing.
North East AFT’s Cummins said the sudden rush of takeovers shows the GOP-controlled state’s eagerness to dismantle public education and replace it with private schools, many more driven by profit motives than an interest in ensuring quality education for all students.
“There’s been a decades-long plan by the Republican Party to privatize public education in Texas, and part of that was the charter program,” Cummins said. “Any politician who voted for charter schools was voting to close neighborhood schools. Anyone who voted for vouchers is voting to close neighborhood schools. There’s no question in my mind that the takeovers are part of their plan to discredit public education.”
Cummins isn’t alone in that assessment.
Ginning up panic
The TEA takes over school districts when one of its campuses receives a failing, or “F” grade under the state’s academic accountability rating system for five consecutive years.
On paper, that sounds like a reasonable barometer, but State Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, said the reality is more complicated. The likelihood of districts receiving a failing grade has steadily increased because Republicans refuse to fund public education.
“They’ve been in charge for decades now, and they’ve managed to backhand cities, counties and public universities,” Bernal told the Current. “But, somehow, they still want to blame school boards for these failures, when it’s really theirs.”
Since Abbott was first elected as governor in 2015, Texas’ per-student spending has increased from roughly $11,000 to about $15,000. Despite the increase, the state’s per-student pending is still $4,000 less than the national average. Further, Texas ranks near the bottom when it comes to public spending on education, according to the Texas State Teachers Association.
The state’s spending on public education stagnated around the same time Abbott began his full-court push to get the Texas Legislature to pass school vouchers.
Although Democrats and rural Republicans shut down that plan during the 2023 legislative session, Abbott ultimately got his wish two years later. Last year, lawmakers approved legislation allocating $10,000 vouchers to around 100,000 students.
The passage of voucher legislation came roughly a decade after the TEA also made the STAAR test — which is used to evaluate district performance — considerably more difficult.
For Bernal, the timing is no coincidence.
“What they’ve done is introduced a voucher scheme and at the same time, made the test harder and then threatened takeovers while underfunding schools,” said Bernal, a father and former San Antonio city councilman. “The takeovers signal that the district is not doing a good job and failing, and you’re going to send more kids towards vouchers.”
It’s about the money
Experts have long warned that Texas’ investment in public education will further decline due to vouchers.
The state’s public school funding is based on school enrollment. If more families sign up for the voucher program, enrollment in public campuses will decline, draining much-needed money for campuses to function, much less stay open.
The problem is especially pronounced for already underfunded rural districts, which are often miles from the nearest private school. Rural voucher opponents argue they won’t reap the supposed benefits of the program while seeing their public school systems rot on the vine.
Critics also warn that the state’s $10,000 handout isn’t enough to fund public education for poor families. However, it’s sufficient to knock down a portion of wealthier families’ annual tuition payments.
Bernal described the system as welfare for the rich.
“In the voucher scam, it is not only known but acknowledged that people who don’t need the help, who are people of means and wealth, will get it anyway,” he said. “That’s not only corruption but hypocrisy of the highest fucking order.”
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, who’s running to replace Abbott, said the upshot is clear: vouchers aren’t really about expanding choice for parents.
“What is happening is districts are being taken over by the state in an effort to control all the vendor contracts, the contracts to build schools — all those things are always about the money when it comes to what Greg Abbott is doing,” Hinojosa told the Current during a recent campaign stop at San Antonio’s The Social Spot.
Among the vendors Hinojosa is referring to is New York-based tech firm Odyssey, which Texas tapped to manage its $1 billion taxpayer-funded voucher rollout.
Odyssey has ties to pro-school voucher Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who donated more than $10 million to Abbott’s campaign war chest.
While it’s easy to dismiss Abbott’s school voucher crusade as part of his culture war agenda, Bernal cautions that there’s more involved — namely money, and the children are just collateral damage.
“I always thought that kids were off the table,” Bernal said. “That the suffering or harm to kids was something that we [as state lawmakers] wouldn’t stand for, and that was something we can all agree on in terms of doing our very best and putting our best foot forward. That’s not the case at all.”
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