AUSTIN, Texas — Van Vleck ISD has just over 1,000 students. John O’Brien has been with the district for 23 years, working his way up to superintendent emeritus.
Van Vleck is about 75 miles outside of Houston, Texas’ largest city. The town has a few private and charter schools, but most kids go to public school. If Texas passes a school choice program this session, O’Brien said his district might lose some teachers.
“We’re going to have to get rid of staff members, so to speak, or lay off staff,” he said.
That’s because school choice programs typically take tax dollars away from public schools, and give them to parents to use for a different type of education. The money doesn’t belong to the school; rather, it belongs to the student.
“The reason I’m not in favor of [school vouchers] is because of ‘level field,’” O’Brien said. “As a former coach, one of the things we always want to do is have equal playing, equal rules. And right now, in the state of Texas, the rules between public school, charter school, private school are not the same. We’re held to a much higher standard in the public schools. And so therefore, to me, the principle of taking taxpayer dollars, and moving them towards a charter school that doesn’t have to be accountable to the same things we do, or to a private school that doesn’t follow the same rules that we follow, I think is not fair. It’s not fair to our schools, meaning public schools, but it’s also not fair to the taxpayers. You’re taking taxpayer money and putting it elsewhere.”
Texas parents already have the freedom of choice. They can send their child to a private school if they’re admitted and can afford it. What makes a state-sponsored school choice program different is that parents could redirect tax dollars from public schools to whatever educational option they see fit for their child, including home schooling.
“The money that is allocated to a student’s education is allocated to educate that student,” said Andrew Campanella, the president of the National School Choice Awareness Foundation. “It’s a better use of resources to make sure that money is spent effectively educating a child in a school or learning environment that has been specifically chosen for the child by his or her parents.”
Campanella described school choice as a state-sponsored scholarship program that helps make private education more affordable.
“I don’t look at private school choice programs as being a tax break or a giveaway to wealthy taxpayers. I look at it as just the opposite: leveling the playing field so that all kids can go to schools that best meet their kids’ needs,” he said.
But O’Brien said programs like this create an uneven playing field for kids.
“I don’t need funds that should be going towards all the kids being pulled away to go to a private school down the street,” O’Brien said. “That’s our biggest concern.”
Bigger school districts don’t want school choice either. Per the Dallas Morning News, Dallas ISD says it needs more money, not less, to pay for school safety initiatives.
But Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick say this is the year that Texas will create a school choice program. In the past, rural Republicans and Democrats haven’t supported it.
Matthew Wilson, an associate professor of political science with Southern Methodist University, said it’s a big deal that Patrick is on board.
“He can make sure this moves through the Senate, and I think that’s really critical for getting something done on this issue,” he said.
Wilson added that there’s a big push for school choice right now because many parents were dissatisfied with public schools during the pandemic. And, there’s been outrage about what students learn in school and read in libraries.
“That’s given a real impetus to the school choice movement, and I think makes it more likely that something will happen in this legislative session than in legislative sessions past,” Wilson said.
If a school choice program were to pass, there’d need to be an accountability system, so the money isn’t mismanaged.
“There will have to be some sort of verification: People have to submit receipts, confirmation. Or, depending on how they structure this, the money could go directly from the state to the educational institution to support a student’s tuition,” Wilson said. “There are a variety of different ways that you can set this up. But you know, like anything that the state does, there will be some oversight bureaucracy that’s necessary in order to make sure people are spending the funds for the purpose for which they were allocated.”
Skeptics say Texas public schools are already under-funded, and taking money away from them would only make that worse. On Tuesday, Rep. James Talarico, D-Round Rock, introduced a bill that would increase teacher salaries in Texas by $15,000. He said teacher pay in Texas lags the national average by $7,500. While a $15,000 pay bump may not be realistic, Wilson said Democrats and Republicans could negotiate so they get the best of both worlds: pay raises and school choice.
“It depends on whether Republicans think they need any Democratic votes for this. And that’s largely a question of how much unity there is within the Republican caucus around whatever voucher program ultimately emerges,” he said. “The backdrop to this is they are dealing with a large surplus, so there’s a fair bit of money to spend. And that creates some possibilities that wouldn’t exist in a more fiscally pinched kind of situation. So they may feel like there’s money to go around for a variety of different things. But it’ll be interesting to see what kind of trade-offs happened between the teacher pay increases in the school choice and issues.”
Wilson added that if the school choice issue doesn’t get brought up early enough in the session, it might not make it to the finish line.
“This is the sort of program that is sufficiently complex,” he said. “If they’re scrambling to get it ironed out in the last few days of the session, it’s probably going to fall by the wayside. And so I think that’s the thing to watch: What is the timetable on which action takes place?”