Vouchers

Texans should have been allowed to vote on the voucher issue

The Texas Legislature just passed a voucher bill that gives $10,000 per student into an Education Savings Account (ESA) so families can send their kids to private schools. Meanwhile, the basic allotment for public school students was raised by a whopping… $350. From about $6,150 to $6,500.

Let that sink in: $10K per kid for private school, but only $6.5K for public school kids — the same public schools that have been chronically underfunded for the last 15 to 20 years. Experts estimate Texas has withheld about $30 billion from public education during that time.

Guess what Texas currently has in its budget surplus? You guessed it: $30 billion. And you wonder why districts are closing schools….

This voucher scheme is especially wild when you consider the cap: $1 billion over two years. That means only 100,000 kids out of 5.6 million Texas public school students would qualify. That’s less than 2%. So we’re turning public education upside down for 2%?

And let’s be real: in Southeast Texas, we don’t even have the private school infrastructure to accommodate a meaningful number of students. We’ve got one private school district and a few other options — nowhere near enough to offer real “choice.”

I’ve got nothing against private schools — my own son went to Kelly Monsignor — but this isn’t about choice, it’s about priorities.

And in rural Texas? Folks yelling “School Choice” don’t even have a choice. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

If we’re going to spend $10K on a handful of kids, why not spend $10K on every kid? Or at the very least, match the voucher amount for public students?

Because right now? The math ain’t mathing. We can talk about teacher pay and who these vouchers have historically benefited in other states later — but trust, that’s the next topic.

—Derek Freeman, former mayor of Port Arthur