In recent years, Texas public education has become a battleground for right-wing ideologues aiming to embed Christian nationalist values in the classroom and to defund or privatize the state’s public schools, which currently serve about 5.5 million students. This 89th Legislative Session is no different. 

After spending more than $8 million on last year’s House primaries to oust anti-voucher Republicans, Governor Greg Abbott appears confident that school vouchers will pass. But the bipartisan election of Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows over hard-right opponent David Cook may throw a wrench into the education agenda of conservatives, who have already filed hundreds of bills targeting the school finance system, LGBTQ+ students, undocumented immigrant children, and more. 

School Finance

In 2023, Abbott sat on a $33 billion surplus without increasing state aid to schools, in a failed bid to tie funding to the passage of a school voucher program. There is now a projected $24 billion surplus for the next biennium that could be tapped. 

Facing record-high inflation rates and no increase in per-student funding since 2019, Texas public school districts have been cutting staff and services and closing schools. 

In response, Democrats have filed several bills proposing to increase per-student funding. Democratic Representative Vikki Goodwin’ House Bill 1770 would raise the amount from $6,160 to $7,500 next year, adjusting annually with inflation. 

Other bills tying school funding to student enrollment instead of attendance, which has been less consistent since the COVID-19 pandemic, may also stabilize school districts’ finances. Democratic Representative Gina Hinojosa’s HB 1157 would use student enrollment to determine school funding as well as special program support—and limit the student-to-teacher ratio. 

Meanwhile, some GOP bills threaten to dismantle the main source of public school funding: property taxes. 

Since 2019, when the Legislature passed a school property tax compression bill, the state has cut the rate of property taxes that school districts receive, known as the M&O tax (for school maintenance and operations). Senate Bill 2, approved in 2023, also advanced $18.6 billion in property tax cuts without providing additional funding for schools. 

Some new GOP bills threaten to either deepen those cuts or eliminate school property taxes altogether, like HB 960 or HB 165 filed by Republican representatives Steve Toth and Cody Vasut, respectively. 

Other Democratic and Republican legislators have proposed bills to offset current or future property tax cuts by tapping the state’s surplus revenue for schools. But some legislators, like Democratic Senator Nathan Johnson, don’t see this as a long-term solution. “Historically, Texas has surpluses and deficits. If we hit a deficit in two, four, or six years, and we have these very large mandatory contributions from the state to school systems in lieu of local property tax dollars, the state could respond by cutting funding for public schools when there’s not enough money,” Johnson told the Texas Observer. 

School Vouchers

In 2023, 21 House Republicans joined Democrats to strip approval of a voucher program, which would entitle students to receive public dollars to attend private schools, from the public school funding omnibus HB 1. Today, only seven of those Republicans remain. A bipartisan group recently elected Dustin Burrows as House Speaker, even though Burrows endorsed school vouchers. Passage of some kind of voucher program seems assured in both chambers, which have already set aside $1 billion in initial budget planning to create it.

Republican Representative Matt Shaheen filed HB 612 in the House, which resembles a bill that failed in 2023. Senate Republicans filed a similar bill, SB 2, and will hear public testimony Tuesday. 

Neither bill limits the amount of general revenue that could be tapped to fund the program nor on the number of students who can receive vouchers. Nor would the bills set minimum financial or academic accountability standards for private schools who receive the funding. SB 2 does require private school students who receive vouchers to take standardized tests, but it does not require the state to monitor their academic achievement. SB 2 would offer $10,000 to students for private school tuition and lesser amounts to students who hire a private tutor. While proponents have argued that a voucher program would be created by tapping the general revenue fund instead of the Foundation School Program that funds public schools, opponents have warned that districts would lose funding anyway since public schools receive money based on student attendance, which would decrease if school vouchers pass. An intermediary “educational service organization” could collect a percentage of appropriated funds (5 percent under HB 612, 3 percent under SB 2) to manage the program. Under Shaheen’s version, individuals could also receive a tax credit if they contribute to the program, further reducing the state revenue available for public schools and other services. 

Unlike past proposals, both bills limit eligibility to children who previously attended public school or are entering kindergarten. But legislators, like Republican Representative Drew Darby, have warned that similar restrictions were quickly removed in other states’ voucher programs. “Once you have a program, they [the guardrails] will be removed, and the program will expand,” Darby said in an interview with WFAA ABC News. 

Culture Wars

Attacks on Texas public schools’ marginalized students do not seem to be relenting this legislative session. 

Under the guise of expanding parental rights, Republican Senator Bob Hall filed SB 86, which would require school district employees to inform parents if their student requests to use different pronouns or identify as transgender. The bill also mandates districts to request parental consent for students to participate in LGBTQ+ student clubs and prohibits instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation. Hall’s proposal mirrors a Katy Independent School District policy passed in 2023, which requires employees to report a student’s preferred pronoun to parents. (The U.S. Department of Education later opened a Title IX gender harassment investigation, and some Katy ISD students reported feeling less safe.) 

Under SB 86, parents could sue school districts for violating parental rights under the Texas Education Code. Republican Representative Jared Patterson’s HB 284 similarly aims to expand parental rights by establishing a state ombudsman for parents who wish to file a complaint against a school district, its employees, the state education agency, or the State Board of Education. 

Republican Representative Ben Bumgarner is reviving efforts to deny undocumented immigrant children access to public education. Like its previous iterations, HB 371 would require students to provide proof of citizenship or legal status to enroll in public schools. Districts would be compelled to report children who do not meet these requirements to the state. Previous efforts have been a non-starter because such a law is likely unconstitutional. 

School Safety and Discipline

School safety and discipline bills filed this legislative session appear to be moving away from punitive zero-tolerance policies, which public school advocates say have failed to make schools safer.

SB 570, a bipartisan proposal, aims to reduce truancy by calling upon district officials to conduct home visits and identify additional services for affected students. Senator Johnson filed SB 559 to reduce the state’s student-to-school counselor ratio, and Democratic Representative John Bucy’s HB 458 would offer alternatives to suspensions for students below sixth grade receiving special education services. 

HB 3, which passed in 2023, requires armed guards on every campus, but it did not provide funding. Republican Senator Joan Huffman filed SB 260 which would double the per-student and per-campus safety allotments. Democratic Senator Royce West has filed a similar bill, SB 598, which would increase the per-student safety allotment from $10 to $100 and the campus allotment from $15,000 to $60,000. In comparison, Representative Toth’s HB 1010 proposes punitive measures to enforce HB 3. Under his bill, if school districts fail to comply with safety and security requirements, the commissioner can assign a conservator to oversee the district. 

Charter Schools

State funds to charter schools have nearly quadrupled since 2010, when the state education commissioner became empowered to expand charter school’s campuses, without input from the public or elected officials, once the entity had been greenlit by the State Board of Education. Texas charter schools receive 20 percent of state public school dollars but enroll only 8 percent of all Texas public school students, according to a 2024 Legislative Budget Board analysis. Texas Democrats have filed multiple bills this legislative session to rein in the expansion of charter schools. 

Democratic Representative Terry Canales’s HB 1693 would require a state auditor to review open-enrollment charter schools receiving more than $100 million in state revenue. And Democratic Senators Borris Miles, Roland Guttierez, and José Menéndez filed SB 285 prohibiting a charter organization from using state funds to bankroll charter schools outside Texas. The bill follows stories by Spectrum News and the Texas Observer about the out-of-state financial transfers, and financial operations and reporting, of a charter school nonprofit formerly run by Houston Independent School District superintendent Mike Miles.

Democrats have filed several bills to curb charter school expansion. Senator West’s SB 605 would prohibit the approval of a charter’s expansion if it doesn’t meet accreditation, academic, and financial accountability standards, or if it is subjected to disciplinary actions by the education commissioner. Representative Diego Bernal’s HB 756 would allow the education commissioner to approve expansions only under certain conditions and only once each biennium. 

Standardized Testing

Republican Representative Brooks Landgraf is responding to years of protests against high-stakes testing by parents and teachers. HB 221 does not eliminate high-stakes testing, but it would require end-of-course state testing “only as necessary to comply” with federal law. That would mean eliminating the Algebra I, biology, English I and English II, and US History state tests for middle and high school students. 

SIGN UP FOR TEXAS OBSERVER EMAILS

Get our latest in-depth reporting straight to your inbox.

Sign Up

The post Public Education Bills: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly appeared first on The Texas Observer.