Leaked audio of a meeting in Huffman ISD allegedly shows Superintendent Benny Soileau telling teachers they should vote against Republican candidates who support school choice.
Corey DeAngelis, a prominent school choice advocate, shared audio and a corresponding transcript on X, formerly Twitter, of a staff meeting at Hargrave High School that was led by Soileau. The superintendent purportedly stressed the importance of the Republican primary in Texas in ensuring a school choice bill is not passed next legislative session.
He said staff would be provided with a list of 16 lawmakers to vote for who oppose school choice.
“If we don’t support those 16 representatives in the upcoming election, we roll into the next session almost assured that we’re going to face a universal voucher bill that will change the face of public education for years,” Soileau said. “And where does that money come from? It comes from the same pot of money that we get ours from. So I’m going to stress to you the importance of showing up for polls and supporting those 16 individuals that have supported us.”
“We’ve got to make sure that we have a good showing,” he said.
“Get those 16 individuals, the Sweet 16, those names out to our staff,” he told the department’s communications staffer.
Huffman ISD did not respond to a request for comment.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, public school officials in Texas have been making headlines for their efforts to influence their employees’ votes in a bid to support anti-school choice candidates running for seats in the Texas House. In at least one case so far, such efforts spurred accusations of unlawful electioneering.
A series of school choice initiatives pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott failed to pass in the Texas House last year, as reported by The Dallas Express. This included opposition from 21 Republicans in the Texas House. Abbott has since targeted those members seeking re-election in the Texas primary.
School choice in the form of education savings accounts, which was the mechanism under consideration last legislative session, allows parents to take the taxpayer money used to fund their children’s public education and use it towards alternatives like private school and homeschooling.
According to the latest Texas Education Agency accountability reports, only 47% of Huffman ISD students scored at grade level on their STAAR exams during the 2021-2022 school year, however, 98.7% of its graduating seniors earned a diploma on time. For comparison, only 41% of Dallas ISD students scored at grade level, and almost 20% of graduating seniors did not get their diploma in four years.