Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde voiced her opposition to school choice legislation in a panel discussion on Tuesday.
The “Where Do Public Schools Go From Here?” event was organized by The Texas Tribune and held in Dallas.
Elizalde was joined by San Antonio teacher Laura Herrera, Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), and Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association.
Creighton and Elizalde clashed over a common refrain regarding “vouchers” that has been advanced by detractors of school choice legislation — namely that they would essentially defund traditional public schools.
“It’s absolutely absurd that 50,000 or 60,000 children that need help in other alternatives would be a threat to public schools,” Creighton said.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, public school enrollment has been on the decline in Texas, with concerns over education quality and perceived politicization of curricula growing in recent years.
Dallas ISD, for instance, has logged dismal achievement outcomes, with only 41% of students scoring at grade level on their STAAR exams during the 2021-2022 school year. Additionally, almost 20% of the district’s graduating Class of 2022 did not earn a diploma in four years, despite the hard work of Dallas ISD’s dedicated teachers and principals.
Furthermore, district parents and community members have previously voiced concerns about certain books made available to students by Dallas ISD, many of which contain sexually explicit material.
Creighton accused opponents of school choice of prioritizing the well-being of public schools as an institution over students’ education.
“To think that educators would put an organization above students is completely opposite of what public school educators do each and every day,” Elizalde said. “I do not think it’s fair to say that we are protectionists because we’re concerned.”
Elizalde has long been an opponent of school choice legislation, slamming the Texas Senate’s proposal to allow families to use up to $8,000 of taxpayer money per child to help defray the costs of homeschooling or private school.
“I kind of find it upsetting that the Texas Senate would pay people more to take their kids out of public schools than it pays to educate them in our own schools,” Elizalde claimed at a Dallas ISD school board meeting in May.
Still, polling conducted by the University of Texas at Austin suggests that support for school choice is on the rise, with a majority of respondents registering their approval for some type of school choice legislation.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to arrange a third special session in October to focus on advancing such legislation. Bills filed during the regular session called for education savings accounts to be the legal mechanism by which families could exercise more control over their children’s education.
“Every parent deserves choices about where they will send their child to school. All these parents know this isn’t a Republican issue, it’s not a Democrat issue. This is a civil rights issue,” Gov. Abbott said previously, according to the Texas Observer.