A special legislative session on school choice in Texas will likely be held in October after Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial.
The special session would be the third in 2023, following two on property tax relief, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“The governor, the team and our allies continue to work on this,” said Dave Carney, Abbott’s chief political strategist, The Dallas Morning News reported. “We’re getting closer every week. When we have the trial and everything else behind us, then the governor will call a special session, probably in October, and we’ll get everything done.”
While it is unclear what kind of school choice legislation will come out of the expected special session, education savings accounts (ESA) were at the heart of serious deliberations in both chambers of the Texas Legislature during the regular session. ESAs would allow families to redirect their tax dollars to help pay for homeschooling or private school tuition if they are unsatisfied with their public school system.
“Parental choice and empowering parents to make education choices that are both best for them and their family improves both the public education system as we can see in Arizona and Florida and some of the other states that have passed it, and it improves individual opportunity as well,” claimed Austin Prochko of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, speaking with KTRH Local Houston.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, support for school choice has been polling relatively high in the Lone Star State, with a University of Texas at Austin survey indicating that a majority of Texans favor some kind of school choice legislation.
“There are a lot of kids that need to be helped, and ultimately everybody deserves to have school choice,” Carney told DMN.
Public school enrollment has been declining in recent years, with parents expressing concern over curricula and student achievement outcomes. Such concerns have translated into increased enrollment at charter schools.
Still, some resistance is expected in the Texas House from a bloc of big-city Democrats and Republicans from rural districts who have previously aligned against using taxpayer money to pay private school tuition or fees, claiming that such a policy would bleed traditional public schools’ budgets.