A new season of school voucher debate kicked off in Texas on Monday with hearings before a state committee.
For the past few years, Gov. Greg Abbott has been leading the charge to bring school choice to Texas, from his parent empowerment tour with the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2017 to his hitting the primary campaign trail to support pro-school choice candidates this spring.
After the primary elections in May, Abbott announced that the scale may finally be tipped in the Texas House. A likely majority seems to favor allowing families to use taxpayer money to fund the type of education they feel would be best for their children, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Nine of the 13 Texas House Republican incumbents who voted against school choice last year lost their primaries. If all the pro-school choice Republicans win their races in the general election, theoretically, there would be enough votes to pass education savings accounts, the mechanism by which school choice would likely be actioned.
Polling suggests broad support for some kind of school choice legislation across most Texas demographics.
The Texas Newsroom reports on the Texas House Committee on Public Education’s two-day hearing this week on school vouchers. Here’s the start of the story:
The debate over creating a school voucher-like program in Texas is gearing up again at the Capitol, where a panel of lawmakers met Monday to begin a two-day discussion on what vouchers could mean for the state.
It’s the latest move in the Texas Legislature’s long battle over Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs. Early last year, Gov. Greg Abbott told state lawmakers that passing an ESA program – which would allow parents to use public funds to cover costs associated with private education – was a top priority for the 2023 legislative session.
But after months of fierce battles over the program at the Capitol – including four special sessions, marathon hearings, protests and intense pressure from the governor – state lawmakers closed out 2023 without approving vouchers.
It’s now expected to be one of the biggest topics the Legislature will tackle when it reconvenes in January.
The point of this week’s hearings are to “evaluate the use of Education Savings Accounts in other states and make recommendations for a Texas program,” said Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, who chairs the Texas House Committee on Public Education.