Pastors for Texas Children reports on the voucher battle in Texas. Vouchers were defeated overwhelmingly in the Republican-controlled House a few weeks back, but like a zombie, they have risen from the dead at the insistence of voucher zealot Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
Let’s hope that Speaker of the House Joe Strauss and Dan Huberty, chairman of the House Public Education Committee, both good Republicans, stand firm against public funding for private schools.
Pastors for Texas Children Statement on Senate Passage of HB 21 With Vouchers Attached
May 22, 2017
In the dead of last night, the Texas Senate, for the second time this legislative session, passed a voucher policy that transfers public tax money to private schools.
Under Speaker Joe Straus’ leadership, House Bill 21 came to the Senate with a structural reform provision for school funding calling for $1.6 billion additional dollars for our schoolchildren.
But due to the legislative bullying of their leadership, the Senate stripped that provision by almost two-thirds—and attached a voucher amendment to the bill that would divert already strapped public education funds to private schools.
The bill now returns to the House of Representatives where that voucher amendment must be removed. The House has already repudiated voucher policy by a more than 2/3 thirds vote earlier this session.
It is simply wrong to underwrite private education with public funds, even if that voucher is for children with special needs. 90% of our Texas schoolchildren are educated through the public school system supported by the public trust. Private school vouchers provide for the few at the expense of the many. They are inherently unjust.
When the voucher supports a religious school with public dollars, whether Baptist, Catholic, Muslim or Wiccan, it is a government establishment of a religious cause. In doing so, vouchers violate God’s principle of religious liberty for all people without interference from any government authority.
It is abundantly clear that the leadership of the Texas State Senate does not believe in public education for all children. For them to persist in saying so is a deception that we take no pleasure in confronting. Such hypocrisy is morally unacceptable.
Our Texas schools serve 5.3 million children, the majority of whom are poor. To transfer and redistribute wealth away from them to private schools through vouchers is offensive to God and decent people everywhere. We are grateful for a Texas House with the courage to say no to this corruption of our common good, and we pray for a Texas Senate that is willing to do the same.
—
Charles Foster Johnson, Pastor, Bread Fellowship of Fort Worth
Executive Director, Pastors for Texas Children
P.O. Box 471155
Fort Worth, TX 76147
(c)210-379-1066
http://www.pastorsfortexaschildren.com
http://www.charlesfosterjohnson.com
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ed reform are really all-in on vouchers.
Everyone who said charters would lead directly to vouchers was exactly right. Critics were all dismissed at the time as “defending the status quo” but charters = vouchers is exactly what has transpired in state after state.
They’re really owed an apology by the charter lobby. They were in fact correct.
Go back and read Barry Goldwater on public school privatization. Ed reformers have now actually gone much further than Goldwater ever did. Goldwater said public schools would continue to exist and would remain the majority. Even he never imagined federal and state lawmakers working to wipe public schools off the face of the map.
I thought it would be difficult to get to the Right of Barry Goldwater but ed reform has succeeded.
There’s not even a debate about this in ed reform circles. They’ve moved even further toward privatization since Trump’s election. Public schools are never even mentioned anymore.
The new battle in ed reform is between people who will consider allowing public schools to exist and people who won’t.
I’ve been looking thru the voucher campaign speeches Betsy DeVos has made since she was appointed, and I cannot find a single mention of a successful public school student.
No one at the US Department of Education can find a single successful graduate of a public school? That’s remarkable.
It’s really not true that everyone who attends a public school ends up in prison, despite what they may have heard at the lobbying events they attend.
Is this supposed to be helpful, this deliberate, politically motivated denigration of public schools and public school students?
This is called “GRAND THEFT or GRAND LARCENCY” and punishable by law.
http://modelmugging.org/crime/theft-larceny-burglary-robbery/
Has this country LOST ITS MIND?
We have been HAD, public schools have been ROBBED and I repeat, punishable by law.
I am not a lawyer but it is Interesting that the pastors do not even mention the Supreme Court or Constitution, or the fact that vouchers can go to religious schools under the conditions outlined in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 2002. In that case, about 98% of the vouchers were used for Catholic schools. Newer voucher laws are being developed without regard to the contextual “reasons” that the Supreme Court acted upon which included school performance measures that may be questioned as applicable in 2017. For a brief on the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case see Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelman_v._Simmons-Harris
I noticed that discrepancy, too. The constitutional issues has been settled for over 15 (fifteen) years, and I am continually amazed, at how the opponents of school choice/vouchers have never heard of this case.
Q When the voucher supports a religious school with public dollars, whether Baptist, Catholic, Muslim or Wiccan, it is a government establishment of a religious cause. END Q
I wonder why this man thinks this way. The Supreme Court ruled otherwise over fifteen years ago. Vouchers are redeemed at parochial schools, in all of the states, which have voucher programs.
It is perfectly all right to be opposed to school vouchers. But there is no constitutional issue.
Chas, if your state constitution forbids using public funds for religious schools, then you can’t do it. Unless your state courts decide to distort the plain language of the state constitution for political or ideological reasons.
I disagree. In Missouri, the state decided to provide the tire chips to the Lutheran school, regardless of the constitution. The case would have been dropped (Trinity school v. Pauley), but the case is under review now.
More to the point, Texas has a Blaine amendment, it is true. Nevertheless, the state Attorney general has stated:
973 Tex. AG LEXIS 231, 15-16
Opinion No H-66
The Texas attorney general concluded that
providing public funds to parochial schools
through tuition equalization grants under a
religiously neutral program is not inherently
unconstitutional under the Texas Constitution
because although Texas’ second Blaine Amendment
(Article VII, Section 5) “prohibits aid to sects[,]”
“not all denominational institutions are sectarian in
the constitutional sense.
also
1975 Tex. AG LEXIS 285,
Letter Advisory No. 105
The Texas attorney general concluded that
distribution of state-owned textbooks to private
school pupils would not violate a Blaine
Amendment (Article I, Section 7) of the Texas
Constitution because it would provide only
“minimal benefits to the sectarian activities of
nonpublic schools.”
Read all about it at
Click to access 50-state-SC-report-2016-web.pdf
If some Texas pastors are opposed to school vouchers, that is their right. But, as they say in Texas: “That dog won’t hunt”.
Charles,
That dog is hunting. Vouchers have been defeated by the Tepublican majority every time: OVERWHELMINGLY. By Republicans who love their communities and their public schools.
I also believe that school choice/vouchers will have a difficult time passing in Texas. The support for them is not there, and the support for traditional public schools is very strong.
Nevertheless, the constitutional issue is settled.
The unkillable ZOMBIE of charter school support. Great imagery.
“In doing so, vouchers violate God’s principle of religious liberty for all people without interference from any government authority.”
Hmm, anybody have a bible verse for that one? I guess it could come under the auspices of “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto god the things that are god’s”. (again the question of which god comes into play)
However, the claim of “religious liberty for all people without interference from any government authority” is actually spelled out in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which was written by MAN:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; etc. . . .”
As a student of the Holy Bible, for over half a century, I have yet to see any specific Bible verse, relating to school choice/vouchers.
That’s a good one, Chas!!