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The 86th Session of the Texas Legislature, just completed on Monday, May 27, was the most productive on behalf of our 5.4 million schoolchildren in recent memory. Certainly, it was the finest session in the six years Pastors for Texas Children has been in existence.
The signature policy achievement of this legislature was House Bill 3, which secured over $5 billion dollars in new funding for our 8500 Texas public schools, enacted a significant teacher pay raise, implemented full-day, high quality Pre-Kindergarten instruction—and did all of this without any standardized test contingency and without any substantive push for a private school voucher. While some regressive forces in state government wished to use our surplus of $10 billion plus dollars to “buy down” rising property taxes, more generous and aspirational voices prevailed to allocate this bounty for investment in the public education of our children. While the return on that investment is delayed until the child reaches adulthood, there is no better investment in the future prosperity of our great state than good public schools.
Furthermore, our message that public schoolteachers are the messengers of God’s Love and the keepers of God’s Common Good, joining Christian pastors and church leaders in this high and holy calling, resonated more harmoniously with policymakers than ever before.
Clearly, the voices of faith leaders and faith communities played a key role in this huge step forward of the enactment of HB3. Quality public education for all of God’s children is protected by the biblical mandate for justice as well as by the Texas State Constitution. It is a moral imperative embraced by civil society.
We were in the capitol every day making visits, holding significant conversations, praying with House and Senate members– but we were also in the Texas communities urging pastors and church leaders to do the same with their own legislators! It is this dual approach that is so effective. It was our privilege to carry that message every day of this session to our 181 House and Senate members.
This historic legislation is not perfect. There are fixes and corrections that need to be made in it in the 2021 session. But, as an old preacher said years ago, “Something doesn’t have to be perfect in order to be good.” Clearly, HB3 is a huge first step in the right direction in correcting funding lapses of the past decade, and in restoring Texas to its rightful place of leadership among our United States in per pupil spending on our children.
The work is not finished. Now that the Session is over, we can focus exclusively on the great work to mobilize churches and pastors for local school assistance. This is the fun part! We love taking this powerful message to our Texas communities!
None of this could have been done without you. Your moral witness and direct advocacy on behalf of God’s “least of these”—our precious children—advanced healthy education policy this session. It also helped produce the kind of legislature that supports public education as a provision of social justice and opposes its privatization for personal financial gain. “Well done, good and faithful servants.” We thank God for you!
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Awesome. Thank you, PTC!!!
The children of Texas are fortunate to have these religious leaders working to improve public education. Public schools are by far the most efficient and effective way to educate our young people. Privatization has been an out of control waste of public dollars. Public schools can only do their best work if they are fully funded. It is rewarding to see that the efforts of the Texas Pastors for Children have secured more funding for the coming school year.
Maybe my grandson’s teacher will be able to quit her second job as a supermarket cashier.
“implemented full-day, high quality Pre-Kindergarten instruction”
I’m not sure that Pre-K “instruction” is necessarily a good thing. Let children be children without the formalities of structured instruction.
“Furthermore, our message that public schoolteachers are the messengers of God’s Love and the keepers of God’s Common Good, joining Christian pastors and church leaders in this high and holy calling, resonated more harmoniously with policymakers than ever before.”
My oh my!
It might have “resonated more harmoniously” but “Messengers of God’s love. . .”–Horse manure! Many teachers do not subscribe to xtian mythology as the “Pastors for Texas Children” seem to want to believe.
Keep your god nonsense out of the public schools. I’m not so sure that these folks see things much different than Betsy DeVos and her brand of xtian nonsense when it comes to public school policy issues.
It strikes me that they are attempting to contradict the notion that conservative Christianity trumpets and that DeVos champions. This is the notion that has split off a large group of practicing American Christians. It suggests that one must conform to conservative political goals to actually be Christian. These pastors seem to be saying that they believe Christianity and the common good are compatible notions, not contradictory ideas as the post-Falwellian version of Christianity would suggest.
I agree with Roy: There are many types of Christians, from conservative to liberal and those who are a mix. These Texas pastors are speaking up and stepping out, in the same way that courageous church leaders led the Civil Rights movement. Hopefully, more churches will follow suit.
People of all viewpoints should be allowed to speak and vote their conscience, which for many is born of spiritual and religious beliefs. This is why I don’t push the separation of church and state mantra: If I am politically active based on my beliefs, I need to allow others the same right. My beliefs are what propel my political activism. However, I understand clearly not to teach my beliefs in the classroom, so perhaps that is what “separation of church and state” refers to.
Separation of church and state in its original meaning was a prohibition on a government establishment of any religion. The Founding Fathers did not want an Established Church in the new nation. They did not want one establishment or many establishments. They thought that government should not support churches or any religious institutions. If their parishioners cared about them, they would support them with their own money. Church-state issues have been debated for many decades, and the Supreme Court has made limited exceptions. But now, the Trump administration and their friends want to erase that “wall of separation.” They want government to support the schools and churches of all religions. That is what the Founders opposed.
I would add to what I said earlier by suggesting that their assertion of a religious basis for their motivation might have more to do with the competition between pre and post Fallwellianism. The motivation might be more intended to point out the religious differences than the political ones. The moral majority attempted to split off Christians from mainstream Protestant denominations by playing up social issues that tended to horrify traditionalists who has at that time come to tolerate some of the diverging viewpoints in a changing society. Some very conservative religionists were not on board with the politicization of Christianity under the guidance of the moral majority. They feared that allowing alliance with political aims would corrupt the faith. (it strikes me they are more than justified in this fear given their present political support for a man married four times and recorded boasting of immorality on several fronts)
As for the separation of church and state, I have recently read of the fear held by the enlightenment generation, men like Madison, Adams, and Jefferson, that the American experiment would devolve into the religious wars so near to their history. It had only been just over a century at that time, when the ravages of the Thirty Years War had been settled by the first modern treaty between heads of state. The idea of loyalty being mixed up in religious rivalry horrified the founding fathers. One of the paradoxes of the originalist judicial idea is that they look so intently at the intentions of the founding fathers in some instances, but ignore them when it comes to the “wall of separation” language Jefferson used in his controversial letter.
A second group that focused on the perils of established religion, one in which state money supported church purposes, was the colony of Maryland, where the Calvert family feared the Protestant majority over their own Catholic background. Then there were Unitarians, persecuted by both Catholics and Protestants in Europe, and Quakers, and ……the list is endless.
Bob Sheperd pointed out some time back in this venue of discussion that the separation of church and state has produced an extremely viable religious culture in this country. He is right, of course, and I tend to blame European declines in participation in organized religion more on its checkered history there than any other factor. When the French revolutionary movement defaced the cathedrals, these great works of art were bearing the brunt of centuries of corruption in religion as it related to political life.