The Houston Chronicle’s editorial board excoriated Texas Governor Greg Abbott for making war on Republican legislators who opposed Abbott’s voucher proposal, and at the same time failing to meet his constitutional obligation to fund public schools.
Our own Captain Ahab, otherwise known as Gov. Greg Abbott, managed to plunge his harpoon into the belly of the great whale last week. After Super Tuesday, our public-school leviathan lists but is not dead yet.
The captain’s uber-wealthy allies — lWest Texas oilmen who are avowed Christian nationalists — must be giving thanks to God for Super Tuesday’s results and preparing for the death blow the next time the Texas Legislature meets. In 2022, they funded Abbott’s primary opponent and now their obsession with school vouchers has become the governor’s.
The aim of these “tycoon evangelicals” — to borrow Bekah McNeel’s label, writing in Texas Monthly — is to get their grappling hooks into our public schools, bleed them out and redirect public resources into private Christian education. So what if our hemorrhaging public school system washes ashore, a blanched skeleton left to the screeching gulls? As long as West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn of Midlandand the Wilks brothers from Cisco are for knocking down the wall — the one between church and state, that is, not the border between Texas and Mexico — how could their agent in the governor’s office be against it?
Abbott is more than halfway there already. Vowing revenge on members of his own party who helped deep-six school vouchers last fall, he relied on a $6 million donation from a Philadelphia billionaire, as well as overlapping donations from Dunn and Wilks, to knock off nine mostly rural representatives of his own party who opposed his obsession. More were forced into a runoff. Based on votes for the House voucher bill during multiple special sessions last fall, he needed to pick up 11 pro-voucher votes. The captain’s likely to reach his ocean’s 11 in the November general election.
“Republican primary voters have once again sent an unmistakable message that parents deserve the freedom to choose the best education pathway for their child,” Abbott said in a statement Tuesday evening. “We will continue to help true conservative candidates on the ballot who stand with the majority of their constituents in supporting education freedom for every Texas family.”
You’ll forgive dedicated public school teachers and administrators, as well as parents of school-age children, if they forgo standing. While Abbott exults, schools around the state — large and small, urban and rural — are grappling with massive budget deficits, thanks to Abbott’s voucher obsession and a Legislature diverted during four sessions last year from meeting its constitutional obligation to adequately fund public schools.
Remember January of last year? Lawmakers convened in Austin for their regular session almost giddy with the prospect of writing the 2024-25 state budget with an astounding cash balance to work with of $33 billion. They staggered home nearly a year later, having for the most part stiffed the school children of Texas (and by extension, the state as a whole). Rather than using that massive surplus to increase base-level funding, they approved $18 billion in property tax cuts. Meanwhile, school districts were left to grapple with inflation, the loss of federal funding designed to help schools weather the COVID-19 pandemic and no new monies to increase teacher pay, hire additional teachers and make needed investments.
Nearly every school district in Harris County is underfunded and in crisis, a recent Kinder Institute study determined. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, for example, is facing a budget shortfall of $73.6 million. For Spring ISD, the budget gap is an estimated $25 million. Spring Branch ISD announced recently that it plans to close two schools and charter programs in the face of a $35 million budget deficit.
Meanwhile, lawmakers continued their streak of penury last year: The last time they increased education funding was in 2019.
They had the best of intentions, it seems, setting aside nearly $4 billion for public education, but those dollars were never allocated. The school finance bill passed by the House ended up in the drink when the Senate added Abbott’s (and the tycoon evangelicals’) voucher scheme, a scheme that would benefit a relative handful of students around the state (and practically none in rural and small-town Texas).
To be clear, school choice or vouchers or education savings accounts — whatever the label of choice — is a legitimate policy issue. It deserves vigorous debate. But we’ve had that debate. Abbott lost on the merits. Wide-scale voucher programs in other states, such as Arkansas, have failed to produce strong academic improvements while draining public schools of funding.
What’s disturbing about the governor’s voucher obsession is his naked obeisance to wealthy special interests who manifestly do not have the best interests of the people of Texas at heart. Their ultimate aim, even if it’s not necessarily the governor’s, is to transform Texas into a Christian-dominated, biblically based state. Those 21 House Republicans who joined with 63 Democrats to block last year’s voucher proposal understood who benefited and who didn’t. And on Tuesday, many paid the political price. It’s of little consolation, we realize, but we salute their courage.
There will come a time when Texans have had enough of the mean-spiritedness and ideological narrowness of the current governor and his far-right cohorts, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton. There will come a time when they demand more from their elected public servants (emphasis on servants).
Given our long history with Abbott, it’s hard to imagine that other states do have elected governors, Republicans and Democrats, who acknowledge that they represent every citizen of their state, not only those who voted for them, who seek to unite not divide. In the words of New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, “they focus intently on the practical instead of the philosophical, emphasizing issues of broad relevance and not venturing needlessly onto the most divisive terrain.”
Bruni was writing about Democratic governors, among them Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen “fix the damn roads” Whitmer of Michigan, but the inclination toward moderation and practicality describes a handful of Republican governors, as well. Phil Scott of Vermont and Spencer Cox of Utah come to mind.
Of course, that’s not Texas — not today’s Texas, that is. Our obsessive Ahab remains at the helm, steering ever more to the starboard, ignoring the risk to his fellow Texans that he’ll one day run aground. We can do better.
Interesting testimony from Robert Hur today on Capitol Hill.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/12/biden-hur-transcript-classified-documents/
Actually I take it back, it’s very boring.
I thought Hur revealing his own extreme anti-Biden bias was made perfectly clear when he retorted “I DID NOT EXONERATE BIDEN!”
Somehow, when Democrats run the DOJ, they can release a report that clearly states that based on the results of an investigation, VP Mike Pence won’t be charged for possessing classified documents.
But unethical and biased Republican Hur, unable to find any credible evidence whatsoever that Biden’s actions were criminal, wants America to know that Biden is NOT innocent and the only reason Hur isn’t prosecuting a president when he uncovered so much evidence of that president’s criminal behavior is Biden’s severe cognitive failings.
It was interesting that Hur, under oath, blatantly misled the American people by saying that he had to put all the evidence his investigation uncovered about Biden’s severe cognitive decline in the report, because Hur wants the American people to understand that Biden’s cognitive decline is very relevant to why Hur isn’t prosecuting a guilty president after his investigation found no credible evidence of guilt.
Trying to imagine the DOJ’s Pence report coming with a long explanation about how this report does not exonerate Pence but instead should be taken as a report in which it is only Pence’s cognitive failings that has saved him from being prosecuted for his crimes.
Hur had so many memory failings already – he clearly had no memory of things in his own report from a few weeks ago.
I was hoping the Dems would do a gotcha with Hur. What was your first day of work on this investigation? What people did you speak with that first day of work? What what the date of your college graduation? What were the names of all the people present the very first time you met with President Biden on this issue? If Hur didn’t come up with an answer in 5 seconds, the Democrats should say “don’t worry Mr. Hur, your cognitive failings and memory issues are the only reason you won’t be prosecuted and going to jail for perjury – and feel free to be very grateful to us for being so unbiased to not prosecute you for the perjury you committed here because we feel sorry for you for having such serious memory failings.
(No one bother to tell me that there isn’t credible evidence that Hur committed perjury, because there is also no credible evidence that Biden committed a crime. That didn’t stop Hur from saying memory problems were the reason Biden wasn’t indicted for his crime, and Hur should be very supportive when Democrats tell him that Hur’s memory problems are the reason Hur won’t be indicted for perjury.)
Please consider my proposal below.
nycpsp,
You are so right. The Hur report exonerated Biden.
Unlike Trump, he did not hide secret documents. He did not resist returning them.
Separately, I tried to make a comment yesterday about the settlement of the lawsuit challenging Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law yesterday but it never made it on the site. It’s a very good settlement, rolling back the worst potential applications of the law and providing a lot of clarity for teachers and librarians.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/florida-dont-say-gay-law-settlement.html
<blockquote>The settlement language, which the state must share with Florida’s 67 public school districts, makes clear that the law does not restrict “literary references to a gay or transgender person or to a same-sex couple” in public school classrooms. It says that L.G.B.T.Q. references are not prohibited in literature, classroom discussions, students’ academic work or its review. Nor are such references prohibited when it comes to teachers’ spouses or partners, or any other context outside of instruction.
The settlement also says that instruction must be neutral on issues of sexual orientation or gender identity, meaning that teachers cannot, for example, teach that heterosexuality is superior to homosexuality or bisexuality.
It also clarifies that the law does not prohibit lessons about or intervention to stop bullying, and does not require the removal of “safe spaces” in schools for L.G.B.T.Q. people or stickers that identify such places.
And it makes clear that student-run organizations such as gay-straight alliances are permitted in Florida schools, along with book fairs, musicals or plays with L.G.B.T.Q. references or characters, and expressions and clothing that do not conform with a person’s perceived gender identity.
The law does not apply to school library books, so long as they are not being used for instruction, the settlement stipulates.</blockquote>
Thank you, FLERP.
One of the interesting things is that, as we know, the law gives parents the right to sue for violations of the law. Thus, under this settlement, if a teacher tells students that homosexuality is wrong or unnatural or something along those lines, that could be the basis for a lawsuit. That’s quite a turnaround.
from the NYT: ”In its own statement, Mr. DeSantis’s office said the settlement would ensure that “children will be protected from radical gender and sexual ideology in the classroom”
whew, thank goodness we have a law protecting the children who – before the law was passed – were being victimized by radical gender and sexual ideology in the classroom.
So DeSantis approves of the settlement because it still protects the formerly victimized kids who had been suffering so much without that law.
Not sure why the law is even in place, except for Republicans to reassure their voters how much they hate LGBTQ people and demonstrate what they want to do to gay people in the future as soon as they gain a little more power.
No offense, but given the acrimony that arose in a separate thread, which has happened a thousand times in the past and will continue to happen as long as we are interacting, can we just agree not to respond to each other’s comments? It wouldn’t be difficult.
WordPress reprinted one of Bob’s comments 20 times a few days ago. I must delete manually.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson: As three is to twenty, so is the proportion of Bob S. to Flerp.
Which is greater? 3 or 20?
$3 or $20?
3 traffic tickets or 20?
Context matters.
flerp!,
I was not responding to you personally. You brought up a new subject to discuss — the Hur hearings and the Florida ruling — and I posted 2 comments about that subject – in fact, Diane Ravitch agreed with a comment because my comment had nothing to do with you, it was simply a comment on a subject you brought up. It wasn’t even challenging anything you said!
I believe that Diane Ravitch has enough faith in us and she assumes that we know the difference.
People give up on the Democrats and Republicans ever being able to discuss anything, but that’s not true, and the answer isn’t for people from those parties to be banned from speaking to one another. The answer is for them to speak more respectfully to one another. I believe both my replies here were perfectly respectful to you and we should both be trying to keep that kind of respectful dialogue going. I hope you consider this reply to be respectful, too.
The historical record suggests that faith would be badly misplaced, but ok.
People in the South need a crash course on how to identify propaganda. These right wing extremist governors keep convincing them to vote against their own self-interest.
“knocking down the wall” — the one between church and state needs to exist, before it can be knocked down.
”They had the best of intentions, it seems, setting aside nearly $4 billion for public education, but those dollars were never allocated.”
I assume this is meant sarcastically. The Tennessee state republicans have acted this way for the past two administrations. Got going on 12 years, they make a big show about raising funding for public education, but the money never makes it to teacher salaries, libraries, or programs. It is all smoke and mirrors.