Governor Greg Abbott of Texas insists on vouchers. He has promoted them in every legislative session. Last year, he called several special sessions of the legislature, solely to get his vouchers passed. He failed and failed and failed. Since last year, he collected millions of dollars to spend defeating anti-voucher Republicans. He spent it on a campaign of lying about them, barely mentioning vouchers but accusing the refuseniks of opposing extra funding for public schools (they opposed extra money for public schools linked with vouchers), he accused them of failing to support Trump on the border, he threw dirt and lies, and he defeated several of those anti-voucher Republicans for their perfidy.

Here’s where matters stand today, as reported by Gromer Jeffers, Jr, in the Dallas Morning-News:

AUSTIN – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott insisted Monday that he would accept nothing less than a robust, universal school choice voucher program, and he resisted calls to join the plan with blanket increases in public school funding.

As he did in Sunday’s State of the State speech, Abbott committed to raising public teacher pay, but on his terms and largely in the form of merit increases

A plan to allow families to use public dollars on private schools is the centerpiece of his legislative agenda for the legislative session that ends in June. Abbott said his success last year in using the primaries to oust House Republicans who voted against school choice dictates that any plan approved by lawmakers be universal and substantive.

Political Points

“An overwhelming majority of Texans want school choice,” Abbott said during an interview in the Governor’s Mansion with The Dallas Morning News. “I won all of those races because the voters want school choice, so now there’s no reason for us to ratchet back on what we’re going to do, especially knowing full well that what we’re seeking to achieve here right now is exactly what the voters of Texas want. Most important is what the parents across the state of Texas want.”

Abbott will make a campaign-like stop Tuesday in support of school choice at a private Christian school in Athens.

In Monday’s interview with The News, Abbott also stressed his commitment to helping President Donald Trump with his immigration policies, discussed the mechanics of lowering property taxes and said his relationship with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows was better than ever.Related:Texas Senate committee approves ‘school choice’ bill on party-line vote

The governor said he was hopeful his agenda, which includes seven emergency items, would be approved by Texas lawmakers.

School choice tops his wish list.

Abbott is backing Senate and House plans that would devote $1 billion for education savings accounts to help families pay for private school expenses and tuition. He wants voucher-type assistance available to any Texas student who wants it.

Public school advocates say they are concerned about the impact universal school choice would have on public education. In the past, a coalition of rural Republicans and urban Democrats in the Texas House have been able to block voucher-style plans, but Abbott says he has 79 votes in the 150-member chamber to approve school choice.

His stronger political position has resulted in a hardening of his education policies, which do not include a significant increase in money to public education outside of teacher pay raises.Related: ‘Hardcore’ supporters will help Texas finally pass school choice plan, Gov. Abbott says

“We bent over backwards to try to provide a compromise position last session,” Abbott said. “They weren’t going to negotiate at all. They said they don’t want anything other than ‘not school choice.’”

Abbott said public education is being funded at historic levels, adding that private schools in Texas were not on “equal footing” with public schools that use taxpayer dollars to build facilities.

“We’re talking apples and oranges here,” Abbott said. “There’s so much money and so much expansion. Spending on the education side has been on the administrative side. We’ve got to ratchet back the spending on administration and devote that money to where it belongs and where it’s most useful, and that is paying our teachers.”

Teacher pay raises would be partly across-the-board because it would come in the basic allotment. The bulk, however, should be devoted to merit increases, Abbott said.

“We want to ensure that we’re putting teachers on a pathway to be able to earn a six-figure salary,” he said. “Some will be across the board. A lot will be a merit.”

A Senate proposal would add $4.9 billion to the Foundation School Program for teacher pay and changes to the Teacher Incentive Allotment. Teacher pay would increase $4,000 for all teachers, plus an additional $6,000 for rural teachers.

State Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, disagrees with Abbott, saying public schools are not adequately funded because of inflation and unfunded mandates, including paying for increased school security.

“The unfunded mandates that both he and the Legislature put on local school districts, we need to make them whole, because it’s the right thing to do,” Anchia said. “We asked them to increase security, and we said we would pay for it.”

Anchia said $5 billion devoted to public education is sitting unspent.

“We should fully fund public schools based on the historic reform bill that we passed in 2019 and release the funds that he withheld during the last biennium for public education,” Anchia said. “He held these funds hostage to get his subsidy of private schools, also known as the voucher scheme, done.”

Abbott says schools could have had that money, but they rejected his education savings account plan.

Anchia said he hoped pay raises would become a reality.

“I’m all about driving money through the formulas down to the local districts, where they know how to make investments better than any politician in Austin,” he said.

Another major agenda item for Abbott is taxes. Texas has a $24 billion budget surplus to work with, and the governor wants property taxes reduced on top of the historic $18 billion property tax cut he signed in 2023.

Abbott said local tax increases often mitigated the 2023 property tax cut, and he said he hopes to sign legislation that would require local tax increases to be approved by two-thirds of voters.

“Reducing property taxes going forward is only going to work if we tie the hands of the taxing authorities to make sure they’re not going to be able to increase property taxes,” Abbott said.