Summary: The third Special Session of the TX 88th Legislature began 09 October 2023, focusing on SCHOOL CHOICE, with other issues added, like Boarder Security, Public Safety, and COVID Mandates. WPC will update and repost this blog as new information develops.
Latest Update: 06 November 2023; 09 October, 2023
Select #Tags for additional articles: #StateLegislation
Image by Dallas Express
Schools, Special Session 3 , 88th TX Legislative Session
Schools, Educational Freedom, (school choice, school vouchers, public school funding, teacher pay raises)
• Only 2 Measures Reach Governor’s Desk in Third Special Session, Texas Scorecard, 06 November 22023. Excerpt. As the third special legislative session comes to an end today, lawmakers have sent to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk. / One measure bans COVID-19 vaccine requirements in most settings. The other increases penalties for human smuggling and operating a stash house. / The rest of the agenda stalled out, including creating a state-level offense for illegal entry from a foreign country and addressing housing areas—like Colony Ridge—that seem to serve as magnets for illegal aliens. / Most notably, the Texas House has again thwarted Abbott's desire for a school choice program.
• Texas House Offers New School Choice Bill Ahead of Looming Fourth Special Session, The Texan, 06 November 2023. Excerpt. The new proposal includes $10,500 per student out of a $500 million appropriation for education savings accounts.
• Patrick Would ‘Support’ Abbott Calling Fourth Special Session in February 2024 to Pass School Choice, The Texan, 03 November 2023, Excerpt. The school choice feud between the upper and lower chambers might require a fourth special session, Patrick suggested.
• The Texas House’s new priority education bill offers the most concessions yet to sway voucher skeptics, The Texas Tribune, 03 November 2023, Excerpt. The revised bill promises a significant funding increase for public schools and academic accountability measures for students participating in the proposed voucher program, two of the biggest requests from voucher opponents.
• Texas House Leadership Casts Doubt on School Choice Passing in Third Special Session, The Texan, 02 November 2023, Excerpt. The future of school choice now is in question after recent comments from Rep. Brad Buckley saying there is limited time to pass the legislation.
• Opinion: The Broken Deal on School Choice, Texas Scorecard, 02 November 2023, Excerpts. Dade Phelan and 23 Republican House members broke faith with Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP. What will the governor do about it?
• House to Abbott: School Choice Is Dead For Now, Texas Scorecard, 02 November 2023, Excerpt. Just yesterday, Abbott said he had reached an agreement with House Speaker Dade Phelan on a compromise bill.
• These home-schooling moms want to create a “microschool” for Black kids. They need vouchers to make it happen. The Texas Tribune, 02 November 2023, Excerpt. The mothers, who are counting on state legislators to reach a deal on education savings accounts, say their public schools were not equipped to create a learning space that is safe for Black kids.
• With time running out, House punts on taking action on school vouchers, The Texas Tribune, 01 November 2023, Excerpt. Gov. Greg Abbott just announced he’d reached a deal with the House to advance school vouchers, but with less than a week before the Legislature must adjourn the lower chamber took no action on the governor’s priority legislation.
• School leaders say Texas’ campus safety funding doesn’t cover new state mandates, The Texas Tribune, 01 November 2023
House Bill 3, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, requires school districts to develop active-shooter plans and mandates mental health training for certain employees. It also provides funds for schools to install silent panic buttons in classrooms and requires each campus to have an armed guard present during school hours.
• Gov. Abbott expands special session to advance school choice bill, The Texan, 31 October 2023, Excerpt. Texas House fails to make quorum to accept the call
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday expanded the call for the current third special legislative session to add items to his school choice bill, which already passed the Senate and has gone nowhere in the House.
Abbott did so after House Democrats introduced their own $40 billion education funding bill that would give all Texas teachers $15,000 raises, and as Texans are voting on 14 constitutional amendments, including a proposition to spend millions of dollars to increase retired teachers’ pensions.
Abbott expanded the special session call after having “productive discussions with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan,” saying they reached an “agreement on school choice for Texas families.”
• Abbott touts school voucher deal with House leaders, but others reluctant to say if bill will pass, The Texas Tribune, 31 October 2023, Excerpt.A deal between the governor and House would be a breakthrough after months of talks. But whether they actually have a deal is unclear.
• 2024 Primary Slate Fills Up as Texas Legislature Grapples With School Choice, Paxton Acquittal, The Texan, 31 October 2023. Excerpts.
The lifespan of the Texas Legislature’s special session is rapidly waning with little movement on the marquee issue thus far, and primary challengers determined to campaign on school choice against incumbents are circling the wagons.
The Texas Senate passed its education savings account program the first week of the third called special session — a plan that would allot $8,000 per student with a $500 million appropriation to include 62,500 kids.
Across the rotunda, the House’s blueprint would provide between $10,000 and $11,000 per student enrolled in the education savings account program, but includes a 25,000-student cap in the first school year and a 50,000 cap in the second year. All students are eligible for the program under that plan, but space is slightly more limited than in the upper chamber.
To provide enough carrots to get it across the finish line in the House, that blueprint comes with extra accountability measures, a teacher pay raise, and an increase to the school district basic allotment that currently sits at $6,160 per student.
Gov. Greg Abbott — who's spent loads of political capital to push school choice — panned the House’s proposal as insufficient. The school funding provisions would also need to be added to the governor’s special session call in order to pass.
As the third special session nears its end, it increasingly looks like no school choice proposal will pass; expectations in the Capitol are that Abbott will call an immediate fourth special session once this one expires.
It’d be the first time legislators will be in session over the Thanksgiving holiday since the 71st and 72nd Legislatures, when the body took up workers’ compensation reform and school funding, respectively.
• Gov. Abbott, Others, Push for School Choice, The Dallas Express, 30 October 2023
Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas leaders are continuing to vocally advocate for school choice as the legislature stalls on the issue.
Several weeks into the third special session, the school choice package has ground to a halt in the Texas House under the leadership of Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) despite popular support among Texans.
• Private schools are ready to expand into smaller communities if Texas adopts voucher program, The Texas Tribune, 30 October 2023. Excerpts.
With rural Texas relatively underserved by private schools, the potential for expansion could play a role in the debate over whether to let families use taxpayer money to pay for private education.
Promise Academy, a Christian private school in northern Tyler, opened about nine years ago to provide low-income families with a low-cost private school education.
The mission of the school, which serves kindergarten through fifth grade on one campus, is to provide a Christian education to those who otherwise couldn’t afford it. On average, parents pay $100 a month for the school year. Most students are Black or Hispanic, and 94% are considered low income.
Now, with education savings accounts — a school voucher-like program — a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott and some other Republican leaders, the Christian school dreams of expanding to serve more families.
• Facing enrollment declines, Texas Catholic schools are leading supporters of school vouchers, The Texas Tribune, 27 October 2023. The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops has been one of the staunchest voucher supporters, arguing it would increase access to religious education regardless of income level.
• Ted Cruz Urges Texas House to ‘Get it Done’ on School Choice, The Texan, 26 October 2023. Cruz said he will support opponents in primaries where the incumbent did not vote for school choice legislation.
• Opinion:House To Abbott: Won’t Pass Choice Without A Payoff, Texas Scorecard, 26 October 2023 Excerpt.
Texas House pushes funding for systems, not students, in a deliberate attack on Greg Abbott’s special session agenda.
The Texas House leadership has apparently broken a deal with Gov. Greg Abbott about school choice. Worried about the response from voters back home, some Republican members of the House are already telling constituents that school choice (and other conservative priorities) did not get done because there was not enough time available.
This is the 307th day of 2023. The legislature had 140 days of regular session, two complete special sessions of 30 days each, and now this third, of which four days remain. That is to say, the Texas Legislature has been in session for 226 days.
In that time, the Texas Senate managed to complete all the work put before it. The House, on the other hand, took 5-day weekends for several months.
On the other hand, the House announced and voted on the impeachment of a popularly elected statewide official in just 48 hours.
Your House members did not run out of time. They ran out the clock.
• Local legislator Glenn Rogers receives the Public Education Champion Award, Aledo ISD Bearcat News, 26 October 2023
Aledo ISD Trustees and administration as well as Denton ISD administration stood alongside Raise Your Hand Texas to present State Representative Glenn Rogers with a Public Education Champion Award Friday night.
Rep. Rogers continues to support public education and increased public school funding while opposing private school vouchers. We are grateful Rep. Rogers’ your work on behalf of our nearly 8,200 school children and 1,000 staff members in Aledo!
• House To Abbott: Won’t Pass Choice Without A Payoff, Texas Scorecard 26 October 2023
• Voucher proposal spurs mix of excitement, wariness in Texas home schooling community, The Texas Tribune, 20 October 2023, Excerpt. Parents of Texas’ growing population of home-schooled students are split over whether education savings accounts would give them much-needed financial help or represent an unwanted government involvement in their kids’ educations.
• House, Senate bills at odds over power to boost future funding for Texas school voucher program, The Texas Tribune, 20 October 2023. Excerpt. The Senate’s Republican bill would let state leaders grow the program by taking money from other agencies without the Legislature’s approval. The House bill would bar the practice.
• Texas House priority bill increases education spending in exchange for creating voucher program, The Texas Tribune, 19 October 2023, Excerpt. House Bill 1 would make an educational savings account program available to 25,000 Texas students in its first year, with increased participation to follow. The governor’s office indicted that the proposal was lacking.
• $15,000 teacher raises part of House Democrats $40 billion school finance bill, The Center Square, 19 October 2023, Excerpts The Texas House Democratic Caucus on Thursday proposed a $40 billion public school education package that includes $15,000 teacher raises. / State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, filed the Fully Fund Our Future Act, which is unlikely to go anywhere in the Republican-controlled legislature. / It was introduced as an alternative to the Republican-introduced school finance and school choice bills that passed the Texas Senate, which would create the state’s first Education Savings Account program. / Hinojosa said her bill would fully fund public school education, which she and others argue aren’t fully funded because of inflation.
• Gov. Greg Abbott Calls on Texas Lawmakers to Expand Education Freedom, Texas Scorecard, 13 October 2023, Excerpt. Abbott said Thursday night that the legislature needs to get school choice across the finish line.
• Texas’ main voucher bill seeks to avoid other states’ mistakes but keeps ideas that attracted criticism, The Texas Tribune, 13 October 2023
The Texas Senate’s main school voucher proposal this special session, which was given approval in the Texas Senate on Thursday, closely resembles two of the biggest such programs in the country.
Like in Arizona and Florida, Senate Bill 1 would create a voucher-like program known as education savings accounts. It would give families access to taxpayer money to pay for their children’s private schooling, be open to most students in the state and prioritize disabled and poor students if there are more applicants than funds available.
In some aspects, the bill’s architects took notes from those programs’ mistakes. In an effort to prevent fraud and misuse of funds, which has been a problem in Arizona, the Texas proposal doesn’t give parents direct access to the cash and requires the comptroller’s office to audit participants’ accounts.
In other areas, Texas repeated ideas that garnered criticism in other states. Critics across the country point out that private schools receiving state funds through existing voucher programs aren’t required to show that students are succeeding academically, like public schools are. And like in other states, voucher supporters in Texas say that’s by design. Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican from Conroe and SB 1’s author, has argued that the market will weed out underperforming private schools.
• Gov. Greg Abbott says he’ll add teacher pay to the special session — but only if lawmakers pass school voucher bill, The Texas Tribune, 12 October 2023. Excerpt. Though lawmakers have drafted a bill to increase public school funding and teacher salaries, it cannot pass during the special session unless Abbott adds those issues to his agenda. Teachers were the only state employees to not receive a raise in the regular session.
• Texas Senate passes expanded public school funding, universal school choice bills, The Center Square, 13 October 2023
• School voucher bill gets initial approval in the Texas Senate, heads over to a more skeptical House, The Texas Tribune, 13 October 2023, Excerpt
The Senate also approved Senate Bill 2, which would infuse $5.2 billion to school districts to help them with teacher raises and rising costs. Gov. Greg Abbott said he would add those items to the special session’s agenda once lawmakers approve a voucher program.
• Sen. Brandon Creighton Proposes Education Savings Account School Choice Plan, The Texan, 10 October 2023, Excerpts.The third special session was called with an explicit focus on school choice, and this is the first universal option being proposed.
• Fort Worth faith leaders enter Legislature’s debate over vouchers, Fort Worth Report, 10 October 2023
• Disability advocates argue against school vouchers in Texas Senate hearing, The Texas Tribune 10 October 2023. Excerpt.
The Senate’s main “school choice” bill would prioritize vouchers for children with disabilities, among other underprivileged groups. But advocates and parents raised concerns that voucher recipients who choose private school would no longer be protected by federal law.
Voucher proponents argue that education savings accounts would allow students with disabilities access to specialized schools if public schools are not meeting their needs. Opponents, however, have pointed out that private schools, unlike public schools, are not required by law to provide special education services.
Some disability advocates have raised concerns about funneling public dollars into private schools when the state’s public school system, which serves most special needs students in Texas, remains underfunded. The number of students with disabilities in Texas has increased by 200,000 in the last five years, according to Steven Aleman, policy specialist at Disability Rights Texas.
• Texas senator files historic school choice bill, The Center Square, 10 October 2023
• Education funding bill would allocate $1.2 billion more into Texas schools, The Center Square 10 October 2023.
• Education funding bill would allocate $1.2 billion more into Texas schools, The Center Square 10 October 2023.
• Speaker Phelan Says Education Savings Accounts Must Come With School Funding Increase, The Texan. 09 October 2023 Excerpts. Exerpts. With the third special session under way, House Speaker Dade Phelan provided insight into how the lower chamber might handle school choice legislation.
• School choice a point of discussion as Texas' third special legislative session begins, CBS Texas, 09 October 2023
• Polling in 21 GOP House Districts Shows 'Strong' Support for School Choice Among Likely Voters, The Texan, 09 October 2023. Excerpts. The poll commissioned by Gov. Greg Abbott found that school choice is "very important" to polled voters in the lead-up to the third special session
• Special session on school vouchers begins with Republicans in disarray, The Texas Tribune, 09 October 2023. Excerpt.Gov. Greg Abbott needs a delicate coalition of Republicans to pass his top priority. But the House and Senate leaders aren’t getting along.
• Texas Legislature to Tackle School Choice, Border, and Vaccine Mandate Ban in Third Special Session, The Texan, 09 October 2023. Excerpts. The governor has said he intends to call as many special sessions as is necessary to to pass his favored proposal for education savings accounts.
• Primary threats loom over House Republicans as lawmakers again consider school vouchers, The Texas Tribune, 09 October 2023. Excerpt. Gov. Greg Abbott promised that if House Republicans block school choice again, he’d go after them in the primaries
• Texas teachers grapple with their raises caught up in voucher fight, The Texas Tribune, 09 October 2023. Excerpt. As a special session starts with a focus on “school choice” but no mention of public school funding, some teachers said they are even considering leaving the profession.
• Comptroller Highlights Extra $2.5 Billion Available to Texas Legislature for Education, Border Special Session, The Texan, 06 October 2023 Excerpts/ The comptroller's early projection estimates around $40 billion in surplus revenue by the end of the 2024-25 biennium.
• A Review of School Choice's Legislative History This Year Before the Third Special Session, The Texan, 05 October 2023 Excepts. School choice was unable to pass during the regular session, but lawmakers have another opportunity in the upcoming special session.
• School Choice, Private Vaccine Mandate Ban, Border Security on Abbott’s Third Special Session Call, The Texan 05 October 2023. Excerpts. Abbott's school choice item specifies it must be universal and apply to all Texas school children.
• Texas public school leaders demand more funding ahead of expected special session, The Dallas Morning News, 29 September 2023. Excerpt. Superintendents, trustees want the Legislature to once again reject voucher-like plans
• Gov. Greg Abbott says special lawmaking session will begin on Oct. 9, likely on school vouchers, The Texas Tribune, 29 September 2023, Excerpts. The session comes as a rift between the Texas House and the Senate grew following Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial, raising questions about the chambers’ ability to compromise on education issues. The governor has threatened to call for more special sessions if lawmakers fail to pass a “school choice” proposal.
• Abbott Touts School Choice at Football Game, Dallas Express, 25 September 2023
• Ted Cruz urges passage of a school choice measure in Texas, The Texas Tribune, 23 September 2023
• Texas education leaders brace for imminent special session on teacher pay and school vouchers, The Texas Tribune , 22 July 2023
• Willow Park Civics Blog > Schools, Students, and Education, 88th TX Legislative Session including School Choice during the regular 88th Legislative Session
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