Is Voucher Passage Inevitable This Legislative Session?

Just because Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick didn’t include vouchers on his list of charges that he wants the Legislature to tackle before the coming session, doesn’t mean he has given up on the idea.

What it means, Troy Reynolds, founder of Texans for Public Education says, is that Patrick doesn’t see any reason to change his proposal from the Senate Bill 1 version that went down to defeat in the last regular session and the following special sessions.

And just because House Speaker Dade Phelan has included vouchers on his list of charges to fellow House members, doesn’t mean he’s suddenly embraced Patrick’s vision, Reynolds says. Instead, according to Reynolds, Phelan’s call for committee members to analyze and discuss out-of-state voucher programs shows the split remains between the two lawmakers on this issue.

A split that becomes a moot point, of course, if any of Phelan’s challengers for the speaker’s job — all who have supported vouchers in the past — unseat him.

“Patrick made a statement when he released the charges that [school choice] will be a priority. I think you’ll see them regurgitate the legislation and just lay that back out,” Reynolds said. “He doesn’t feel like he needs to study anything anymore. He doesn’t need to learn. That’s what he wants.”

Reynolds described Phelan as the “canary in the coal mine,” with the authority to influence whether or not a system would divert public education funding to reduce private schooling costs and other non-public school education alternatives — such as homeschooling.

Phelan played a part in “defending” against the passage of Governor Greg Abbott and Patrick’s shared priority, alongside most Democrats and a stronghold of more than 20 rural House Republicans.

“I think if he wins as speaker, we have a chance at defeating vouchers again,” Reynolds said. “If you get a speaker who supports public education, he can table things, refuse to bring things to the floor or send them to committee.”

“If one of the other Republicans takes it, you may see them run the table,” he noted. “Abbott’s already shown he’s willing to hold money hostage from children and teachers to get his way, and I fully expect him to do that again.”

Phelan is up for reelection to the speaker’s post against four fellow House Republicans: James Frank (R-Wichita Falls), Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress), Shelby Slawson (R-Stephenville) and David Cook (R-Mansfield).

All four challengers voted in favor of legislation that would’ve created a voucher program in Texas during the most recent special session. Phelan omitted his vote, which is not unusual for him to do as a speaker.

However, according to reports, Phelan indicated he would not have supported Abbott’s universal version instead favoring a more scaled-back approach to implementing such a program.

“Vouchers are not in any way inevitable. There’s still a lot more to go,” Patty Quinzi, director of Public Affairs & Legislative Counsel for the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said. “Once people realize what a voucher would do, that the money would come out of the funding for public schools, they are vehemently against it.”

Quinzi said the motivation to get vouchers passed comes from a select few billionaire donors, such as Billionaire GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass. Yass donated roughly $6 million to Abbott in the same month as the final special session the governor called in a last-ditch effort to pass his priority legislation.

Yass has long supported sending public funds to families to help them pay for tuition for private and other alternative schooling.

“Our public schools are passing deficit budgets. We’re now in an uncertified teacher crisis like we’ve never seen before,” Quinzi said. “Make no mistake about it; this by design is to undermine our schools, demonize them, declare them failures, and privatize.”

Quinzi described Texas lawmakers’ efforts to pass such a program as “talking about the wrong things,” particularly when similar plans unfolded unsuccessfully in other states like Arizona, which entered the year with a more than one-billion-dollar budget shortfall.

Quinzi added that reports indicated over 60 percent of those participating in Arizona’s voucher program were already in private schools.

“I think the stakes have never been higher,” Quinzi said. “So, much is on the line right now.”

Despite Quinzi’s concerns about the line of support thinning and Abbott’s recent primary challengers’ victories, she said she was confident that there were enough Republican, rural voters that could block efforts to pass copycat legislation this session.

On the other hand, Reynolds noted that Abbott had already declared he had enough votes from these wins to get vouchers to pass in the Texas House this legislative session.

“If it makes it to the [House] floor, unless the Democrats have a big run, and I’m not seeing that right now,” Reynolds said. “I don’t see a voucher vote getting stopped.”