Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) published his top 30 priorities for the 88th Texas legislative session recently, and number eight on the list is a bill called “Empowering Parental Rights – Including School Choice,” which has been a topic of debate among state legislators.
"Each session, the 31 members of the Texas Senate file thousands of bills,” Patrick said, according to his website. “The tradition has been for bill numbers 1 through 20 to indicate the lieutenant governor and the Senate’s priorities. Senators like to get a low bill number because it shows their bill is also a priority of the lieutenant governor and has a great chance of passing.”
One thing Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Patrick have been promoting is creating Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) that Texans can take advantage of. ESAs are a program whereby the government grants a certain amount of funds for parents to use for a private school, homeschooling, online learning or other approved learning circumstances, such as workforce training or apprenticeships, according to the Austin Journal.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick
| Texas.gov
“I believe Texans support our priorities because they largely reflect the policies supported by the conservative majority of Texans,” Patrick continued. “Most will pass with bipartisan support.”
The Texas Public Policy Foundation has laid out the Parent Empowerment Act, which describes how an ESA program would benefit Texas families. The foundation’s stance is that parents should have a wide variety of choice available for their children's education, including public school, charter school, private school or homeschool.
With an ESA, parents can use state funds for tuition and fees at a public or private school, for school supplies, entrance exams or extra academic tests, tutoring or therapy, cocurriculars (activities that add value to instruction and curriculum) and transportation, if approved. Each year, parents would be able to access a "digital wallet" that is funded by the comptroller and can only be used for academic purposes for their children. The Parent Empowerment Act would also allow certain preapproved vendors to be refunded, it said.
ExcelInEd reported that, as of 2022, eight states have ESA programs: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. The group said more than 30,000 students have used ESAs as of last year.
The program is still gaining popularity, according to the Lone Star Standard. Earlier this year, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) and Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) signed bills that would create ESA programs. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) recently announced that her education program includes an Education Freedom Account.
The Heritage Foundation said the Texas Legislature will be considering a proposal to give families greater freedom to choose their children's learning environment.
The objective, Abbott says, is to "restore parents as the rightful people in charge of making the decisions for their children about their health care and about their education."
Public support for education choice policies like ESAs is at all-time high. In a recent poll, 70% of Texans and 77% of parents of school-aged children support ESAs, the Heritage Foundation said, citing the Pew Research Center.