Gov. Greg Abbott recently doubled down on his support for school choice legislation as the Texas House continues to debate education saving account bills, offering his endorsement for a Senate proposal he says makes 5.5 million students in the state eligible.
While House lawmakers have been considering several school choice measures, Abbott, in a statement on his website, offered his endorsement for a proposal approved by the Texas Senate, noting House options under consideration do little to offer any meaningful school choice.
“Texas must empower ALL Texas families with education freedom … no matter how long it takes,” Texas State Rep. Brian Harrison said in a post on Twitter.
And that just might happen. According to the Texas Tribune, Senate Bill 8, the Texas Education Savings Account bill, passed in the Senate April 6 by an 18-13 vote. But the House adopted an amendment against school vouchers in a House budget vote, targeting education savings accounts
“Empowering parents to choose the best educational path for their child remains an essential priority this session. A majority of Texans from across the state and from all backgrounds support expanding school choice,” Abbott said in a statement. “The Senate’s version of school choice makes about 5.5 million students eligible, while the House’s version of that bill proposed last week would make about 4 million students eligible. The latest House version of school choice, which came out this weekend, only applies to about 800,000 students.”
Abbott also noted in the statement the House option provides less funding for special education students than the Senate bill and also does not extend school choice for low-income families that may be in dire circumstances.
“This latest version does little to provide meaningful school choice, and legislators deserve to know that it would be vetoed if it reached my desk,” he said in the statement. “Instead, the original House version of the Senate bill provides a more meaningful starting point to begin House-Senate negotiations.”
Other changes are looming, according to Fox 7 Austin, which noted the House Public Education Committee recently offered a proposal to eliminate the STARR test, a standardized test that Texas students must pass to advance to the next grade and ultimately graduate. According to the report, it has become a part of the House’s revisions of the Senate’s education savings account measure.
According to Dallas News, the education savings account proposal adopted by the Senate would create education savings accounts of up to $8,000 for families that can be used for private school tuition, books, tutoring, uniforms, transportation and other educational needs.
The report noted the expenditures would be monitored by a comptroller’s office, and the measure wouldn’t give the money to the families immediately, and it would only be offered for private schools and vendors that are state-approved. The proposal also would protect rural school districts to make sure they do not lose funding, according to the report, which may be a response to critics who took aim at the state’s ESA bills.
Abbott, speaking in his State of the State address earlier this year, pushed lawmakers to make education savings accounts available to every Texas student, according to a news release on his website, making “education freedom an emergency item,” according to the release.
