Texas leaders divert dollars and discourage public input
When our family moved to Dripping Springs, Texas, a little over a year ago, the reputation of the local public schools was a big factor. Though we mourn the lack of diversity as compared to our school in Georgia, so far we’ve had a mostly excellent experience.
Imagine my surprise then when I clicked on the Texas Monthly cover article from March, “The Campaign to Sabotage Texas’s Public Schools,” and the first photo of a school was my kids’ elementary school. The long and excellent article describes a decades long attack on public education in Texas. Dripping Springs is highlighted as a cautionary tale of a once strongly supported school district now suffering from attacks like those seen across the state and country. It certainly helped explain why the school bond proposition on our ballots in November failed.
The next phase of this “campaign” is going on right now at the capitol in Austin. Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Education heard a series of bills which seek to introduce Education Savings Accounts, a.k.a. vouchers, into Texas. I was one of the 388 members of the public who signed up to testify. Most of us arrived by 8:00 am. The committee took their time laying out each bill, followed by invited testimony from folks who supported each bill. They did not even begin public testimony until nearly 7:00 pm. Many, if not most, of those who signed up did not have the luxury to wait 12 hours for the chance to speak two minutes and were gone by the time their name was called.
The good news: the effort to weaken our public schools is far from over. The legislation is likely to pass the Senate, but it faces a much more uncertain future in the House. Stay tuned to our newsletters and watch your email to know when your voice can be most effective.
Though I couldn’t stay until 10:35 pm when my name was called, this is the testimony I prepared:
Hello and thank you for the opportunity to testify.
My name is Stephen Reeves and I serve as executive director of Fellowship Southwest. We are a Christian network of churches and individuals compelled by our faith to practice compassion and promote justice. We garner support from just over one hundred churches in the Southwest US.
Fellowship Southwest is a member of the Coalition for Public Schools, and I am testifying against SB 8.
I live in Dripping Springs where I have two children at Walnut Springs elementary and a third at the Pathways preschool at the Methodist church. Both of my parents were educators in the Round Rock school district where I grew up.
First and foremost, I support the right of every parent to choose a private education for their children, particularly one that affirms and promotes their faith tradition. I also believe that the primary place where faith formation occurs is in the home and the church, or other faith community. I do not believe the state should subsidize private religious education with diverted tax dollars. Instead, we should make sure every public school and every teacher has the resources and support they need to provide an excellent education for every child in Texas.
I believe the Texas Constitution has it exactly right in Article 1, Section 6, “No money shall be appropriated, or drawn from the Treasury for the benefit for any sect, or religious society, theological or religious seminary,” Though I know that our Attorney General and recent Supreme Court decisions disagree with that provision. I believe these new decisions are a dangerous departure from our longstanding tradition preventing my tax dollars from supporting the promotion of a faith with which I disagree. We see across the globe that state-supported religion results in the death of faith. I would ask the same question that Ronald Reagan-appointed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor asked, “Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?” I worry about the future of the church and Christianity when government thinks it can help.
There is a fundamental tension anytime tax dollars flow towards religious institutions. Without government accountability we risk wasting tax dollars on an ineffective education, one that does not prepare students to be productive citizens of Texas. On the other hand, with government money and accountability comes strings and government eyes. As a person of faith, I don’t believe the government should interfere with truly private religious teaching, to do so would violate the free exercise clause of the first amendment.
Soon thereafter we moved to Dripping Springs a little over a year ago, my third-grade daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia. The services she has received in her public school have been incredible and her reading has rapidly improved.
Public schools are obligated to take every child that shows up. This includes every kid with a learning disability, every kid whose family cannot feed them breakfast before school, kids who don’t speak English, and kids with parents working multiple jobs making it hard for them to be as involved as other parents. This is not the case for private schools that can pick and choose their students. Nothing in this bill mandates the acceptance of any child at a private school.
To spend so much time, energy and money developing ways that the state can support private schools is a diversion from what I believe is the most important job the state does - to “make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools” for ALL Texas children. We do so to secure a healthy future for them, their families, and the state of Texas. I wish the leadership of Texas would do everything in their power to make sure all students across the state receive the same excellent public education that my kids do in Dripping Springs ISD. Thank you.
