AUSTIN – Last Wednesday, Senate Bill 2, which is titled Providing School Choice, was fast-tracked by Gov. Greg Abbott as an emergency item.
The bill, which was penned by Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) passed through the senate, and it proposes the establishment of an education savings account program. The program would, if passed through the House, help cover the cost of private school tuition, with a $10,000 annual voucher allotment, per student.
The bill was backed by Senate Republicans, as well as Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, and advanced on a 19-12 vote, mostly along party lines. Sen. Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville) was the lone Republican voice against it.
Nichols, whose senatorial district includes Tyler County, did not mention the topic in his column “My Five Cents,” which is published in newspapers throughout the district (including the Tyler County Booster), but later made a statement after the votes were recorded in the upper chamber.
“As a fiscal conservative and a believer in the value of public schools, I cannot in good conscience vote for this bill. It is not fair to the children and parents of Texas, has little oversight of how the public funds are spent, creates Constitutional questions about separation of church and state, hurts public schools, leads to class segregation, and is not fiscally conservative,” Nichols wrote.
Woodville ISD Superintendent Lisa Meysembourg shared Nichols’s statement on social media, and encouraged others to share the message, which was also shared by Nacogdoches ISD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo.
Patrick issued a statement supporting SB 2 and said that from day one of his first term in the state’s leadership, his “goal and passion has been to improve public education in Texas and provide great education options for all students.”
Patrick added that the measure is the sixth time that the upper chamber has passed a school choice bill, with every previous iteration dying in the House. “The Senate will pass school choice over and over again until the House passes this bill,” he said.
“The days of limiting millions of Texas students to a one-size-fits-all approach are over.”
Under the terms of the bill, in addition to the $10K per year, per student, allotment, from taxpayer funds, the legislation would provide $11,500 per student for children with disabilities and would also provide at least $2,000 annually per student for home-schooling families who wish to participate.
In the last legislative session, in 2023, several attempts failed to get through the House, and a group of rural Republican representatives joined House Democrats to defeat them, including Travis Clardy, who was defeated in his bid for reelection by a voucher proponent.
Abbott has made the vouchers issue a key part of his agenda, and campaigned to replace many of those voucher critics with new legislators who voice support of the system.
According to campaign finance data, a Pennsylvania GOP megadonor, Jeff Yass, has given more than $6 million to Abbott’s campaign.
Yass, who was an early investor in TikTok, is one of the nation’s key supporters of school vouchers, and according to reports, his contributions to Abbott are the first time he has poured large sums of money into Texas.
As far as SB 2’s fate in the House, it is not certain whether the lower chamber will take it up. The newly elected House speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), according to reports, has voiced support for school choice.
