Texas lawmakers are discussing plans for school choice and putting an additional $5 billion into Texas schools, likely expecting the two to be linked.
"If we say, if we don't do this, we're not going to fully fund public schools is an admission that we are not fully funding public schools," said Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde.
Elizalde has led the charge of leaders around the state fighting back against school choice and fighting for more money. She laughed at the $5 billion the state is proposing to help the funding problems. We asked her what schools really need.
"It's $14 billion. If we're talking about bringing us, I mean, and I know people are like $14 billion? Well, it's been 19% inflation," she said.
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Her counterpart in Fort Worth ISD has taken a quieter approach, saying she’s thankful for any additional money coming her way, but Superintendent Angelica Ramsey echoes the sentiment that Texas is sitting on record amounts of extra cash in its savings account, while still not paying schools like other states across the country.
"Appreciative, but it doesn't change that we're in the bottom 10 states in funding for public education," Ramsey said.
As much as schools want to talk about additional funding, the debate in Austin is significantly tied to school choice, and what lawmakers do to allow parents to take state tax dollars and use them to pay for private school tuition.
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As much as schools are fighting for more money, they’re fighting against the legislation that would let parents take their kids and tax dollars away.
"Just like all school districts in the state, we are opposed to whatever you want to call them, I understand that right now, they're education savings accounts, ESAs (Education Savings Accounts), they're vouchers," Ramsey said.
The process here is complicated. Both sides of the legislature need to debate, amend, and argue before coming up with a final plan.
School leaders are staying out of it for now, with no immediate plans to head to Austin, but are making sure lawmakers know their feelings about funding and this first pass from the Senate doesn’t quite hit the mark from the public school leader perspective.
