The Texas Senate is moving quickly to ram through a private school voucher scheme in the special legislative session. We have to act now in support of public education and our neighborhood public schools.
There are two ways you can help:
1. Testify in committee
The voucher bill, Senate Bill 2, is set for a public hearing this Friday. If you wish to testify, here are the hearing details:
Texas Senate Committee on Education Public Hearing
10 a.m., Friday, July 21
E1.012 (in the extension of the Texas Capitol building)
We will update this page when the exact hearing location is announced.
2. Contact your senator
If you can’t make it to the hearing, contact your senator to tell them you oppose any and all voucher bills, which would strip taxpayer dollars from our neighborhood public schools and funnel them to unaccountable private and religious schools.
Submit your address below to find contact info for your state senator
When you call, tell senators:
- Vouchers drain money out of neighborhood public schools to subsidize private and religious schools that are unaccountable to taxpayers and don’t have to meet the same standards.
- Neighborhood public schools are still struggling with the deep (and unrestored) funding cuts the Legislature made during the Great Recession. It makes no sense to create a new taxpayer-funded entitlement program to fund private and religious schools that educate the few students that gain admission.
- In fact, voucher schemes of all kinds largely benefit wealthy families. That’s because wealthy families can best afford to make up the cost between the value of a voucher and the actual cost of tuition and other charges at private and religious schools.
- The only real “choice” in voucher schemes belongs to private and religious schools, which get to choose which students they will accept.
- Vouchers divert important resources from the majority of Texas students to serve a small segment of children who could be served through existing public school choice options.
