The Road Ahead for Texas Public Education Advocacy

Texas is once again preparing to kick off a new legislative session flush with cash while districts across the state are forced to cut budgets and close schools.

According to Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar (R), lawmakers will meet in January 2025 with a $21.3 billion budget surplus and $23.8 billion in the state’s Rainy Day Fund. This budgetary boon comes at a time when school districts across the state have been forced to grapple with growing deficits due to Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) decision to hold public school funding hostage in his 2023 effort to pass a voucher bill. Many districts have had to cut staff and programs and are eyeing even deeper cuts in the near future.

How did we get here?

A bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the Texas House voted 84-63 to kill Abbott’s voucher proposal in 2023 despite the governor’s threats to block any efforts to increase school funding or teacher pay until a voucher was passed. Abbott was true to his word in 2023, and then, with the help of millions from out-of-state billionaires including Betsy DeVos and Jeff Yass, who gave the governor the largest campaign donation in Texas history to push vouchers, responded with an unprecedented disinformation campaign to unseat Republicans who had stood up for public schools by voting against vouchers. Much of this primary propaganda focused not on incumbent representatives’ opposition to vouchers but on their purported positions on border security issues. The messaging worked on primary voters, and after the 2024 Republican primaries, Abbott predicted he had secured a narrow majority capable of passing a voucher bill in the 2025 legislative session.

The November election functionally did little to alter the partisan makeup of Texas House and Senate, but it has been viewed by many as a consolidation of the electoral momentum the governor and his preferred candidates carried out of the primary. Seizing on this momentum, Abbott held a press conference at a private Christian school in Tyler the day after Election Day claiming a voucher was all but assured. In response, ATPE Executive Director Shannon Holmes pointed out that the relationship between candidate support and voucher support is not as clear-cut as voucher proponents often make it out to be. For example, in Kentucky and Nebraska, voters solidly defeated voucher propositions despite electing candidates who support vouchers on the same ballot.

Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) have each vowed that vouchers will remain their top priority when the new Legislature convenes in January. However, vouchers will be far from the only education policy issue facing legislators. The 2025 Texas Legislature’s sizeable class of new “freshman” legislators will consider legislation regarding school funding, educator compensation, student discipline, school safety, educator certification, special education, and host of other thorny education issues in addition to vouchers—and vouchers, whether they’re called education savings accounts (ESA) or some other marketing term, would divert billions, likely tens of billions, of tax dollars at the state level toward subsidizing tuition for those attending private schools. In other words, vouchers would dramatically reduce available dollars from the state for public education to create a new entitlement for the parents of current and future private school students.

These new legislators, and many of their more seasoned colleagues, will absolutely rely on outside voices to make decisions about how to spend available dollars on these important education policy issues. This is why it is critical for educators to take the lead in building personal relationships with both new and veteran lawmakers so they will rely on your expertise to help them make the education policy decisions that will affect you and your students on a daily basis.

Where do we go from here?   

The first step in building a relationship is contacting your elected officials, optimally before the start of the new legislative session. Whether it’s through an email, a letter, a phone call, a meeting at the district office, or inviting them to talk over coffee or a meal, each contact makes a difference. Resources such as TeachTheVote.org can help you find out who represents you in the Texas Legislature and how to contact them.

Take comfort in the knowledge that legislators are members of your community just like you, many times with family or friends in the schools where you teach. But also know that those who hope to defund and undermine public schools are contacting your legislator every day. Educators must engage at the same level or better to prevent legislators from receiving a one-sided view in favor of dismantling the public education system.

For more tips and information on advocating at home and in Austin, as well as additional information on hot-button education policy issues and the extensive set of member advocacy tools ATPE has in place to help you communicate with and build relationships with your elected officials, check out the new ATPE Member Advocate Program. (Called ATPE-MAP for short, this new member benefit presents an opportunity to earn a state- or local-level microcredential in public education advocacy, as well as to earn continuing professional education credit. ATPE-MAP enrollment is included in your ATPE membership, and if you complete the state-level microcredential, you’ll be eligible to be invited to attend ATPE Capitol Expeditions during the upcoming legislative session.)

The environment may seem challenging, but educators have many arrows in their quiver, most notably the ability to meaningfully connect with their lawmakers and serve as local education policy experts. ATPE is in your corner, but it will take our members across the state building and strengthening personal relationships with legislators in order to achieve positive outcomes for Texas public school students and educators.