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$1 billion school voucher bill clears first hurdle in Texas Senate

Texas state senator Brandon Creighton

Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican from Conroe, said his school voucher bill provides “freedom to our students and our families.” (Photo by Matt Hennie)

By Matt Hennie

January 31, 2025

The legislation provides vouchers of $2,000, $10,000, or $11,500 to 100,000 students. Critics assail it as a handout of public dollars to private school students.

A $1 billion school voucher program that would award up to $11,500 in public dollars per student to go toward private education easily crossed its first hurdle in the Texas Senate on Tuesday.

The 9-2 vote along party lines by the Senate Committee on Education K-16 — Democrat Sens. José Menéndez and Royce West voted against it — puts Senate Bill 2 on a path to become the first bill passed by the Senate this year. Gov. Greg Abbott is likely to dub the legislation as an emergency measure on Sunday, which Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said would allow a full Senate vote as soon as Wednesday.

The measure — called the “Texas Education Freedom Act” — is a redux of legislation passed in parts a dozen times by the Senate since 2019, only to fail in the House, a point bill author Sen. Brandon Creighton made several times on Tuesday. 

“This legislation feels familiar and it should,” Creighton said. “The Senate passed this legislation four times in 2023 but here we are again.”

The latest incarnation of the legislation includes several key changes from the 2023 bill: It ups the per-student amount to as high as $11,500, expands the pool of students to 100,000 in the first year, increases the amount offered to home school students, and ditches a provision to keep providing funding for rural public schools for students who leave due to vouchers.

“Senate Bill 2 finally brings Texas in line with 32 other states, both with Republican and Democrat governors, and Republican and Democrat legislatures in those states, offering expanded education freedom to our students and our families,” Creighton said.

The legislation also provides anti-fraud protections and mandates criminal background checks for vendors. Parents wouldn’t receive funds directly; instead the money would be deposited into education savings accounts and sent directly to approved vendors. The money could be spent on tuition and fees for private schools, higher education institutions, training for programs that offer industry-based certifications, instructional materials, educational services at public schools that don’t qualify for state funding, private tutoring, and educational therapies.

“This money doesn’t go to the parents like a voucher. So you can’t go to Rooms to Go and buy furniture if you have a thousand bucks leftover, right. This is an education savings account with the strongest anti-fraud provisions in the country,” Creighton said.

Under the bill, the school voucher program would start for the 2026-27 school year with enough money to serve up to 100,000 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Lawmakers want to include $1 billion in the state budget for the program. Vouchers for students at an accredited private school would be $10,000, or $11,500 if they have special needs. Home school students could receive $2,000.

Some 80% of the vouchers are set aside for public school students whose families earn below a certain income or students with a disability, while the remaining 20% of vouchers would be available to anyone filled by a lottery. The restrictions for the 80% of recipients only apply if applications to the program outstrip funding.

The bill may also exclude students who lack permanent legal status. Federal law, based on the US Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, requires public school districts to enroll students regardless of immigration status. But Creighton said supporters of the legislation are considering an amendment with a trigger that prohibits migrants from receiving vouchers if the Plyler case is overturned.

Creighton was dismissive of migrants participating in the school voucher program.

“We don’t see undocumented families waving their hands up in the air, ‘Please let us fill out all this paperwork and notice us and let us apply for an education savings account for a private school or home school opportunity.’ We just don’t see that,” he said.

Texas state Senator Royce West

Sen. Royce West, a Democrat from Dallas, criticized the legislation for failing to prioritize low-income students from academically struggling schools. (Photo by Matt Hennie)

Critics: Texas vouchers plan doesn’t prioritize neediest students

Democrats don’t have the numbers in the Senate to kill the legislation, as Republicans hold a 20-11 majority. But their statements during the eight-hour hearing on Tuesday hinted at an opposition strategy — question the voucher program’s impact on public schools and whether the high income thresholds allow the vouchers to benefit low-income students in the way Creighton and other supporters insist they do. 

“The dye has been cast,” West said. “The fact is it’s going to pass. The question is how do you make it a better bill.”

For the 80% of voucher slots with restrictions, the bill sets the income limit for families at 500% of the federal poverty rate. For a family of four, that’s about $160,000 per year. Yet in Texas, the median family income is $79,000 and students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch if their household income is below 185% of the federal poverty guideline, or about $59,000 for a family of four. 

About 3.8 million Texas students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches, far surpassing the 100,000 students the voucher program hopes to enroll in its first year. The number of students eligible for a voucher would be even higher using the 500% income threshold in the legislation. 

West said the voucher program should instead target low-income students in academically failing schools. 

“Why doesn’t this bill make no consideration for those factors — being in failing schools and impoverished conditions? As an example, you define low income as 500% above the federal poverty guideline,” West said. 

“This does not prioritize the lowest income in our state. I don’t see anything in there about prioritizing kids coming from academically failing schools,” the Dallas lawmaker added.

Creighton said the income threshold would allow a household with two parents holding public sector jobs and a few children to enroll in the program.

“The 500% is essentially a teacher and fireman with a few kids in their household,” he said. 

“That’s the number we ended up at to make sure that if a teacher and a fireman that are working hard every day to just make life make sense, and they have three or four kids, that they would be eligible within the framework and prioritized first — along with disability,” he added.

Menéndez said if a voucher doesn’t cover the full cost of tuition and expenses to enroll at a private school, it won’t be an option for low-income families. 

“If the parents can have this $10,000, but they can’t afford to make up the difference, then are they really eligible? It’s like a bridge that’s three-quarters of the way built. It’s not really good enough for them,” he said.

Texas state Senator José Menéndez

Sen. José Menéndez, a Democrat from San Antonio, said the school voucher bill isn’t “really good enough” for families who can’t afford to enroll their students in private schools. (Photo by Matt Hennie)

‘Fairytale projections’ about Texas school vouchers

During the hearing, Creighton repeatedly pointed to voucher programs in Arizona and Florida, bragging that his bill puts Texas far ahead of where those programs started. Yet the Arizona effort has blown a hole in the state budget and regularly experiences fraud, while the Florida program has been criticized for draining funds from public schools. Brookings, a nonpartisan think tank, has called the Arizona program “a handout to the wealthy.”

The Legislative Budget Board, which studied the cost and implementation of Creighton’s bill, predicted the cost of the voucher program would balloon to $5.36 billion annually by 2029. The report also questioned if private schools across the state — which currently have an enrollment of about 350,000 students — could accommodate a flood of new public school students with vouchers. 

The board’s analysis predicts that private schools could increase capacity by 35,000 students in the first year of the voucher program, with 70% of those slots — about 24,500 students — taken by public school students and the rest — 30% or 10,500 students — by home school students. The report’s scenario didn’t address if the remaining 65,000 vouchers would be awarded to existing private school students. Critics of the legislation said it amounts to a handout of public funds to private school students.

Creighton called criticism of his bill “manufactured narratives” and countered that states with school voucher programs haven’t seen an exodus from public schools.

“It’s unfortunate that Texas is not leading on school choice. We would be number 33. We don’t want to follow any other state in the country but if we are following, we want to launch the best program available and this would certainly be it,” he said.

The lawmaker from Conroe also dismissed the Legislative Budget Board’s analysis as “fairytale projections.”

“We, as a body, would have to approve the growth of the program as appropriators and on the Senate floor before those fairy tale projections beyond the $1 billion plan that we’re talking about now would be anything but a cartoon,” he said.

CATEGORIES: EDUCATION

Author

  • Matt Hennie

    Matt is the chief political correspondent for Courier Texas. He’s worked as a reporter and editor for nearly 30 years in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina and Kansas, focusing on telling the stories of local communities so they become more engaged and better informed.

Politics

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