By Mike Killalea, NSD president
Here’s an interactive site that will show you the estimated impact of school vouchers on your own community. dontdefundmyschool.com lets one choose any ISD in the state, and compare the effects of small, medium, and large voucher-scam programs:
The site makes the following excellent points about the voucher scam:
· A bipartisan coalition in the Texas House is fighting to fund our local schools and champion our students
· Greg Abbott is fighting to defund our schools and champion his billionaire mega-donors
· Vouchers are a scam
· Vouchers take your taxpayer dollars from your local school to subsidize private education for the wealthy few. Voucher scams do not improve your child's education, but they do give wealthy parents a discount on their private school tuition
· Voucher scams will raise your property taxes
· Texans pay more in property taxes than California, Florida, and 41 other states because Greg Abbott has systematically underfunded our public schools for years. To stop the bleeding, local school districts are forced to raise property tax rates. Vouchers will take even more money away from our classrooms, forcing school districts to raise your tax rates even more. With voucher scams, you pay more — for less.
· Voucher scams are backed by billionaires, not Texans
· For decades, a bipartisan coalition has rejected voucher scams. The only thing that's changed is the tens of millions that billionaires like Tim Dunn, Farris Wilks, and Jeff Yass are spending to push voucher scams in Texas. They're lying about public schools and public officials because vouchers serve their interests — not yours
· Texas public schools are closing after Greg Abbott held our schools aGreg Abbott has provided zero dollars in new basic funding for our local schools in the past four years. Last legislative session, after a bipartisan pro-public education coalition in the Texas House defeated his voucher scam, Abbott retaliated by holding new funding for our schools hostage. Now, countless districts are cutting programs and closing schools amid budget shortfalls.
· Texas public schools are closing after Greg Abbott held our schools and students hostage: Abbott has provided zero dollars in new basic funding for our local schools in the past four years. Last legislative session, after a bipartisan pro-public education coalition in the Texas House defeated his voucher scam, Abbott retaliated by holding new funding for our schools hostage. Now, countless districts are cutting programs and closing schools amid budget shortfalls
Don’t believe Abbott could be so callous and unfeeling to allow schools and their programs to close? Well, check out this article. Abbott just this week held a pro-voucher scam rally at San Antonio Christian School, where he pushed or a billionaire-backed private school voucher scam.
Abbott’s impressive tone deafness
With impressive tone deafness, Gov Greed’s rally was held a few miles from three San Antonio public schools set to close due to insufficient funding from the state —just days after Governor Abbott admitted that his private school voucher scam would drain even more money from Texas public schools.
This week, North East ISD announced the closure of three public elementary school campuses — Driscoll, Wilshire, and Clear Spring — to offset a $39 million budget deficit due to Governor Abbott holding school funding hostage in retaliation for the Texas House rejecting his private school voucher scam during the last legislative session.
BTW, a large voucher-scam program in North East ISD is estimated to cut $23,522,042 from the school’s funding. This could translate into:
As many as 439 fewer teachers for students.
470,440 fewer library books.
A projected increase in student-teacher ratio of 7.32%.
Fighting back!
If you are fired up to fight, go to dontdefundmyschool.com, and enter your information to find your representative and ask them to stand up for Texas local schools:
It's going to take all of us to defeat the voucher scam.
The data from this analysis comes from Every Texan, a statewide non-partisan policy organization. This analysis details the projected loss of funding to Texas public school districts should 1%, 3%, or 5% of students accept a voucher — you can learn more about our data and methodology here. While Every Texan resources are publicly available, Every Texan was not involved in the creation of this website. Paid for by the Texas House Democratic Caucus, texashousedems.com. Not created with government funds.
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