Lobby Trip to Austin - Education Budget

 

Every two years the Texas state legislature meets address the needs of the citizens by passing legislation and budgets for the next two years. Budgeting state funds is always a contentious affair, especially education funding. A couple of friends and I went to Austin a two weeks ago to speak to our state representative John Kuempel and our state senator Donna Campbell in support of increasing state funding for public education and against private school vouchers.

Our first meeting was with John Kuempel. My friends took the lead on urging his support for raising teacher pay and increasing state funding for retired teachers. Kuempel was quite receptive and said he fully understood as his wife had been a public school teacher until recently and he had a very clear idea of what they do and what they deserve. I then brought up our concerns about private school vouchers and the use of tax payer money supporting religious schools. Representative Kuempel told us he was firmly against such legislation this term just as he has been in every other session of the legislature as it doesn’t make any sense for his district. He also said that he is speaking with his colleagues in the House advocating against any such bill. Needless to say we thanked him for his support and encouraged him to keep it up.

Once we made our way through the capitol building to Senator Campbell’s office we met with her staff member specializing in public education, a woman around 30. As we spoke with her about our interest in a strong public education system we learned that has two young children in Austin ISD schools and is therefore also interested in quality education. She explained that while Sen. Campbell wants to see teacher pay increased she’s unwilling to support just increasing state funding to bring the percentage of school district budgets provided by state funds back to the historical average of 50% from the current low of 41%. She told us that the senator feels that school districts can’t be trusted to spend the money on teacher salaries so instead she’ll support some form of narrowly constructed bill that forces districts to only use the money on teacher pay.

I then asked her how that reconciled with the philosophy of local control and the assumption that local school boards knew best the needs of their districts. Her defense was that school board elections are low turnout affairs and that often leads to boards which make poor decisions that aren’t truly representative of the people in the district. Rather than continue to argue this point I moved on to our view on spending taxpayer money on private school vouchers. The staff member said that Sen. Campbell is a strong supporter of vouchers and has been since first being elected as are many of her constituents. I told her that we believed that taxpayer funds should only be spent on public schools as there would be no transparency on how those funds were spent since private and religious schools don’t have publicly elected boards and aren’t required to make their budgets publicly available. We were told that Sen. Campbell didn’t share that concern.

I also brought up that private and religious schools aren’t required to meet the same standards as public schools with regard to curriculum or having students take the STAAR tests. I reminded her that private and religious schools don’t get graded by the state and are required to address poor performance like public schools are. We closed by asking that she relay our views to the Senator.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 22, 2023

More Republican Crazy Legislation

A few weeks ago in this column I wrote about some of the Republican bills filed in various states including here in Texas that really aren’t good for the country. Since then several more have surfaced; it’s almost like some of these legislators heard about what was being proposed and said hold my beer as they vie to file even more extremist bills.

In South Carolina H.B. 3549 by state Rep. Rob Harris (R-Spartanburg County) would define any unborn child, at any stage of development from the moment of fertilization, as a “person.” The bill also makes clear that all penalties for crimes against a “person” apply and since South Carolina has the death penalty that punishment can be applied to a mother who feels the need to control her own body and the doctor who performs the procedure. In addition the bill specifically says the “law of parties” applies so other members of the medical staff, the receptionist, and the friend who drove the woman to the appointment can all be charged with murder and suffer the death penalty upon conviction. As usual with Republicans Harris doesn’t understand the constitution’s stance on separation of church and state as he  justifies the legislation with religious belief as shown in this passage from its text "The General Assembly finds the following: Acknowledging the sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God...". Don’t think that Rep. Harris is a lone crackpot as the bill currently has gained 17 other sponsors over the last few weeks.

Then there’s Florida where Republican state Sen. Jason Brodeur filed SB 1316 just over a week ago. His bill would require bloggers who write about state officials to disclose who is paying them and how much. "If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register" with the appropriate office within five days of the post, the legislation says. The bill says blog “does not include the website of a newspaper or other similar publication." The executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Bruce Brown says "When a bill this plainly unconstitutional is introduced it's essential that journalists explain to the public why it runs afoul of the First Amendment.” Brown further explained "Our system of free expression rejected the British tradition of licensing printers because we recognized that it was the essence of self-rule to have complete freedom to criticize the public officials who act in our name. The registration regime proposed here would encumber that and deny Floridians their right to hear from a variety of voices about the conduct of their elected leaders." It never ceases to amaze me that Republicans pretend to be defenders of the constitution but in reality only care about their recent interpretation of the Second Amendment.

Texas Republicans certainly don’t want to be outdone so a slew of them in both House and Senate filed bills to prevent any governmental or business entity in the state from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations. Should S.B. 1177 filed by Senator Bob Hall pass neither public nor private schools could require students to have been vaccinated for COVID-19. Hall also filed S.B. 308 which would prohibit any public accommodation, meaning restaurant, hotel, bakery, etc. from so much as separating vaccinated customers from un-vaccinated customers. Senator Lois Kolkorst filed S.B. 1026 which prohibits employers from requiring their employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Representative Jeff Leach filed HB 3475 and several other Republicans filed all filed similar bills.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 8, 2023