In a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows said that the House Education Committee next week will pass a voucher bill and a school funding bill out of committee.
“I expect early next week, the House Public Education Committee will pass out both bills — a school finance bill and a universal comprehensive school choice bill, from the pub ed committee, and it’ll be on the floor very soon thereafter and pass,” Burrows, a Lubbock Republican, said during the press conference.
The pair of policies, House Bill 2 and House Bill 3, are the lowest-numbered bills in the House after the budget, reflecting their status as a central part of Abbott’s legislative vision this year. The Republican governor mounted an aggressive but unsuccessful push last session to pass a voucher program, and along the way blocked a bill to increase flagging public school funding.
Abbott has pledged that the Legislature will pass a voucher program this session, but he has been busy since the start of session touring the state to promote the policy at private schools and conservative political conferences.
Last month, he and Burrows announced that 75 representatives had signed on as co-authors of HB 3 with its primary author, Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, making a majority of the chamber authors of the bill.
Joined Tuesday by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and former Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who oversaw the passage of a similar voucher program there, Abbott said that he expects to see even more support for the voucher bill next week than would be suggested by its author list.
“There’s more than enough co-authors in the Texas House who remain committed to ensure that legislation’s gonna pass,” said Abbott. “I have every reason to think there will be even more than that, in favor of it, when school choice hits the House floor.”
Burrows vouched for Abbott’s claim: “There will be more votes on the House floor for school choice when it passes than there are coauthors.”
HB 3 differs in some key ways from the Senate’s voucher proposal, Senate Bill 2, which it passed and sent to the House at the end of last month.
Where the Senate bill would offer a flat $10,000 voucher to be applied to tuition, uniforms, books and transportation at private schools, HB 3 instead would tie the voucher size to the per-student basic allotment that the state uses to calculate how much money should go to districts. By setting it at 85% of the combined state and local funding, the House vouchers would cover about $1,000 less than the Senate program.
Yoking the two would mean that lawmakers would need to increase public school funding in order to boost the size of vouchers in the future.
Both bills also have provisions to prioritize poor families and students with disabilities for vouchers if the program doesn’t have enough money to keep up with demand. The House version has a tiered system of priorities, putting students with special needs first followed by poor families:
- Students with disabilities from families earning up to 500% of the federal poverty level ($160,750 for a family of four).
- Families earning up to 200% of the poverty level ($64,300 for a family of four).
- Families earning between 200% and 500% of the poverty level.
- Families earning above 500% of the poverty level.
House Bill 2 meanwhile attempts to address years of complaints from teachers that Texas is failing its public schools and its children by failing to increase education funding to counteract inflation. It would increase the basic allotment by $220, or about 3%, to $6,380 per student per year.
That’s just a fifth of the $1,000 increase that public school advocates asked for in 2023, which would be enough to counteract several consecutive years of high inflation during the pandemic. Critics have argued that even that wouldn’t give schools extra money to comply with new unfunded and underfunded mandates from the state, such as armed security officer requirements.
HB 2 also incorporates policies that the Senate passed with bipartisan support last month to expand teacher performance bonuses and offer incentives for teachers who stay in Texas.
