The Texas House of Representatives on April 17 voted to create a private school voucher program after hours of floor debate and deliberation, clearing the last major hurdle to deliver a huge victory for Republicans in the Lone Star State and a defeat for Democrats, school districts and rural communities that had campaigned against such a proposal for years.
Yet after more than 10 and a half hours of argument, the lower chamber approved just one change to the bill, a “perfecting amendment” from the chair of the House Public Education Committee, Salado Republican Rep. Brad Buckley.
Buckley’s amendment, which passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 145-1, revised some of the bill’s definitions and made some minor changes, such as requiring that private schools can only get state voucher money if they have operated a campus for at least two years.
House Republicans spent the next nine hours of floor debate killing every subsequent amendment to the voucher bill, 43 in total, all proposed by Democrats.
The amendments touched on nearly every imaginable aspect of the bill, reflecting years of criticisms of vouchers from parents, teachers, superintendents, school districts and lawmakers. Some were strictly oppositional, attempting to nullify the program by removing its enacting clause and to rename it. Many contradicted each other, proposing to both increase and to cut the voucher amounts. One would have advertised the program in more languages, and another would have limited state advertisements. At least one would have restored language that was in Buckley’s voucher proposal last session.
But on the chamber floor, at the culmination of a tumultuous and consequential week — following rumors that some Republicans would vote to put vouchers to a statewide vote, reports that Gov. Greg Abbott subsequently threatened any dissent with vetoes, and a final push in the form of a morning phone call to the caucus from President Donald Trump the day of the vote — that did not seem to matter. Whatever the motivation, Republicans had no appetite to engage with those proposals.
On nearly every amendment, after a few minutes of floor debate, Buckley, offering a brief explanation, moved to table the change, a routine maneuver to effectively kill amendments without actually voting on them. When the clerk called the vote on his motion, no more than two of the chamber’s 88 Republicans ever voted with the minority not to kill the amendment. And that was an exceedingly rare occurrence, happening for just four of those 43 amendments.
His actions did not escape the notice of House Democrats. Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, observed that the amendments were being tabled “regardless of how commonsense [or] how conservative-leaning they are. … It’s almost as though some members have been told how to vote, and they aren’t looking at the policy. They’re just following direction.”
And after 10 consecutive motions to table, Rep. Mary E. González, D-Clint, felt the need to remind Buckley to explain why he was tabling amendments: “In the past, when that request was made, usually the author would … say a reason,” González said.
Buckley did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Democrats reiterated those complaints through the rest of the floor debate until the bill passed on a party line vote, 85-63. On Thursday, the Senate concurred with those changes by a 19-12 vote, sending the bill to the governor to be signed into law.
Here are the 43 proposed amendments that House Republicans dismissed:
*Unless otherwise noted, no Republicans voted against tabling the amendments as described.
Eligibility
Once signed by Abbott, the approved version of the bill will set aside just under $1 billion during the 2026-27 school year to offer vouchers — formally, “education savings accounts” — to any student in Texas who is eligible to attend public school, in order to pay for tuition and other costs to attend private schools. (Homeschooled students also could apply for much smaller voucher accounts for homeschooling materials.)
Abbott and the program’s sponsors have described the proposed voucher system as both “universal” and targeted toward poor and middle-class households. That’s because the program by default will be open to all families, of any income level — including, as Democrats pointed out in committee, Elon Musk, a Texas resident and the richest man in the world, with a net worth of $368 billion according to Forbes. Abbott specifically has pushed for a voucher program without income limits.
But if more students apply for vouchers than the state can pay for, they will be awarded by a lottery, with poorer families and students with disabilities getting priority. They first would be awarded to families with special needs students, followed by poor families in progressively broader income tiers. Any remaining spaces after that would be open to any of the remaining households — by definition, those making at least a six-figure household salary.
Texas Republicans have dismissed those wealthy examples as edge cases, arguing that the bill primarily aims to help low- and middle-income families. But universal vouchers in Arizona disproportionately have been used by students who already were attending private school before it offered public money, according to a ProPublica investigation. (Texas Republicans have emphasized that some poor families have been working multiple jobs to be able to afford to send their kids to private schools.)
When Texas Democrats repeatedly pressed Republicans to codify that attitude in the bill by capping the income of applicants, they declined to do so.
These amendments would have done just that.
- Amendment 2: Limiting eligibility to children from households making less than 500% of the federally defined baseline income for poverty, and scaling the voucher size according to household income.
- This year, 500% of the federally defined poverty level is $160,750 per year for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (The poverty level depends on household size, and is revised each year.)
- The vouchers would have been scaled as follows:
- At or below 200% of the federal poverty level: either $10,000 or the cost of tuition at the private school up to $30,000, whichever is greater.
- Between 200% and 300%: $10,000.
- Between 300% and 400%: $7,500.
- Between 400% and 500%: $5,000.
- At or below 200% of the federal poverty level: either $10,000 or the cost of tuition at the private school up to $30,000, whichever is greater.
- Between 200% and 300%: $10,000.
- Between 300% and 400%: $7,500.
- Between 400% and 500%: $5,000.
- Proposed by Rep. Harold V. Dutton Jr., D-Houston.
- Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, was the only Republican to vote against tabling this amendment.
- Amendment 13: Limiting eligibility to children from households that are at or below 85% of the median household income in Texas.
- The median household income in Texas was $76,292 in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, so the amendment would have limited eligibility to households making less than about $64,849 per year.
- Proposed by Rep. Armando Lucio Walle, D-Houston.
- Amendment 14: Limiting eligibility to children from households making less than 500% of the federally defined baseline income for poverty.
- Unlike Amendment 2, this proposal would have left voucher size unchanged, at 85% of the combined average state and local public school funding, regardless of income level.
- This year, 500% of the federally defined poverty level is $160,750 per year for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (The poverty level depends on household size, and is revised each year.)
- Proposed by Rep. John H. Bucy III, D-Austin.
Voucher size and spending restrictions
The House bill ties vouchers to public school funding: specifically, 85% of combined local and state public school spending. For the current school year, that would be somewhere between about $9,000 and $11,000 per student, per year. (There’s some disagreement on that figure. According to data from the Texas Education Agency cited by the Texas Tribune, that would yield vouchers of about $10,900. But a separate analysis by the Austin American-Statesman calculated a different state and local figure, which would yield an estimate of about $8,900 per student.)
This session, lawmakers and the public have argued for both increasing and decreasing the size of the vouchers themselves. Some Democrats this session worried that despite their size, the vouchers could be shy of the full cost of attendance, leaving poor families with a smaller but no less infeasible gap to make up. Others have argued for cutting the size of vouchers, to reduce the cost of the program and curb the benefit to leaving public classrooms.
The average tuition for Texas private schools is about $11,000, according to Private School Review.
These amendments would have changed the size of vouchers and conditioned how they could be spent.
- Amendment 17: Requiring that participating families “seek and exhaust financial assistance” for tuition before using vouchers, and limiting the size of their vouchers to their financial need so calculated.
- Proposed by Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth.
- Amendment 24: Changing the size of vouchers to be 85% of just state public school funding, rather than state and local funding combined.
- This would have roughly halved the size of the vouchers. Using figures from the Statesman analysis, 85% of just state school funding this year would yield about $4,200 per student this school year.
- Proposed by Rep. Alma A. Allen, D–Houston.
- Amendment 26: Requiring that voucher program money be spent on in-state services, and not “tuition or fees for services provided at a campus located in another state or country.”
- Proposed by Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston.
- Amendment 36: Doubling the size of the voucher to 170% of the statewide average of state and local funding per student that year, and requiring that half of it be used for tuition.
- This would have translated to vouchers of between $18,00 and $22,000 per student, per year.
- By boosting the size of vouchers without increasing the program’s budget, this change could have potentially reduced enrollment in the program if it fills up completely in its first year.
- Proposed by Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston.
Program size and funding mechanisms
With a nearly $1 billion cost for a single school year, Abbott has boasted that Texas’s voucher program as proposed would be the largest such program at launch in the country.
During demonstrations and protests throughout this session and last session, public teachers, superintendents and school districts argued that it was irresponsible for the state to spend so much money on a new program without shoring up funding for its existing schools, which have operated under high inflation for six years without an increase to the basic allotment. (Before last week’s floor debate on the voucher bill, the House approved a $7.7 billion policy to increase school funding for the next two years, though it still falls billions short of what school districts need to counteract inflation.)
And philosophically, many have challenged the use of public tax dollars to help fund private schools, especially when those schools can operate without that money and when that private tuition would drain funding from public schools.
A nonpartisan fiscal analysis of the version that the House passed last week (before amendments) projected that if the Legislature increases funding for the voucher program in future sessions to meet demand, the state would be spending about $3.9 billion on vouchers every school year.
Republicans have repeatedly pointed out that it is up to the Legislature to approve such an increase, and adopted a change to the bill to cap spending at $1 billion for the current two-year budget cycle. But they have declined to cap spending in future budget cycles.
These amendments would have changed the way the voucher program is funded and established limits on its size.
- Amendment 5: Capping the program’s budget for any two-year period at $1 billion.
- Proposed by Rep. Mihaela Plesa, D-Dallas.
- Amendment 7: Removing public funding for the voucher program.
- The unamended bill already has provisions allowing the comptroller to accept monetary gifts, grants and donations to the program fund.
- Proposed by Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons, D-Houston.
- Amendment 8: Capping funding for the voucher program to not exceed public school funding.
- Proposed by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio.
- Amendment 10: Preventing school district purchases of attendance credits from being transferred to the fund for the voucher program.
- Proposed by Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, D-Farmers Branch.
- Amendment 12: Funding the voucher program only with “money appropriated to the fund under the General Appropriations Act,” stripping the provision allowing for gifts, grants and donations to the fund.
- Proposed by Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin.
Public school standards
Lawmakers this session have argued that private schools should have to meet the same standards as public schools if they receive public money, in order to guarantee consistent treatment and care for current public school students.
One prominent side of this issue relates to standardized testing for private schools. In Texas, private schools can, and often do, opt out of using the state standardized tests that are used to measure public school performance — the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR exams. Many instead use other nationally accredited exams, which makes it harder to compare them to public schools and hold their use of public money accountable.
These amendments would have required that private schools meet at least some of the same standards as public schools and school districts in order to receive public funding.
- Amendment 16: Requiring that private schools demonstrate that they comply with federal laws about providing education to children with disabilities in order to receive state voucher money, including the Individuals with Disabilities Act, Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
- Proposed by Rep. Erin Elizabeth Gámez, D-Brownsville.
- Amendment 18: Only allowing participating private schools to use the state standardized test to assess students, rather than giving them the option to use “any nationally norm-referenced assessment instrument.”
- Proposed by Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin.
- Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, was the only Republican to vote against tabling this amendment.
- Amendment 20: Requiring that private schools meet the state’s safety requirements for public schools in order to receive state money, and that the state’s audit of private schools inspect tuition to ensure that schools are not charging voucher-funded students more than other students in order to pay for school safety compliance.
- Proposed by Rep. Mihaela Plesa, D-Dallas.
- Amendment 23: Requiring that private schools comply with the state’s minimum standards for bullying prevention in order to participate in the program.
- Proposed by Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City.
- Amendment 28: Subjecting a participating private school to the same state and federal laws as school districts, including reporting requirements, if more than half of that school’s revenue comes from vouchers.
- Proposed by Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin.
- Amendment 35: Requiring that all teachers and administrators employed by the private school meet the state’s existing requirements for public teachers and administrators as defined by education code Title 2, Subtitle D, Chapter 21, Subchapter B.
- Proposed by Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston.
- Amendment 38: Identical to Amendment 35: Requiring that all teachers and administrators employed by the private school meet the state’s existing requirements for those positions.
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
- Amendment 41: Requiring that participating private schools comply with the “substance” of existing state laws for school districts on mental health training for employees, “multihazard operations plans” and school safety and security standards, “to the extent feasible as if the private school were a school district.”
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
Limiting harm on other programs
The voucher program is expected to have consequences on other state programs. Even Gov. Greg Abbott has acknowledged that drawing students out of the public school system and into private schools would reduce funding for school districts, which is calculated based on attendance, and could in turn affect the solvency of the Teacher Retirement System.
Private school vouchers also wouldn’t help students in rural areas that don’t have any private schools, or that don’t have private schools that meet the program requirements, which Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder pointed out in a press release after the bill’s passage. Of the state’s 254 counties, “more than 150 counties in Texas have ZERO private school options,” he wrote. (That doesn’t necessarily mean that a majority of Texas students don’t have, or wouldn’t have, options for private school.)
That isolation was why a handful of rural Republicans didn’t back Abbott’s voucher campaign last session, a big reason the Legislature failed to muster the votes to pass vouchers then. As retribution, Abbott bankrolled pro-voucher primary challengers for many of those lawmakers last year, ousting 11 of them, enough to lead him to declare soon after last year’s elections that he had the votes to pass the program.
These amendments attempted to reduce the burden that vouchers would place on those programs, in some cases by draining funding from the voucher program itself.
- Amendment 9: Mandating that if the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency determines that the amount of money budgeted for the Foundation School Program is less than the amount needed to “fully fund” it, the difference will be made up with funding from the voucher program.
- Proposed by Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin.
- Amendment 27: Guaranteeing extra money for school districts in counties in which there are no accredited schools that participate in or meet the requirements of the voucher program.
- Proposed by Rep. Vince Perez, D-El Paso.
- Amendment 29: Directing the comptroller to annually calculate “the amount by which the program impacts the Teachers Retirement System due to reduced school district and open-enrollment charter school student enrollment” and to annually send that amount of money from the voucher program fund to the retirement system, “to ensure the actuarial soundness of the system as described by Section 821.006, Government Code.”
- Proposed by Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso.
- Amendment 33: Matching the basic allotment increase each school year to the percentage increase in voucher program spending that year, if the voucher program grew more than the basic allotment (as a percentage).
- If the Legislature next session increases funding for vouchers to meet student demand, the program would grow by about 210% from the 2026-27 school year to the 2027-28 school year, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board’s analysis — more than tripling, to $3.1 billion for the school year.
- Proposed by Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie.
Equal access
Publicly funded schools in Texas must educate any child, regardless of race, sex, class, faith or ability. The voucher bill doesn’t require participating private schools to change their admission standards, and adds protections to make it harder for the state to compel them to do so, which could make it harder for some students and families to be admitted to a private school, even with a voucher.
Disability advocates raised that issue during a Senate hearing on vouchers last session, arguing that it could leave students with disabilities unprotected by federal equality laws.
This session, experts reached similar conclusions about the bill’s promise to help poor families first while also being open to any family regardless of income.
But requiring equal access to private schools would raise significant questions about whether religious schools would be able to receive state voucher money, and whether they would need to modify their curriculum to do so.
These amendments broadly would have aimed to ensure equal access to private schools, and to guarantee that students would receive at least the same standard of care and education as in public schools.
- Amendment 31: Requiring that public school districts in which more than half of the student population identifies as Hispanic or Latino give parents a written notice in Spanish of the program’s availability.
- Proposed by Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston. (Initially erroneously attributed to Rep. Morales Shaw in the online legislative record. The scan of the amendment clarifies that it was brought by Christina Morales.)
- Amendment 39: Striking the section “Program Participant, Provider and Vendor Autonomy,” that is established by SB 2.
- That section limits the state’s ability to impose requirements “that are contrary to the religious or institutional values or practices” of private schools receiving state money, to limit the school from determining admission and enrollment practices and to limit its hiring practices, among other things.
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
- Amendment 42: Requiring that private schools administer special education services to comply with an individualized education program, or IEP.
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
- Amendment 43: Prohibiting participating private schools from discriminating against children in the admission process or providing services to them, on the basis of a federally protected classification or income level.
- Federally protected classifications include sex, race, faith and disability status, among others.
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
Transparency, data collection and reporting
Tying into concerns about which families will receive voucher money, several proposed amendments would have required private schools to report information beyond what is specified in the starting version of the bill.
- Amendment 19: Requiring that participating private schools post student household income data on their websites.
- Proposed by Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston.
- Amendment 22: Requiring that participating private schools report to the comptroller and third-party voucher assistance organizations any complaints filed against them with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, and providing for the comptroller to maintain a list of those complaints on the state voucher program website.
- Proposed by Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City.
- Amendment 30: Incorporating demographic data into the comptroller’s annual report to the Legislature on the voucher program, rather than having that data be collected and reported separately.
- SB 2 already has a section mandating the collection and reporting of demographic information for the program, including grade, age, sex and race, but it is separate from the section describing what to include in the program’s annual report. This amendment would have consolidated the two sections.
- Proposed by Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas.
- Amendment 44: Requiring that the state comptroller’s annual report on the program include salary and wage information from private schools that receive state voucher money, and requiring that those schools make that information available to the public on their websites.
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
Conflicts of interest
Houston Democratic Rep. Gene Wu, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, proposed two amendments targeting conflicts of interest in the use of the program, whether real or perceived.
- Amendment 15: Barring children of Texas lawmakers from participating in the voucher program.
- Buckley included this provision in the original draft of his voucher bill last session.
- Proposed by Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston.
- Amendment 32: Prohibiting state legislators from serving on the governing body of a private school that receives money under the state voucher program.
- Proposed by Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston.
Conditional approval
A handful of amendments attempted to add conditions to the bill for political leverage.
Detecting wobbly support for the bill from Republicans, one would have put the program to a statewide vote in order to become law, forcing the governor and Republican leaders to spend money and political capital on months of statewide campaigning.
Two others would have conditioned vouchers on public school funding, an inversion of Abbott’s hardball strategy to pass vouchers in 2023. Last session, after the House defeated an Abbott-backed voucher bill, the governor retaliated by tying vouchers to a bill to increase public school funding, which failed.
- Amendment 3: Putting vouchers to a statewide vote in November.
- Proposed by Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin.
- Former House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, was the only Republican to vote against tabling this amendment.
- Amendment 6: Preventing the state comptroller from spending money on the program unless both the average base public teacher salary in Texas is at least equal to the average base pay of a teacher in 95% of states, and the average state and local funding per student in Texas is at least equal to that average in 95% of states.
- Proposed by Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons, D-Houston.
- Amendment 34: Nullifying SB 2 unless the Legislature also enacts the House public school funding proposal, House Bill 2, “or other similar legislation that provides financing for public schools in a similar manner and that legislation becomes law.” The House voted to approve that bill on Wednesday, but it still has not been considered in the Senate.
- Proposed by Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood.
Other proposals
House Democrats proposed an assortment of amendments beyond those categories.
- Amendment 4: Nullifying the bill by striking the enacting clause.
- Proposed by Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie.
- Amendment 11: Prohibiting the comptroller’s office from using the program’s money or entering into a contract to “promote, market or advertise the development or use” of the voucher program, or doing so itself.
- Private schools still would have been able to advertise their own participation in the voucher program.
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.
- Amendment 21: Requiring that no member of an eligible private school’s governing body has been found civilly or criminally liable for concealing sexual abuse of a child, and requiring that all private schools applying for approval disclose all school records of abuse of a student or minor by an employee or adult under the school’s supervision.
- Proposed by Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas.
- Former House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, were the only Republicans to vote against tabling this amendment. This also was the last amendment proposed that any Republicans voted against tabling.
- Amendment 25: Prohibiting an education service provider or vendor from using voucher program money to pay for court-imposed settlements, fees or fines “in an action or proceeding brought by or against the provider or vendor.”
- Proposed by Rep. Jessica González, D-Dallas.
- Amendment 37: Allowing the bill to be cited as the “Siphoning Classroom Assets for Millionaires (SCAM) Act.”
- House Democrats have regularly attacked vouchers by calling them a “scam” that benefits wealthy families at the expense of Texas taxpayers and public schools.This amendment would codify that language.
- Proposed by Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston.
- Amendment 40: Making it a felony for an individual to knowingly misrepresent their eligibility for vouchers, knowingly participate in the program while ineligible or knowingly misspend money, and for an employee of the comptroller’s office to allow a private school to participate in the program without meeting all of the bill’s requirements.
- Proposed by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson.