BCISD opposes education voucher bill
State legislation that would give families $8,000 a year to spend on private schools will take funds from local public schools, according to an analysis by the Texas Legislative Budget Board, which is why Burnet school board trustees are against it.
The Burnet Consolidated Independent School District board passed a resolution opposing vouchers, education savings accounts, and taxpayer savings grants at its regular meeting Monday, March 27, in response to Senate Bill 8, which is currently pending in committee.
“The analysis assumes 25,000 children will leave public schools to take advantage of the program in the first year, and that the number will grow to nearly 42,000 by 2028,” BCISD Superintendent Keith McBurnett said in a media statement after the meeting. “While the annual cost of the program starts at $512 million, the figure balloons to nearly $1 billion within three years.”
The analysis is for Senate Bill 8, written by Sen. Brandon Creighton, chair of the Senate Committee on Education. The bill itself makes no appropriations but would be the legal basis for appropriations.
SB8 would establish an education savings account program and define a “certified educational assistance organization” (CEAO) to administer the program. It also sets program eligibility requirements for children and educational services providers and offers a list of approved education-related expenses.
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Sounds as though BCISD needs to listen to the analysis they are quoting. Forty-two thousand students is a lot of unsatisfied customers. If I still had kids in school I would definitely be searching for a school which sticks to reading, writing and arithmetic. Topics which prepare the students for the job world. I would also be looking for a school in which the administrators/teachers know that the students belong to the parents. Finally, paying all of these school property tax dollars for all of these decades has given tax payers zero voice in decisions made by public school systems. And the key problematic word here is “systems”. Local school districts have grown into large systems, including organizations which influence the thinking of locally-elected school board members, which intimidate and obfuscate. I pray that we all do the right thing here.
Also thoroughly opposed to this. Private schools should not receive public tax dollars. Nor should charter schools. As a retired educator who doesn’t like watching kids become political pawns to the jackals on either side of the aisle – and to be abundantly clear, both sides are guilty of this – we need to FIX education and not abandon it to be unfunded and generally worse over time.