The Texas Senate approved Senate Bill 1 earlier this week. The bill would allow parents to use money from state funds to go towards their child's private school education.
This school voucher bill is of top priority for Gov. Greg Abbott- the Republican leader even agreed to add public school funding and teacher raises to the special session agenda, but only if that bill passes both the Senate and the House.
Carmen Calderone, chairmen of the Nueces County Republican Party says that the school choice bill will empower parents to be in charge of their child's education.
"Whether that's a private school, keeping them in the government school, being able to get them more supplies for them, homeschooling, whatever is best for their child, and they can use the resources that they're already being taxed for to go towards that," Calderone said.
If Senate Bill 1 gets approved by the House of Representatives, $500 million would be used over the next two years to fund the voucher program. Calderone says that there's a misconception about where that money would be coming from.
"The senate bill that was just passed in special session, it's new money out of the general fund. Five hundred million is coming out of the general fund. That's not coming out of the education fund that's already allocated for public schools," he said.
Even though that money would come from the general fund, Dr. Nancy Vera with the Corpus Christi American Federation of Teachers said that placing state funds into private schools where they can decline any child's admission is wrong.
"The problem is that these private school vouchers can go to schools that only accept certain types of children. They accept whoever they please. We believe that using taxpayer money to supplement their income is a travesty and a direct blow to public education," Vera said.
Vera believes it's important to care for and maintain Texas public schools especially when they can perform just as well as private ones.
"It's everybody's business that we keep public education alive. And we can't do it if we're funneling money to private companies so that they can make profit," she said.
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