EDITORIAL “Talk is Cheap and Money Buys Whiskey”

Our newly elected State Representative for District 87, Caroline Fairly of Amarillo interviewed with a local radio station recently on vouchers and said two things that should alarm you. First, she said the proposal to give taxpayer dollars out to private schools “is a good bill” and second she said, “it will pass”.

During the last Texas Legislative Session, a proposal to give vouchers to families in Texas to pay for private schools gained ground with Governor Greg Abbott and Lt Governor Dan Patrick putting their support behind the measure. A group of Rural Republicans banded together to strip vouchers from a larger funding bill, which then died because the Governor said he would veto it. That’s right, the Governor said he would veto public school funding if he didn’t get the private school voucher proposal he wanted.

The Governor then made those rural Republicans his political targets during the 2024 March primaries using a 6 million dollar donation from Jeff Yass, an out-of-state donor who was the founder of the controversial China-aligned social media platform TikToc. Abbott used that donation to run attacks and spread misinformation about the Rural Republicans, the attacks admittedly baseless, and one of his top political consultants referred to it as “bullshit” on a call with donors following the election. Abbott was successful in defeating all but eight of those Rural Republicans and yes that’s right, Abbott took out Rural Republicans for voting to support their district, their rural schools, and their communities.

Our representative Four Price was one of the Rural Republicans who helped to defeat vouchers along with Ken King from Canadian. Rep Price chose not to seek re-election and was replaced by Caroline Fairly, whose campaign was funded almost entirely by her father Alex Fairly, an Amarillo businessman, and Abbott, along with Abbott's endorsement.

Fast forward to 2025 and consider the fact that Fairly holds a seat that consists of mostly rural school districts where there are less than a dozen private school options in all of the 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle. And yet, Fairly, along with our State Senator Kevin Sparks, are strongly supporting the proposal.

Any proposal to hand over our tax dollars to private entities is NOT a good bill. The current draft of the bill, SB 2 will provide $1 billion for private school vouchers, called education savings Accounts (ESAs). The $1 billion will allow payments of $2,000 for homeschooled students and $10,000 for private school students. The bill prioritizes special needs students and “low-income” families making up to $160,000 (family of 4), which is 500% above the poverty level. Surprisingly, there are 6 million eligible students in Texas and the $1 billion would only fund a total of 92,000 full vouchers.

At the same time were are supporting the shrinking of government with DOGE at the federal level, the Texas ESA proposal will grow state government by adding 42 new jobs and creating an administrative bureaucracy that will cost the state $80M. Private schools will be eligible to receive the money and the only “accountability” private schools will have will be that they must be accredited by the state. A fiscal note attached to SB 2 said that with only 5% growth in the ESA program, the state would need to fund it at $ 3.5 billion within 5 years.

For private schools and homeschool families, the danger is this – when you take government money, soon comes government regulation. In other states, homeschool families who have taken vouchers have to undergo family background checks and other intrusive measures. Remember, there is no such thing as no “strings attached” when it comes to the government.

The marketing of the ESA program has been to “empower” parents and to give them “choice” but as you can see, these bills are not “choice” and they aren’t conservative.

School funding in Texas is super complicated, but essentially schools are funded by your local tax dollars first, then the state kicks in additional dollars to each district through the basic allotment. The state provides “weighted” funding to certain types of students and funding for mandated programs, like school safety as an example. And finally, the federal government kicks in and funds programs like free and reduced lunches. This part of the budget is called M&O. School districts can issue taxpayer-supported debt to pay for major facility projects, which requires voter approval. This part of the budget is referred to as I&S.

Article 7 of the Texas Constitution mandates that the state provide a “free system of public schools” and in their wisdom, our founders established that the state portion of student funding would come from a dedicated source of revenue based primarily on revenues from our state’s robust oil and gas industry. ESA’s on the other hand will be funded by General Revenue where it will compete with funding of state priorities such as funding for water infrastructure and giving citizens property tax relief.

ESA programs will provide little to no benefit to rural communities and truthfully there is no compromise position on this issue. According to national reports, Texas ranks in the bottom 10 states for public education funding and Texas has not raised the basic allotment for school districts in Texas since 2019. Any new money districts have received in the last six years has been because of federal COVID-19 relief funds, or they have been tied to mandates from the state. Older districts like many in our area are having to pass massive bonds to take care of aging facilities, and some districts were forced to pass deficit budgets to meet the educational needs of students.

To you and Ms Fairly, I say her vote should be the same as Rep Prices, she should vote for her district, and that there is no compromise for these reasons. To implement a $1B ESA program today which will inevitably grow over time, as the insatiable appetite of government always does, will result in the underfunding and eventually defunding of rural schools in particular. It’s not that vouchers will take students away from rural schools, that’s not the case, because there will be nowhere to go. Rather the problem is this, the State of Texas cannot afford to fund two separate systems of schools and as the political winds blow, rural students will get left behind.

Under this dual funding system, we will inevitably see rural schools go the way of rural hospitals, roads, and infrastructure investments, which have been underfunded and largely ignored. This will get even worse over time especially as our Rural representation in Austin shrinks. If private schools do “pop up” to replace our rural community schools, they will likely fill the gap in the way that dollar stores have filled the retail markets in rural towns, providing substandard products that don’t represent our values.

Rural Texans are resilient, we solve our problems, and we have become accustomed to feeling ignored by our state leaders. I feel like part of my job as the local newspaper is to let you know when something needs your attention. And this is a warning. As a friend said, “Talk is Cheap and Money Buys Whiskey”. This issue needs not just your concern, it also needs your action. The long-term success of our local schools and the education of the kids in our communities are too important, and we can no longer sit on the sidelines.