Fiscal Conservatives Frustrated With House Votes
Update, Friday 2:10 p.m.: Rep. Donna Howard's proposal to direct surplus Rainy Day Fund money to Texas schools for enrollment growth survived to fight another day during debate on the House floor this morning, but not before a Republican attempt to derail it.
Howard, D-Austin, succeeded in attaching the measure, which she said could provide more than $2 billion to schools over the next biennium, to SB 2, an appropriations bill. It attracted widespread support among her colleagues, passing with 98 votes.
But today, when the bill came up for a second vote on the floor, Rep ...
Comments (13)
David Huang via Texas Tribune on Facebook
sux 2 b u.
Though, I'll miss having tax-free Amazon shopping if this means I'm going to have to pay taxes from now on. But oh well, for the good of the State and all. :)
Jeremy M. Prince via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It shouldn't just be fiscal conservatives that are disturbed by the recent House votes in Texas. Regardless of who you are, if you're not seriously disturbed by the behavior of the Texas legislature in recent months (or even years), I sincerely challenge the quality of your cognition.
WUSRPH
Too bad the conference committee will probably chicken out and taken out the Amazon amendment....It would be great to see Perry have to veto it again...plus cause another special session at the same time...Dynamic leadership, any one?
Gigi ATexaslady via Texas Tribune on Facebook
See the House is counting their chickens before the eggs hatch...again.
Rudy Gonzales
Fiscal conservative's, also known as GOP/TEA and some "Long-Time-in-Office" holders are shoving their religious beliefs down Texans throats. We need to change out the current religious radicals and get people who will represent all Texans. Hispanics and Tejano's are already aware of the antics of the GOP/TEA party in Texas. Though conservative, they are not radical. This should not even be on the "Special Session's agenda. These A--holes are wasting our money and time doing BS legislation in Austin. This is the perfect reason to kick out all the a--'s! There should have never been a special session. This should have been taken care of day one in regular session. These a------'s blew through BS legislation rather than do their fiduciary and representative's job. Every school in Texas is waiting for the budget to see how much these GOP/TEA a----'s are going to cut from their budget. Texas has a p---poor record under this Conservative Governor and legislative group. In this one party state, the only legislation that is passed are Governor "Long-Time-in-Office" and known murderer, Rick Perry. Laws passed include the Sonogram bill requiring women to have a sonogram before having an abortion. Here's where they shove their religious beliefs down women's throat whether they want it or not. Not everyone goes to the church "Long-Time-in-Office" and known murderer, Rick Perry goes to. Not everyone goes to the church these right-winged GOP/TEA members go to. Texas must turn their backs on the religious zealots.
Todd Moye via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Refusing to spend revenue that the state has already collected--on public education, which is mandated by the state constitution, no less--isn't "fiscally conservative." It's nihilist.
Honor Kirk
How is collecting sales tax on sales in the state going to hurt jobs? I fail to understand Perry's reasoning on this. Actually, I fail to understand Governor Good Hair's reasoning on anything.
Can somebody please explain to me how collecting sales taxes, which is paid by the consumer bad for "jobs"?
GS Crispus
Amazon essentially threatened to move shop if we demanded they start collecting taxes. In other words, the end result of thirty years of supply-side economics.
David Spratt
Amazon has successfully dodged this tax issue in other states as well. As online sales continue to increase, tax revenue to the states will decrease. I do not mind paying the sales tax, but states being cheated out of it is not right. Maybe a state income tax will make up the difference? If The educators get their way and continue to get every dime they are out for , this will surely happen. To bad the state of Texas Lost Plyler v. Doe in 1982. If we were not forced to educate illegal Children and their counterparts Anchor Babies , the state would probably not even need an extra 4 billion. As the Court noted in 1982 there was no showing of " A significant State interest in denying services to illegals." I would think the times have changed and today " Significant Interest and harm" could be shown. Those districts that are growing, what demographic is causing them to grow? Plyler was a 5-4 decision. It should be revisited, State interest would turn the tables on this disastrous ruling.
PeggyV
Howard's amendment spends more state dollars while HB 33 - the Taxpayer Savings Grant - provides as much in additional funding for public schools without increasing state spending. (Both estimates are based on projections.)
Isn't is an interesting commentary on public education that public schools are lobbying for the former and against the latter.
One costs Texans more money which limits economic freedom and the Taxpayer Savings Grant provides parents with freedon to select the educational environment where they believe their children have the greatest opportunity to succees.
I believe that if public school district leaders were more focused on the students than on their own bureaucracy and power, they would not oppose school choice.
Moreover, their opposition to school choice affirms how little confidence they have in the edicational product they are delivering. If ISD leaders fear a mass exodus should parents have the opportunity to choose, what does that say about public schools?
GS Crispus
When private schools have to meet the hiring and legal standards public school systems are mandated to provide, I might consider private schools as something more than what they are -- expensive and unregulated subsidies to the private sector based on free market religious thinking. Our education system should not be made into another privilege for the wealthy.
Heres a comparison of public vs private:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:uyRcHqRnG94J:www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP111.pdf+public+schools+outperform+private&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShWenPNVJs-dtKF1OtNOqo3aIXexrokNj8aqcdFnCzVWjaIQQ1yT0HpZJV8g28z2I966kfKAQDwsYvKERzd9pQJ9lW2ld9bopaL1Z7VMGrTUVWzgBdMxW2C8w9cuSBvPrJtI0Pm&sig=AHIEtbSayjqVKsLqWeRl2IxbAVm1YVuCAw
PeggyV
GSCrispus...you clearly do not understand education issues. Private schools usually operate at a much lower cost per student than public schools. But if you want to assume that private schools are for the priviledged, if would make sense that you would want the private school opportunity for all. You may also be interested to know that legislative leaders attempted to eliminate many of the mandates but the education lobby opposed much of it...particularlt teacher "unions".
GS Crispus
Myth 1) “Charter Schools are cheaper than public schools”
Some are. Some are not. It varies greatly on their funding and how they are classified. If you had read the link I had read, you would have seen such a breakdown of different private schools.
Interestingly, such disputes exist in the public school system as well. You can see revenue received by neighboring public school districts vary from two hundred dollars to differences in thousands of dollars per student. A few hundred dollars per student can be the difference of millions of dollars.
As for Charter School funding, they received great favor (and still do) from No Child Left Behind (modeled on Texas’ choice policy) and the Obama administration has continued this line of thought with Race to the Top. It is no longer 1996.
Regardless, when you create another school system through public funds (one with NO REGULATIONS), you are incurring additional costs because you are not supporting a public school and a charter school down the road. When you throw in basic economic theory, such as the concept of “economies of scale”, you are weakening a larger public school systems ability to offer more and diverse programs because you are siphoning funds away to create a secondary school bureaucracy down the road.
Myth 2) Regulations are Bad, Mmk!
Again, some are and some are not. For instance, charter schools are not held to the same standards the public schools are regulated to follow. For instance, charter schools generally have less educated and less qualified teachers across the board because we have standards and certifications for public school teachers that they do not have to follow.
Secondly, charter schools can cherry pick the students they want, and turn away those who are too “expensive” (to give a relatable example: private insurance providers find ways to disqualify people with pre-existing medical conditions because its more expensive to deal with them).
When researchers (again, if you had read the article I had linked) began to account for special populations such as Special Education, LEP (limited english proficiency), economic disadvantaged -- they showed that Charter Schools were less successful in education these groups. As a teacher, I’ve become quite accustomed to receiving such children back from the local private schools who did not want to deal with these populations. Private School attrition rates on these students in aggregate are reprehensible.
These students are simply more expensive. Special Education tracking has shown itself to be very successful, but it is not cheap. Things such as drop-out recovery and SSL/ESL “shelter classrooms” are expensive, and it is much easier to avoid these costs by simply not having those students (or not providing the services and pretending they do not exist).
I can tell you this, there are quite a few students who would never have earned their High School diploma, if a state regulation stating my school campus had to look for them did not exist. Life is hard, and sometimes family, economics, and other social ills create barriers to education, and if we do not address them – they become bigger problems for society in the long-term.
Where can we see deregulated failures in recent history? Well, a recent GAO report has shown how corrupt and terrible unregulated for profit schools can be. We have a huge oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico because we thought the oil industry could police itself. How about that deregulated banking industry? How are they doing?
There are good and bad regulations. It is not a yes or no thing, even though many on the right want to treat it as such.
3) Myth #3: Oh God The Evil Teacher Unions!
Yes, let us blame the teachers for acting in their rational self-interest in a right-to-work state that is a beacon of conservative policies in the country. Yes, it’s the Teachers Unions holding us back in a state where conservatives have a supermajority and have gotten everything they want. Yeah, what else are they telling you on the radio?
The policy in this country has been from No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top has been to blame the teacher for poor test scores or demonize the profession. Good for nothing socialist parasites! It amazes me when you look at attrition rates for teachers, and then the even bigger attrition rates in charter schools, that we still think a policy of blaming teachers will somehow make things better. We now have a belief from two administration that’s if we somehow cut 5-10% of teachers a year and turn things over to a “free market” method of doing business, we are somehow going to get better results. Aint gonna happin’.
In Conclusion:
The problem is that we have seen no real tangible results from unregulated charter schools. Often times, we get worse results (just as we have from unregulated for-profit college, the oil industry, and the banking industry… and heck quite a few things we have outsourced to China).
A $5100 school voucher is not going to enable people to send their child to the $25,000 a year private school, but it is a nice subsidy to people who can already afford to send their children anywhere they want…and again there are certainly no requirements that these same unregulated schools have to play by the rulebook we’ve set for the public school system.
When the private business community can play by the same rules we expect of our government institutions, then they will have a leg to stand on. Currently they do not, and I am not willing to skim of the top of our schools and strip them of further funding because a minority of the population treats anything labeled “private” as something to put blind faith in.