House education leaders won't budge on school finance, private school choice

The top House education leader said Sunday that "private school choice" is still dead in the lower chamber.

"We only voted six times against it in the House," House Public Education Committee Chairman Dan Huberty said. "There's nothing more offensive as a parent of a special-needs child than to tell me what I think I need. I'm prepared to have that discussion again. I don't think [the Senate is] going to like it — because now I'm pissed off."

Huberty, R-Houston, told a crowd of school administrators at a panel at the University of Texas at Austin that he plans to restart the conversation on school finance in the July-August special session after the Senate and House hit a stalemate on the issue late during the regular session. Huberty's bill pumping $1.5 billion into public schools died after the Senate appended a "private school choice" measure, opposed by the House.

Huberty was joined by Education Committee Vice Chairman Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, and committee member Gary VanDeaver, R-New Boston, on a panel hosted by the Texas Association of School Administrators, where they said they didn't plan to give in to the Senate on the contentious bill subsidizing private school tuition for kids with special needs.

Gov. Greg Abbott has called legislators back to Austin for a July-August special session to tackle a hefty 20-item agenda that includes several public education issues that the Senate and House could not agree on during the legislative session. Huberty, Bernal and VanDeaver on Sunday refused to budge politically from where they stood on major education issues during the regular session.

"I pretty much stand where I stood then," VanDeaver said.

Educators argue private school choice saps money from the public school system, while proponents say it offers low-income parents choices beyond the limited scope of the public education system.

That position could put the representatives in private school choice advocates' crosshairs as they gear up for re-election in 2018. Huberty, already a target of efforts to unseat him in the next Republican primary, called it an "onslaught" against public education.

VanDeaver said educators have two options: They can give in to the Senate's attempts to attach school finance and private school choice, or they can vote against legislators who want those issues linked.

"If you don't stick up for yourselves in a real way ... we are going to lose," Bernal added.

Abbott put several public education bills on the special session agenda, to be addressed only after the Senate passes crucial "sunset" bills that would keep several state agencies, including the Texas Medical Board, operating during the next budget cycle. 

Huberty said providing public schools with additional revenue is the only way to decrease local property taxes, another priority of the governor on the agenda for special session. "I'm planning on filing a property tax bill that will address school finance," he said. 

Educators have argued school districts must push for higher taxes because the state is underfunding public schools.

Huberty said he did not know if he would re-file the exact same piece of school finance legislation the House passed in the spring. That bill simplified the formulas for funding public schools and injected $1.5 billion into public schools, in part by using a budget trick to defer a payment to public schools until 2019.

Huberty said the Legislature could still fund the bill by using that mechanism. "If there's no money, I get it," he said. "But we got a mechanism set up to be able to deal with it."

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin and Texas Association of School Administrators have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors is available here.