Brownsville school board member opposes voucher plans at Austin hearing

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Brownsville ISD Trustee Daniella Lopez Valdez expressed dismay over what she encountered at a hearing of the Texas House Committee on Public Education concerning so-called Education Savings Accounts, also known as school vouchers.

The hearing in Austin was on Monday, the first day of school for the Brownsville Independent School District and many other public school districts across Texas. The timing was no accident, she said.

“I was there all morning, all day. I mean I didn’t testify until 8:30 p.m., after all the invited testimony. … You could tell. It was very staged the entire time. … The hearings are happening on the first day of school so nobody could know about it. … I feel like they’re trying to hide this and slip it in, but we need to make the community aware because they want to make it happen. There are already messages that the governor’s going to call so many special sessions, like he’s already threatening his legislators, in a way, to make it pass.” she said.

Lopez Valdez is the vice president of the BISD Board of Trustees and chairs its budget committee. In June she was elected to the Texas Association of School Boards’ Legislative Committee, marking the first time in 17 years that a representative from the Region One Educational Service Center in Edinburg has served in that role, which is to advocate directly to state leaders for the shared policy priorities of Texas schools.

“The truth is that they’re just trying to privatize public education without any data, without any means of knowing that this is just a special interest person that is donating so much” money to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in an effort to get a voucher system passed in Texas, she said over the phone on her way back to Brownsville on Tuesday.

“Basically they’re telling us, ‘you don’t get money unless you pass vouchers, unless you agree to it, unless you swallow it. This is it. You don’t get anything until you pass vouchers. … I mean, they could have met any other day in the summer, but they chose the first day of school.”

In an interview with The Brownsville Herald on Monday, BISD Superintendent Jesus. H. Chavez agreed with Lopez Valdez’s view that the hearing happened on the first day of school for a reason.

“We’re living with a basic allotment. For every student we get $6,160. That amount was approved in 2019, so for four years we’ve been living with that same amount, and even though the state has the dollars, right, and I put this squarely on the governor and the lieutenant governor. They did not want legislation and this funding to come through unless they got vouchers,” Chavez said.

“It’s interesting. Right now as we speak, they’re having a hearing in Austin about education saving accounts, vouchers. Now let me ask you, why do you think they set it on today, the first day of school? We can’t be there. We educators, we superintendents, we cannot be there. I am here in Brownsville. I’ve got to open up school. I’ve got to be sure that things go well, and they set the hearing at a time when educators, superintendents can’t participate in the hearing,” Chavez said, then added:

“Maybe it was something else, but coming back to why we didn’t get the funding, we didn’t get the funding because the governor didn’t want to give us the funding unless we got vouchers.

“Bottom line, that’s where we are and we’re suffering. You know that we cut the budget $17 million dollars. In addition to that, we’re running a deficit budget, meaning that we have to use over $23 million dollars from fund balance. I am doing that. A number of districts across the state are doing that. We’re fortunate in that we wanted to protect jobs and we didn’t let people go, but there were districts that had to let go of 50 teachers, 100 teachers or even 200 teachers because the state is not doing its part in funding public education.

“That blame is not a local blame. That blame rests squarely on the governor, the lieutenant governor. The Senate, they wanted vouchers one way or another, so the bill for funding was tied to vouchers and it failed, because we in education, we don’t want vouchers, we don’t want education saving accounts. Long term they’re going to hurt public education, they’re going to hurt the state,” Chavez said.

“Parents have choice already. They have choice within our district. We pretty much let people go to whatever school they want within our district. You also have the choice of charter schools. You’ve got multiple charter school companies out there, and so there is a lot of choice. Parents do have choice. They’re wanting to further take public dollars and put them in private hands,” the superintendent said.

The November general election will determine partisan makeup of the 89th Texas Legislature. It is also expected to dictate what happens next in Abbott and the Legislature’s ongoing effort to enact a system of private-school vouchers to allow parents to access public school funds.

For her part, Lopez Valdez said she saw the hearing as an effort to instruct the House and the Texas Education Agency in how to implement education savings accounts based on the model provided by Indiana and Utah, which she said are young, unproven programs.

“I feel that basically they showed us what they want to do. It was very apparent where they’re going. Whether they listen to us or not, now we know what they think are their strong points, and we can come back and argue back with actual data and actual facts and I think that is very helpful. … They’re going to say that they can fund it, but they can’t. It’s not sustainable to create a whole other program and fund it as well. That’s not fiscally responsible.”

As the Region One member of the TASB legislative committee, Lopez Valdez represents school districts from Laredo to Corpus Christi, including all in the Rio Grande Valley.

In her testimony to the Education Committee, she urged House members to oppose vouchers.

“I’m here to express my deep concern over the current proposal to implement Educational Savings accounts, particularly due to their impact on South Texas families. In South Texas, public schools are the backbone of our communities, serving some of the most vulnerable families in the state. Education is truly our path to progress. Brownsville ISD is currently 58% underfunded and Donna ISD is 74% underfunded according to a Rice University study mentioned (in earlier testimony.) Across our region 27 districts are over 40% underfunded,” she testified.

“ESAs would only benefit a few, leaving the majority with fewer educational resources. Education is essential for our communities’ future. Weakening it undermines our entire region. I urge you to oppose ESAs and to focus on strengthening our existing public schools to ensure that every child has access to a quality and safe education.”