AUSTIN, Texas — Texas House Republicans have filed their priority legislation for a package that would allocate taxpayer money toward private schooling. Rather than give a fixed dollar amount to private school families, the legislation would permanently keep private school voucher funding at a lower rate than public school funding.
House Bill 3, filed by Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, establishes the creation of an education savings account program, known as an ESA. It would give families of private school students an amount of taxpayer money that would equal 85% of the statewide average funding going toward public schools.
“Talking to the members in the Texas House, it was important that there be a linkage there that we never wanted to just to have a situation where we were funding more for an ESA than public school amounts,” Buckley, who chairs the House Education committee, said on Thursday. “It’s a way to link those two so that we have equitable resources going to parents in the case of the ESA, but also to make sure that our public schools, of course, are funded at a level that helps them meet the moment of 2025, after four years of raging inflation.”
The bill is in contrast to the Senate plan, which passed largely along party lines earlier this month. That package would allocate $10,000 per private school student, regardless of funding for public schools.
Alongside the school choice legislation in House Bill 3, Chairman Buckley filed House Bill 2, which invests more than $9 billion in public education, including $3.2 billion going toward the basic allotment, according to House Speaker Dustin Burrows. The two bills are entirely separate—vouchers are not wholly tied to public school funds—though Burrows noted that the two bills will move forward together, in what he labeled the “Texas Two-Step.”
The House has historically been opposed to school choice legislation, though Governor Greg Abbott and other Republicans have said the votes are there in the House this session to pass such a plan. By codifying that ESA programs will permanently receive less money than public school students, the bill appears to try to appeal to public school advocates, though it’s not clear if it will work.
“In the long run, this voucher bill would take far more money out of our public schools than what is being proposed this session,” Representative James Talarico, D-Austin, said in a statement. “Vouchers are a scam that takes precious tax dollars out of our neighborhood schools and into unaccountable private schools that can discriminate against kids.”
Asked by a CBS Austin reporter whether or not Buckley had had conversations with Democrats over the 85% allotment, Buckley said that he had not.
