AUSTIN – The Texas Senate is poised to pass a “school choice” bill Wednesday that would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars for private school education.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, has vowed to pass Senate Bill 2 and send it to the Texas House, where similar school voucher-style bills fell short in previous legislative sessions.
Gov. Greg Abbott has made school choice his No. 1 policy goal for the Legislature.
How to watch
The debate and votes will be livestreamed by the Texas Senate at senate.texas.gov/av-live.php. The Senate session begins at noon, and SB 2 is the only bill set for debate Wednesday.
What is in the bill?
SB 2 would create a fund for education savings accounts, a school voucher-style program, with $1 billion from the state budget devoted to the fund. Officials have estimated it would provide enough funding for 90,000 students.
All Texas school-age children would be eligible to apply for an education savings account. Students chosen would get $10,000 to put toward a certified private school. Special education children could receive $11,500. Home-schooled children could get $2,000 to put toward their education.
The bill creates tiered access. If the number of children applying for an education savings account exceeds the $1 billion currently allocated for the fund, $800 million would be prioritized for low-income families or children receiving special education who previously attended public school.
The bill defines low income as families earning five times the federal poverty level, or about $160,000 a year for a family of four.
The remaining $200 million would be available to children of all income levels and include those who are currently in private school.
Will the bill pass?
Similar proposals have passed the Senate numerous times in previous years. Support for the bill falls largely on partisan lines in the Senate, where Republicans hold a strong majority of 20 out of 31 seats.
Patrick has boasted that SB 2 will face little resistance in the Senate, telling KTVT-TV last week that he would send the bill “like a rocket ship” to the House.
The House is a different story. In previous years, similar bills have been defeated by a coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans who opposed using taxpayer money for private school education.
Many House Republicans who opposed school choice retired or were unseated in bruising 2024 Republican primaries in which Abbott actively campaigned against incumbents. Abbott’s political opposition was fueled by $10 million from GOP megadonor Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire and leading school choice advocate.
Abbott has said he has at least 79 votes to pass the measure – a majority of the 150-member House.
What are the battle lines?
Powerful conservative groups, including the Austin-based think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, have lobbied aggressively for the bill’s passage. They say there is too much waste in public education and that a school choice bill empowers parents to have more say in their children’s education.
Public schools associations have been opposition leaders, arguing SB 2 would divert money from public education to private schools that do not face the same scrutiny or standards as public schools.
At a Senate hearing last week, about 75 people testified for the bill and 250 testified against it.
