Since the Kingdom of Life Academy moved from its location at the Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Tyler to its own 23-acre space in town, they’ve struggled to get enough students to keep afloat, going from 10 students at the end of 2019 to 20 students this year.
Its website states the campus offers a “Christ-centered education” to grades six through 10. “All education is inescapably Christian in that all truth is God’s truth. The Bible, as the infallible, inerrant and inspired Word of God, is the foundation and guide for all knowledge and is basic to all elements of education.”
Struggling private religious schools like Kingdom of Life, as well as Catholic parochial schools facing widespread declining enrollment, have been looking to the state to throw them a lifeline through a school voucher program that would pay for the tuition of private school students at large. For nearly 30 years, a bipartisan coalition in the Texas House has staved off efforts to siphon public dollars to private schools. But after Tuesday’s election results, Governor Greg Abbott and the school voucher movement are inching closer to getting what they want.
“We have more than enough members of the Texas House of Representatives elected last night to make sure that school choice is going to pass,” Abbott said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon in front of the Kingdom of Life Academy campus.
Public education advocates say that while defeating school vouchers next legislative session will be an uphill battle, the fight isn’t over.
“There’s more than one way to get the voice of the people amplified. It’s not always at the ballot box. If we get such an overwhelming cry against this policy, I think you’re going to see House members tell the speaker not to let the policy come to the [House] floor,” said Charles Johnson, executive director of the public education advocacy group Pastors for Texas Children, which has long organized faith-based leaders to fight against vouchers and for religious liberty.
In the last legislative session, Abbott tied a $7.6 billion public school funding package to a universal private school voucher program. Even after four special sessions, House legislators voted 84-63 to strip the voucher proposal from the bill; 21 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the bill. Abbott poured $8.8 million into House primary campaigns and ousted nine incumbent Republicans who voted against vouchers. Much of this was bankrolled by Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who contributed an astounding $6.3 million to Abbott’s warchest. Yass also gave $8.7 million to AFC Victory Fund, an affiliate of the Besty Devos-backed American Federation for Children, which in turn poured nearly $5 million into the Texas primaries. An affiliated PAC of the right-wing Club for Growth also spent over $8 million, according to state campaign finance records.
To counter Abbott’s gains in the primaries, House Democrats targeted several key races with the goal of flipping two or three GOP-held districts. They fell far short of their goal and even lost two open seats held by retiring Democrats. The GOP will now control 87 of the 150 seats in the lower chamber.
Abbott declared that there are now 79 “hardcore school choice proponents” in the state House, enough to meet the simple 76-vote majority needed to pass a voucher bill.
Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at the Michigan State University, told the Texas Observer that Abbott is following the same playbook as in 30-some states where vouchers were passed. “A lot of outside dollars are spent on the Republican primary processes. The only difference with Texas is that you do have this longer bipartisan tradition of opposition, but it’s also a lot bigger and a lot more expensive to play in the primary game [in the Texas Lege].
But there’s no shortage of big money in Texas GOP politics. As Johnson told the Observer, “If you’ve got billions of dollars at your disposal, you can buy a legislature. And that’s what Tim Dunn, Farris Wilks, and Jeff Yass, Betsy DeVos, and others in their network have done. They bought a legislature.”
Despite Abbott’s declaration of victory, there’s still a number of factors that may upset his voucher agenda.
“We have one more election before the session starts that may be the most important, and that is the election of a speaker,” said Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who serves on the House public education committee. Speaker Dade Phelan is currently facing a mutiny from a significant bloc of the Republican caucus who want him gone. GOP House members will hold a caucus meeting in early December to cast their (non-binding) votes for speaker.
“A lot is going to change over the next few months,” Talarico said.
After Donald Trump announced Abbott was on his vice presidential shortlist back in February, Abbott told reporters he planned to run for governor again in 2026. But Trump’s election has prompted another round of speculation that he might end up in other positions in Trump’s new administration next year.
Johnson said he believes that without Abbott’s pressure campaign, many other House Republicans would vote against vouchers: “Some more traditional Republicans who believe that vouchers are bad, voted for them anyway to keep Greg Abbott off their back.”
It may be wishful thinking to pin hopes of a voucher downfall to an off-chance cabinet appointment, but it is true that the policy’s passage is not set in stone.
“The results last night should not be mistaken for a mandate on private school vouchers,” Talarico said.
He believes that the presidential election affected the state House races down ballot, but said that across Texas and the nation, even where there was a red wave, school vouchers or sending taxpayers money to private schools is still deeply unpopular with voters.
In the deep-red states of Nebraska and Kentucky where Trump won with commanding leads, voters also struck down ballot measures for school vouchers by strong margins. In Colorado, where Harris won, rejected a measure that would have enshrined the right to “school choice” in the state’s constitution.
Cowen said that voucher programs across the country have mostly led to declining student achievement. During the last legislative session, attempts by Democrats to add financial and academic accountability measures to the voucher bill were rejected by Senate Republicans and Abbott.
And across the 30-some states that have a school voucher program, Cowen notes that 70 percent of voucher users were already attending private school.
At the news conference, Abbott asserted that school vouchers would not take away money from public schools, saying that money from vouchers would come from the general fund and not the permanent school fund. “[Voucher opponents] make it sound like you can’t have both school choice and robust public schools,” Abbott said. “That’s completely false. The reality is we can have the best public schools in America and also have school choice at the very same time. It does not have to be one or the other, and it’s wrong to pit one against the other.”
Public education advocates disagree. “If you commit yourselves to paying tuition for students who are already in private school, costs borne by the private sector just last year or this year, it gets really hard, really quickly to pay what you need on the public school side,” Cowen said.
Arizona, which has an universal voucher program, is staring down a $1.4 billion budget shortfall this year and had to make significant cuts to other state programs.
“We are focused on what this state’s educators care about: fully funding the public schools that 90 percent of Texas students attend. We would hope the governor and the legislature are also focused on that outcome,” said Patty Quinzi, director of public affairs and legislative council at the Texas American Federation of Teachers.
The coming legislative session in 2025 could have an immense effect on the future of public education in Texas. Public ed backers hope the desire to protect public schools will help once again sway Texans to act and put pressure on their elected representatives.
“The very existence of public schools is at stake. I think if we pass a voucher scam in the state, it’ll be the beginning of the end for public education as we know it,” Talarico said.
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