The Truth of Texas’ Education Continues to Unravel
Hello SAISD Parents,
This week has been a long discussion about school vouchers, teacher pay raises, and parents’ rights. First, let me tell all of our parents that these “parents’ rights” are something new that is not true. The truth is that these rights have been in place for many years. Parents lose their rights only when they enroll their children in Charter and Private schools. So now let’s dive right into what school vouchers will do to our educational institutions.
Now, let’s break down how all our schools are funded in Texas. The most important thing to remember is that our state ranks 9th in the world’s wealthiest economy. This makes me wonder why we need help finding the money for public schools. Our public school’s first funding source is local property taxes based on where we live, meaning a poor district receives less than a wealthy district. Then the state looks at factors such as a student being economically disadvantaged, special education, and other characteristics of our children within our communities. At this time, many superintendents are pushing for enrollment-based funding vs. funding based on attendance. This would give our public schools a better chance of getting more funding.
This idea that private schools are better than public schools is not valid; instead, it’s had the opposite effect- children often return to their local schools. As I listened to teachers who had worked for charter schools tell stories about how the schools would use a paper system to record daily attendance to ensure they didn’t lose any money, that was wrong. The list of what some of these charters did wrong is long, and at times hard to believe that TEA didn’t stop them is even harder to understand. The other issue is that Texas has not reevaluated how much it costs to educate a student in Texas since 1984. Instead of creating all these educational committees that sit behind a desk and read reports to see how much they think it will cost needs to be corrected. We need people that visit our schools, teachers, parents, and staff to determine what our children need in their classrooms. Teachers, know that the Texas AFT are advocating to give teachers a raise of $10,000 instead of an allotment of $1500. We pray they can convince them that all teachers need a raise because this is the only way to keep them in our classrooms. Teachers this is the Respect Pledge that teachers can sign at https://www.texasaft.org/campaigns/respect/.
Lastly, by next week, I will be able to update all my parents’ on the funding or lack of for our community colleges and state universities. Parents know you have the right to speak up for all our children and our community. If anyone has questions or concerns, please email me at lena.lopez@saobserver.com.
Have a Blessed Week,
Lena Lopez
