Texas Public Education Is on Course to Disaster, Here’s the Developments
Hello SAISD Parents and Community,
This past week has been a battle over many issues, the biggest being how to allocate the budget to our schools, teachers, and different educational programs. Our Governor Gregg Abbott has also changed the “school vouchers” to “school choice”. It’s still the same concept, all he did was change his approach to getting what he wanted- something that ‘sounds’ like he’s helping our educational system. No matter what they choose to call it, this nightmare of defunding our public schools will still hurt our teachers, children, and all staff.
Many house representatives and senators said that SB8 needed to ensure more measures to ensure that all funds were correctly used and that they needed to hold private schools accountable. In a statement by Senator Creighton, the head of the Senate Educational Committee, he repeatedly emphasized that “private schools will act independently and that parents will be the best accountability tool for the program and that private schools will not be subject to state tests.” By that statement alone, he doesn’t care about our children and their education; instead, it seems he is eliminating paperwork and making the TEA job easier. Parents know that not every politician voted for SB8 because, as some stated, there is good and evil in this bill, but for the most part, it is more bad than good. This “school choice” is just another way of rewording so that the Governor and Lt. Governor get what they want: which is to defund our public schools. When everyone gathered on the floor to ask questions; it came with a lot of booing and catcalls, especially when Martinez Fisher was up.
Fisher asked ‘so if this is correct, then none of the billions of extra surplus we have this legislation will be used to help our teachers nor their classrooms in our public schools’. The answer was yes, that is correct, and at that moment, he said “Well thanks for not helping our teachers.”
Martinez Fisher
This one statement speaks volumes, and from all the backlash, it seems that it got everyone’s attention as well.
Every year, parents face changes our Governor Gregg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick want to make in our current educational laws. They do this with their puppet rulers republicans by convincing them that these changes in the classroom will make our schools more successful and help both teachers and students. Yet SB 16, about higher education, states all staff are prohibited from compelling a student from adopting a belief that any race, sex, ethnicity or social, political or religious, social, belief is inherently superior to any race, sex, ethnicity, or religion. So why do they have the right to do this when they want to change the law in our educational system based on their beliefs or ideology?
If more bills pass, this will give the head of TEA, Mike Morath, more rights and leverage to take over more failed public schools, which means more teachers lose their jobs as well. Now he will be known as the terminator or cleaner that will come in with his staff and take over our public school districts. Yet, as they keep changing the laws, we are losing more teachers and public schools.
If we want to change this broken record, they call success, teachers, staff, and everyone in our public schools, along with community members, must find a peaceful way to protest. If we want to make changes, we need to speak up and tell our stories because our politicians should not have the right to choose if our teachers deserve a pay raise, especially with the cost of living rising every day. I know that we all live in some scary times, but we need to understand that our children will suffer more without teachers and staff in our local schools.
If anyone thinks that sending your child to private schools that pop up overnight is better than your child’s current school, then you need to know that’s a lie. When anyone wants to send their child to a charter school or private school, there are many things you must remember; those schools can deny your application, many don’t take special needs students, and when you have a complaint, there are no school boards or superintendents to report it to. Then if TEA is not making these schools accountable like they do our public schools then we will never know if our children are receiving a good education.
Parents, we must ask ourselves what will we do when the doors at all our public schools are locked and the buildings are empty. Lastly, we must remember that our teachers are on the front line right now trying to find a way to climb out of these deep trenches that they have been put in place by our Texas politicians.
If anyone has any questions or concerns or wants to know how to connect with their local official please email me at lena.lopez@saobserver.com
Have a Blessed Week,
Lena Lopez
