Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

The Texas Legislature has demonstrated that they can't be trusted to maintain appropriate funding for public education. When I was a public school student here in Texas, the state paid 60% of the cost of education. Now it's down to 38%. This dramatic decrease in funding has has increased the burden on local school districts, forcing them raise property taxes, cut services, or both. Meanwhile, the Legislature has cut the corporate franchise tax all while cutting funding for schools.

I will fight for an amendment to the Texas Constitution to require the Legislature to fund at least 50% of the cost of public education. This will help local schools reduce class sizes, offer more services, recruit and retain better teachers, and offer a wider of classes and educational opportunities. Every Texas student deserve a great education, and the State of Texas must keep its promises to our children.

Educators and students must be given more flexibility in the classroom. Ending shame and blame testing will give them the space they need to do their jobs. Texas standardized testing is above the federal minimum, and this exacerbates our "teaching to test" problem. Testing should be used to evaluate students to improve their learning, not for shaming students, blaming teachers, and punishing schools. The inappropriate fixation on testing cuts into more productive teaching time. Teachers are trained professionals, and we need to give them the space to adapt to their classrooms and trust them to do the job they were trained to do.

As professionals, we must compensate teachers fairly and competitively and keep our retirement promises to them. Retired teachers are not eligible for social security, and the Teacher Retirement Service pension hasn't given a cost-of-living increase since 1999. Many retired teachers live in poverty or have had to return to work.

Rising healthcare costs and an underfunded healthcare plan have exacerbated these challenges. 2018 costs have increased 50% or more, leading many retired educators to risk going without health coverage. Our retired teachers deserve better, and if Texas continues breaking its promises to them, we will have trouble recruiting great educators in the future.

I believe in strong public schools that have the resources and flexibility to serve each and every Texas student. However, there's a vocal contingent in Texas goverment who are trying to break public schools, so that they can create a voucher system. This would allow our public tax dollars to subsidize private, for-profit schools instead of funding our neighborhood schools. Because the value of a voucher wouldn't cover the full tuition costs of the vast majority of private schools. Vouchers would effectively be a tax break for wealthier Texans who can already afford to send their children to private school.

In addition, private and charter schools are not required to serve all students. Bleeding money from our public school system would threaten education quality for the students left behind. Redirecting public dollars to a voucher system would increase inequity, enable voluntary racial segregation, and starve our public school system of much-needed funding.

Texas is not producing enough college graduates to meet employers' needs. College students in Texas, at both four-year and two-year institutions, struggle to complete degrees at the rate our state needs to provide the skilled labor force needed for competitive economic growth in the future. The rising cost of college and reductions in availability of financial aid are a key factor in this. More and more of the financial burden of education is being pushed onto individual students and their families, which forces students to rely on loans and working during school to cover costs. Dependence on debt and working long hours during school leads to lower completition rates and higher stress. The Legislature needs to make a commitment to ensure that all students, including those with the greatest financial need, have access to quality higher education.

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