by The Center Square Staff
The bill now heads to the House, where its passage remains tenuous despite Gov. Greg Abbott making parental rights and school choice a legislative priority.
On Thursday, the Texas Senate passed the state's first parental rights and school choice bill, SB 8, filed by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who chairs the Senate's Education Committee.
After a marathon hearing that lasted over 11 hours and hundreds of witnesses who testified for and against the bill, the state Senate Committee on Education passed the bill by a vote of 10-2 on March 28. On April 6, after 29 amendments were offered, several of which failed, the bill passed 18 to 13.
The bill now heads to the House, where its passage remains tenuous despite Gov. Greg Abbott making parental rights and school choice a legislative priority.
On Thursday, during budget deliberations, House Republicans approved an amendment to ban state funds from supporting Education Savings Accounts in opposition to the Senate plan.
Sen. Creighton said he authored the parental rights bill "to place parents, not government, squarely in the center of the decisions for their children. Giving parents the power to determine the best school for their child will encourage competition and innovation, ensuring that each Texas student has the opportunity to succeed."
"As a state with 6 million students, and 400,000 educators, I recognize that there are no simple solutions to the complex challenges facing our education system," Creighton said in a statement. "However, as lawmakers, we have an obligation to meet the moment and take decisive action for the future of our state."
According to a recent Texas Education Agency report, in the 2021-22 school year, 5,427,370 students were enrolled in Texas public schools. The report doesn't include private school or homeschool enrollment data.
Failing public schools, efforts by some administrators to limit or remove parental rights and oversight of the curriculum, books, or lesson plans being taught to their children, teacher unions demanding school shutdowns, mask mandates and other mandates led parents to demand the state Legislature take action as the Florida Legislature has already done.
The Texas Parental Bill of Rights, which Gov. Abbott has been touting in a statewide tour meeting with parents and educators, addresses several issues related to parental rights and educational choice. However, critics point out that it's not what it seems, and the bill doesn't help all Texas students. The newly created Education Savings Account, the bill creates, for example, only applies to 62,500 students in failing schools.
One of the strongest provisions of the bill is the emphasis on parental rights, which clarifies that parents are the primary decision-makers of their children's education and healthcare. The bill recognizes that public schools or governmental entities may not infringe on a parent's right to direct the instruction of their child as it pertains to their education and medical, psychiatric, and psychological treatment.
Regarding instruction in the classroom, the bill requires schools to provide parents with access to curriculum and materials. It also allows parents to request that school districts audit their children's classroom materials to ensure they align with district-adopted material and are on-grade level.
The bill prohibits all public school districts from providing instruction, guidance, activities, or programming about sexual orientation or gender identity to all pre-K through 12th-grade students.
It also requires parental consent for changes to health or wellness policies for their children, requiring schools to inform parents of any changes to their child's mental, emotional or physical health. It also requires parental consent for schools to share their children's health or medical information with a third party.
The bill also streamlines the grievance process, which currently takes many months. The bill includes several stipulations to require the process to take no longer than 42 days.
The bill also makes it easier for parents to move their children into different schools in another school district and into private schools. Currently, school districts can deny parents' transfer requests for a range of reasons. The bill changes this to only allow denials based on a school's capacity or if the applicant is currently suspended or expelled.
The bill creates an Education Savings Account for 62,500 pre-K through 12th-grade students who attend the poorest-performing schools in the state. The money would be parent-directed and could be used at any accredited school or accredited college.
It allows parents to apply to receive up to $8,000 in state funds to put into an ESA to pay for a range of educational-related expenses. It also includes a subsidy for smaller school districts with less than 20,000 students to offset any losses they may face with students that leave their district. Smaller school districts would receive a $10,000 grant from the state for five years for every student that leaves.
The ESAs would be administered through the Comptroller of Public Accounts and funded through the state general revenue fund, not through a dedicated public school fund.
ESA applicants are prioritized according to how poor their schools grade according to the state grading system, with two-thirds of the slots only available to students attending schools with C, D, or F grades. The bill also requires that 10% of the slots be made available to private school students whose families have a combined income of less than twice the federal poverty level.
The Center Square Staff
Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/texas-senate-passes-parental-rights-school-choice-bill
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