“I’m a native Texan, a product of Texas public schools, and a faith leader… The Texas Consitution outlines clearly that it is a responsibility of the Texas governmnet to provide for the children of Texas to be educated. This voucher program would benefit maybe one or two percent of the young people in this state. It is not what we want. It is not what we need.”
– NT-NL Bishop Erik Gronberg
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25
An August 25, 2023 article in the Texas Tribune (1) reports that public schools receive a minimum of $6,160 per student per year, with additional funding provided for students with special needs. Subsequent reporting (2) indicates that the legislation, as currently proposed, “…would allow almost all Texas families access to $8,000 of taxpayer money to pay for private schools and other educational expenses such as uniforms, textbooks, tutoring or transportation, among other things.” This is the first indication that this initiative is not about providing great education for all Texas students: the authors of this legislation are willing fund private schools an additional $1,840 public dollars per student than they are willing to provide to public schools.
Suppose the legislation changed per-student funding to $8,000 per student per year so that public funds for public schools matched what the proponents of this bill want to give private schools. Parents still have a problem: $8,000 does not cover the cost of tuition at a private school. Take Fort Worth’s Trinity Valley School for example. Annual tuition for a high school student is $26,832 per year. That means that a Fort Worth family earning the median household income of $67,927 per year (4) would need to come up with an additional $18,832 per student per year. That’s 27.7% of household income if they want to send their student to TVA. This is the second indication that this legislation is not about providing great education for all Texas students: it does not cover the cost of private education for all students.
References:
1. Lopez, B. (2023, August 25). How a state effort to fund Texas schools equitably is shortchanging dozens of rural districts. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/25/texas-school-districts-funding-property-values/
2. Lopez, B. (2023, October 13). Texas’ main voucher bill seeks to avoid other states’ mistakes but keeps ideas that attracted criticism. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/13/texas-school-vouchers-other-states/
3. Tuition Fees | Affording TVS | Trinity Valley School. (2023). Retrieved October 24, 2023, from https://www.tvs.org/admission/tuition-fees
4. Data USA. (2023). Fort Worth, TX | Data USA. DataUSA.Io. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/fort-worth-tx/
