House Dems Say Senate Republicans
Poised to Gut Public School Funds Bill
Capitol Inside
May 14, 2025
Texas House Democrats contended on Wednesday that Senate Republicans were on the verge of gutting a public education funding plan that Governor Greg Abbott used as bait to win support for a school vouchers bill from rural GOP lawmakers who'd killed it two years before.
The House Democratic Caucus issued a scorching review of a Senate rewrite of legislation that cleared the lower chamber with an infusion of almost $8 billion for the Texas public schools with the first increase in six years in the basic allotment that districts receive based on the number of students who are enrolled.
The Senate Education Committee set a public hearing on a revised version of House Bill 2 on Thursday three weeks after the proposal arrived in the Capitol's east wing. House Democrats warned that the new vouchers law would take more money away from public schools than the Senate's overhaul of HB 2 would pump back into them if the alterations that the Republicans there have reportedly made to the measure.
The Democratic Caucus said Senate Republicans plan to take a proposal that was already insufficient and slash it in a way that culminated in school closings, teacher layoffs and the elimination of programs in districts that would fall farther behind in a scramble to keep pace with inflation. The HDC said that 80 percent of the public schools in Texas will begin the school year this fall with budget deficits that would be deeper if the Senate GOP leaders get their way with the knife that they appear poised to take to HB 2.
"The House offered our starving schools crumbs, the Senate is now offering no more than dust," the Democrats' caucus asserted in a three-page analysis that it based on a Senate overview of the alterations that the Republicans there are ostensibly preparing to make with HB 2.
State Rep. James Talarico - an Austin lawmaker who's been the Democrats' leading voice on the Public Education Committee during all of four regular sessions in the House - suggested on social media that the public school funding plan had been a ruse designed to hoodwink Republicans who'd opposed vouchers in the past.
"Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans are defunding our schools in broad daylight," Talarico said. "After bribing lawmakers to vote for his voucher scam with the promise of historic school funding, Greg Abbott is - unsurprisingly - going back on his promise. This was supposed to be the Texas Two-Step, but right now I'm just seeing one step: defunding our schools with a vouchers scam."
GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows' team coined the two-step phrase for the sake of easing resistance from rural representatives who needed assurance that public schools would come out ahead if they reversed course on education savings accounts.
But Talarico argued that Abbott essentially took public school funding hostage then killed the hostage after he'd gotten everything he wanted with a $1 billion initial outlay for ESAs that would cost the state more than $3 billion annually after the program's first two years.
The Democratic Caucus said Senate Republicans planned to eliminate a $440 increase in the basic allotment that the House approved in April while cutting $800 million for compensatory education, $450 million for bilingual education from the school funding proposal. The HDC also asserted that a minimum $4,125 pay raise for public school teachers would be reduced to $2,500 for educators in urban districts if the Senate revisions prevail. The caucus said Senate Republicans could erase a proposed expansion of pre-kindergarten in Texas from HB 2 as well.
more to come ...
| 
