Does House School Package Set the Stage
for One Step Forward and Two Steps Back?
Capitol Inside
February 21 2025
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows sought on Thursday to put a happy face on the central question that's dogging the GOP's perennial school choice crusade when he touted legislation that would invest record sums of money in public education in the nation's second largest state.
But Burrows set the House leadership team up to be the butt of jokes and mockery on social media and beyond when he christened a pair of bills at the heart of an education funding package as the "Texas Two Step" proposal. The name conjured memories for old-timers of a hit song that the band Desert Rose released in the 1980s called One Step Forward with the classic the problems that come with taking "one step forward and two steps back" in life.
The powerful Lubbock lawmaker in his second month with the gavel portrayed House Bill 2 as a major step forward with a boost of almost $8 billion in state outlays on public schools in Texas. But Burrows said House Bill 2 would prompt the state to spend $1 billion on education savings accounts - which are better known as private school vouchers.
That - in the minds of Democrats, Republicans in rural areas, teachers and local school boards - would represent two giant steps in reverse as a consequence of a very simple truth that Governor Greg Abbott and GOP lawmakers in Austin refuse to acknowledge. Every dollar that's appropriated for private education is one dollar that the state could have used to improve the public schools. That's a cold hard fact.
Abbott adamantly denies that the state would be taking money from public schools if it enacts the first school vouchers plan here. He bases the denial on the fact that state spending on public education would increase in the next two years regardless of the amount that it doles out to families that send kids to private schools. But the governor, the speaker and the other Republicans in the House and Senate would be lying if they said the money that legislators shell out for the state's inaugural vouchers program could not be used to support public education around the state.
The second step back in the House package could come if and when the state's bond rating is slashed as Moody's expects in a move that would make it harder for public schools to raise funds to pay for needed improvements when they're already strapped for cash.
"I believe the Texas House is fully prepared to fund public education while acknowledging one size does not fit all—one without the other would leave Texas short," Burrows said in an email on the House two step. "This session, the House will lead from the front by passing a series of sweeping reforms to improve our education system for Texas students, teachers, and parents."
With GOP State Rep. Brad Buckley of Salado as the lead sponsor of the public and private school funding measures, the House package would raise the basic amount that the state spends on public education by less than 4 percent. But the Republican-controlled Legislature hasn't increased the basic allotment for public schools here since 2019. The public schools have struggled at the same time with costs that have soared since the end of the covid pandemic.
But Abbott and his allies in Austin appear to think that the school choice proposal would fail if voters understood that the public schools would have less money as a result of it even if they received the first allotment increase in six years. The blanket denials give the impression that the Republicans at the Capitol are incapable of selling a school choice plan on its merits without the need for sugar-coating, semantics ingenuity and catchy spin.
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