Senate Has Best Shot Yet to Snap Streak
with 0-5 School Choice Record Since 2015
Capitol Inside
February 7, 2025
Texas Senate Republicans appear to be on the verge of ending a decade of failure on Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's paramount priority with House GOP leaders preparing to follow the upper chamber's lead with a vote on school vouchers as the first bill out of the gate on the rotunda's west side this year.
Patrick has bragged about passing a school choice bill five times in the Senate since he took over as the chamber's president in 2015. But that's like a coach declaring victory after winning the first half of a football game that his team goes on to lose. Patrick and his Senate allies actually are 0-5 on school choice because they've failed to find a way to pass the proposal across the rotunda where such a task is a far more imposing challenge than it is in the state Capitol's east wing.
The Senate approved a vouchers plan for the sixth time on Wednesday night in a 19-12 vote. GOP State Senator Robert Nichols of Jacksonville joined the chamber's 11 Democrats in the opposition to the measure on the final two votes after siding with the Republicans on the initial vote to suspend the regular order of business as SB 2's initial hurdle.
The school choice bill arrived on Thursday in the House where new Speaker Dustin Burrows has indicated it could be the first piece of legislation that the member tackle on the floor in the 2025 regular session. Burrows has been guardedly optimistic about the prospects for school choice in a House where Senate vouchers bills have all gone to die.
The odds for the measure in the House are substantially better now than they've ever been as a consequence of Governor Greg Abbott's vouchers vengeance tour that knocked out eight Republicans in the primary election as payback for opposing his signature school choice plan in special session in 2023. Five GOP representatives who voted to kill the vouchers bill declined to seek new terms last year while another Republican who opposed the measure was unseated in a primary runoff that Abbott avoided. Five other GOP members who voted against the school choice plan are back in the House this year.
All of the 14 House Republicans who are gone after helping Democrats derail the vouchers bill were replaced by candidates who've vowed to support school choice in debut sessions in 2025. If all 62 Democrats in the House were opposed to SB 2 or a substitute House plan, they would need 14 GOP votes to defeat the vouchers plan this time around.
But the chances of a rubber stamp from the House on SB 2 could be remote - and House and Senate members alike can expect the final plan to be written in a conference committee that Patrick and Burrows appoint. The proposal may have to be watered down considerably to clear the House where rural interests have a much stronger voice than they do in the Senate.
Some Republicans could be hesitant to spend $1 billion on private schools when they have few of them if any in their districts. Abbott and Patrick insist that the vouchers bill wouldn't be siphoning money from public education as Democrats and reluctant Republicans charge. Both leaders point to state budget proposals that show spending on public schools going up. GOP State Senator Brandon Creighton excoriated Democrats last night as the SB 2 chief author for portraying the measure as a boondoggle for big donors that's taking money away from public schools that are increasingly underfunded.
But when you cut through the spin and semantics quibbling - the state would be earmarking $1 billion for private tuition subsidies that could be used to strengthen public schools that are all 181 legislators in Texas represent.
Patrick ran the table for all practical purposes in a showdown with the House on property tax relief in 2023. The final product contained all the major Senate priorities with only token concessions for the House. But every legislator on both sides of the aisle favored a big cut in local taxes on Texans' homes.
Patrick could discover that passing school choice in the Senate is the easiest part of the fight by far - and his skills as a negotiator could be put to the first real test when five senators and five representatives that he and Burrows have selected as conferees try to come up with a product that will end the winless streak on vouchers.
School choice isn't the only issue that the Senate has tackled on Patrick's watch without success. A taxpayer-funded lobbying ban has gone nowhere in the House despite multiple attempts. House leaders let a Ten Commandments mandate for public schools die from neglect two years ago. Patrick's first major setback as the lieutenant governor in policy fights came when the House buried a bathroom bill that he'd championed in 2017.
But Patrick and the Senate Republicans have been largely responsible for the passage of the most conservative agendas in the Texas Legislature's history with a potpourri of hot-button issues like abortion, guns, election security, critical race theory, transgender rights, DEI and ESG.
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