The future of public education looms large over the November 2024 election in Texas, where state lawmakers are expected to debate the merits of a school voucher program when they return to work in January.
Teachers, students and school districts across Bexar County are already feeling the impacts of the last legislative session’s maneuvering, in which Gov. Greg Abbott denied public schools the $5.2 billion lawmakers approved for them as leverage for his voucher plan that ultimately failed in special session.
Abbott has already had some success rooting out critics within his own party who see spending taxpayer money on private school tuition as a major threat to the state’s public education system.
But Democrats, public education advocates and teachers’ unions say protecting schools has been a galvanizing issue headed into this November’s election.
Six months ago voters in the county’s most conservative school district, North East ISD, shut out a slate of school board candidates backed by conservative groups. Meanwhile, school closures at San Antonio ISD along with widespread HVAC failures have been blamed on the lack of state resources, to the disappointment of residents and district officials, who say the status quo is untenable.
Here are four education races on the ballot that are worth watching.
A pair of San Antonio-area Texas House races
In the last legislative session, 21 Republicans and all Democrats joined together to stop a school voucher plan from advancing in the House. Now those votes have helped make two San Antonio-area House races top political battlegrounds this November.
Southside House District 118 is represented by Republican John Lujan, who says he supports allowing taxpayer money to go toward private school tuition as a means to get kids out of failing school. Last year, he voted against a plan to untangle vouchers from public school funding — something public school advocates supported — and that his Democratic challenger has made central to her campaign.
At a recent debate Lujan said he still wants to see an Education Savings Plan, or vouchers, come to fruition, but that he’d fight to make public school funding a separate vote in the next session.
In Northside House District 121, incumbent state Rep. Steve Allison (R-San Antonio) became a target of Abbott in the primary after he sided with Democrats to stop vouchers. Now a little-known Democrat, Laurel Jordan Swift, is raising big money for her race against Republican Marc LaHood, who beat out Allison in the primary and has vowed to support school vouchers.
State Board of Education Place 1
The fractious body that sets curriculum and chooses textbooks for Texas public schools has seven seats up for reelection this year, including an exciting race in State Board of Education District 1, which represents a massive area from El Paso to the northwest part of San Antonio.
The incumbent Democrat decided not to seek reelection hours before the filing deadline, leaving her party scrambling to find a candidate.
They landed on Gustavo Reveles, communications department for Canutillo Independent School District in El Paso, who is up against Republican Michael Stevens, a longtime educator and administrator who works in the San Antonio Independent School District. Stevens ran unsuccessfully for the seat in 2022.
Reveles and Stevens haven’t clashed on partisan issues in the way some other SBOE candidates have, but they have different takes on what they’d like to see happen with state curriculum.
Edgewood ISD
This district recently regained control of its school board after the state took it over in 2016, but has already landed back on the Texas Education Agency’s radar after a reporting mishap drew the state agency’s attention this year.
Some of the current board members date back to that take over, and this year two Edgewood ISD trustees who’ve made adhering to state policies a top priority are up for reelection on the Nov. 5 ballot. There’s also an open seat where a longstanding member declined to seek reelection.
The board’s dynamic changed dramatically last year when a recent high school graduate — who is also the son of one of the district’s most vocal critics — was elected on a platform of scrutinizing the administration and status quo on the board. His allies are among the challengers pushing for change in the three school board races.
East Central ISD
While other school districts are closing schools amid a lack of resources and shrinking enrollment, East Central ISD is exploding with growth to the point its asking voters on the Nov. 5 ballot to approve three separate bonds — along with a tax increase — to fund new facilities.
The money is supposed to go toward building new schools and upgrading aged sports facilities to match rapidly increasing enrollment, which is expected to double in the next eight years.
East Central ISD leaders say those asks to voters come in part because state funding hasn’t kept up with its portion of the district’s revenue stream.
In materials distributed to parents, the district noted Texas has “barely increasing school funding since 2019” at the same time “enrollment and operating costs like salaries, supplies and fuel have continued to rise.”
