State Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio) walked into the lion’s den on Tuesday.
LaHood was among the roughly dozen Republicans who Gov. Greg Abbott backed over popular GOP incumbents who stood in the way of the governor’s much-desired school voucher program two years ago.
Now that early reports on Texas Education Savings Accounts paint an unflattering picture of their success, the first-term lawmaker is struggling to defend them in his first reelection race.
“If the ESA program is a bust, I’ll be the first to admit. ‘Hey, I was wrong. How do we fix it?'” LaHood told a crowd of about three dozen NEISD parents on Tuesday. “I want to fix things, and transparency is how we get there. But that applies to both sides.”
Texas House District 121 on San Antonio’s North Side hasn’t elected a Democrat since 1981, but LaHood is now in a fiercely contested reelection race against Democrat Zack Dunn, who is getting help from state and national Democrats.
The only general election debate of that race was held Tuesday, hosted by North East ISD Council of PTAs and Raise Your Hand Texas at the Piper Bass Memorial Student Center, where nearly all of the questions were about school vouchers.
“I could not be more anti-ESAs, anti-voucher scams,” Dunn said at the debate. “This is a billion dollars that was taken away from our public education system, and it was given to private institutions.”
North East ISD has identified 16 schools that it could close in the wake of dropping enrollment and lack of funding, and Dunn and LaHood — a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, respectively — paced the podium area with their passionate takes.
Afterward the debate, NEISD leaders and PTA organizers said they were stunned by some of LaHood’s comments.
For example, they said, families of students with disabilities have had well-documented problems finding private schools that will accept ESAs, but LaHood said he needed more data before weighing in on the issue.
“I want to know how many children and families with disabilities actually applied for the program,” LaHood said. ” … Some of my closest friends have children with severe disabilities, so for me, it’s personal — I want to make sure they’re prioritized, but I don’t want to [go off of] a soundbite.”
According to the Houston Chronicle, data from the Texas Comptroller’s office showed that of the roughly 28,000 students in the program’s highest priority tier, fewer than 30 of them had disabilities.
Some who qualified are now giving their vouchers back because they didn’t find a school — just as critics of the program warned before it was created.
Why not everyone who got a Texas school voucher will use it
“As a taxpayer and a public school parent, I expect the person that represents me in HD121 to know this data,” said Robbie Shepherd, the first vice president for the North East ISD Council of PTAs. “I expect him to have it before he goes on the floor for a vote.”
After the event, NEISD Trustee Terri Chidgey also approached LaHood about comments he made suggesting the district wasn’t willing to share information about its finances.
LaHood said that in today’s Texas House, where most of the pro-public school Republicans were voted out, he’s among a small number of Republicans who still want to beef up public school funding.
“I am in the minority of the majority,” LaHood said Tuesday. “I want to increase basic allotment.”
The basic allotment went up about $55 when Texas passed its massive school funding and ESA bill in 2023, but experts say it’d been so long since that figure was adjusted, it needed to rise by about $1,600 just to break even with the amount that schools were receiving in 2019.
LaHood said he’d be happy to fight for more — but couldn’t get districts like NEISD to show him why they need it.
“I said, “Show me your books. Let me advocate. Let me argue. Let me get more money,” LaHood told the audience. “I’m not going to say they didn’t show it to me for nefarious reasons. Maybe they didn’t trust me … but we have to look at the books.”
The comments shocked NEISD leaders who say their finances are already publicly available — unlike the private schools who are now receiving taxpayer dollars from school vouchers.
NEISD also faced one of the largest budget deficits in San Antonio this year, but it was hardly alone in that boat.
“He stated multiple times that he couldn’t find what school districts were spending their money on,” Chidgey said. “I shared with him that the budget is a very public document. It’s on the [district’s] website.”
A growing expense
In an interview after the debate, LaHood said he would judge whether ESAs were working as intended based on a handful of metrics.
“Is there a demand? Is it negatively affecting our public education funding? … Is it not actually getting the results?” he said.
“I supported it because I want to make sure our children are actually getting educated. Period. That’s the metric for me. Are our children learning? Are they benefiting from it? Can we afford it? … It’s not rocket science.”
But the question of affordability is high on the minds of many headed into this next legislative session, when Comptroller Don Huffines is asking the Texas Legislature to double the school voucher program’s funding from $1 billion to $2 billion.
Cooled economic growth means Texas isn’t bringing in the same property tax revenue as it has in recent years, and LaHood said the state could consider expanding its revenue to fund its obligations.
“It’s controversial, but there are new revenue sources proposed from Hollywood, from THC, from sports gambling, and other things that would generate large portions of income,” he said.
As for the school vouchers, however, he doesn’t believe there’s any appetite to slow down.
“I think it’s going to be a success. I think it is already a success. I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” he said. “If I believe something and I realize I was wrong, I’ll say, ‘Hey, you know what? I was wrong.’ I don’t think I was wrong.”
Dunn said that’s evidence LaHood wasn’t willing to look critically at the issue that got him elected, after big money was spent attacking then-state Rep. Steve Allison (R-Alamo Heights) in 2024.
Abbott received a record-breaking $6 million check from an out-of-state school voucher supporter that cycle, and spent a good chunk of it campaigning against Allison, a former Alamo Heights ISD board president who was among the last remaining public school advocates in the GOP conference.
“Certain people took checks — $873,000 from our governor — to vote for vouchers because the person that was in office ahead of time was an anti-voucher, pro-public education Republican,” Dunn said Tuesday. “That’s a fact, not a soundbite. That’s what happened.”
