Teachers travel to Austin to ask lawmakers to oppose vouchers, increase school funding

Nicolette Ardiente boarded a bus full of teachers at 7 a.m. on Monday. The bus was departing from the Northside American Federation of Teachers headquarters in San Antonio and headed to the state capitol in Austin, where teachers would talk to lawmakers about school funding, teacher pay and other issues facing educators.

Before leaving for Austin, Ardiente, a retired piano instructor and local Democratic activist who is currently seeking a seat on the school board for Northside Independent School District, told the San Antonio Report she hoped legislators listened to “the voices that are in our classrooms right now.”

“For far too long, we have legislators, and you know, senators who are making bills about how Texans govern their lives without the actual community input,” she said.

Though Ardiente is not a teacher, she joined 400 teachers from across Texas — including 60 from San Antonio — who made their way to Austin for Public Education Legislative Advocacy Day, a day when teachers’ unions from across the state meet with their representatives to talk about issues relating to public education.

Facing a state legislative session heavy with proposals concerning public education, teachers were at the state capitol to make the case for an “Educator’s Bill of Rights” and hold a rally on the building’s South Steps.

Created by the Texas American Federation of Teachers, the Educator’s Bill of Rights outlines legislation teacher advocates want to get passed in Texas to increase teacher pay, improve working conditions, make classrooms safe, increase public school funding and address other issues affecting public school educators.

School vouchers

While the Texas House and Senate are considering bills related to teacher pay, teacher training, special education, and career and technical training, school voucher programs dominated the conversations on Monday, as AFT members spoke against proposed education savings accounts and advocated for an increase in the basic student allotment.

If passed by the state, education savings accounts would use $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to give roughly 100,000 students money to pay for private school tuition, textbooks, therapy and other education-related items. State legislators are currently considering House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 2, which both outline potential ESA programs with key differences between the two proposals.

The Senate’s version of ESA passed the chamber in February, but HB 3 will have its first committee hearing on Tuesday. 

Desiree Cervin, an assistant teacher with SAISD’s Head Start pre-K program who traveled to Austin to speak out against school vouchers, has two daughters enrolled in public schools, one of whom she said is severely dyslexic.

Cervin said she is afraid that education savings accounts would strip special education programs and services that have helped her dyslexic daughter improve her grades and learn to love reading. On an educator’s salary, Cervin said she couldn’t afford the kind of tutoring her daughter currently gets for free.

“How is she supposed to continue to learn at the level she’s at without that funding, without those resources?” Cervin said.

The Senate filed legislation this session to overhaul how the state funds special education in schools. Rather than base the funding public schools receive on how much time special education students spend in a certain program or classroom, legislators want to change the model to accommodate the specific services students may need and increase special education spending.

A poll conducted by Unified for Texas Workers found that 65% of 1,275 potential 2026 voters — including K-12 parents, Democrats, Independents, Republicans, urban residents and rural residents — totally oppose school vouchers.

The poll, which has a margin of error of 2.75%, also found that 86% of voters would oppose vouchers if their property taxes went up as a result of state approval.

Results from Unified for Texas Workers reflect the opposite of a poll conducted by the University of Houston and Texas Southern University in 2024 which found that overall, 65% of 2,257 surveyed adults supported school vouchers.

Meeting with lawmakers

During the advocacy day, attendants broke into groups and tracked down the representatives for their school districts, primarily to make the case against ESAs.

One group from San Antonio visited the offices of Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio), John Lujan (R-San Antonio), Rep. Diego Bernal (D-San Antonio), Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) and other elected officials from the San Antonio and Bexar County area.

Some representatives were in committee hearings, such as Martinez Fischer, whose staff member greeted teachers hoping to talk to him. Martinez Fischer is an opponent of school vouchers.

Other representatives evaded teacher advocates or maintained firm support of school voucher programs, according to San Antonio teachers.

Adrian Reyna, the executive vice president of the San Antonio teacher alliance, said LaHood would not hear the teachers’ arguments against school vouchers.

LaHood did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Ardiente said she met with Bernal, who sits on the House’s K-16 education committee, and Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio), who represents District 122, where Ardiente lives.

While Ardiente said one of those conversations was friendly — Bernal has been a longtime school voucher opponent — she wasn’t sure if legislators truly heard teachers during the advocacy day, which is what she hoped for before even stepping foot in Austin.

“We’re talking to a staffer,” Ardiente described visiting Dorazio’s office. “[Dorazio] walks right in, he sees us, and then he runs back into his office.”

Dorazio said the teachers who stopped by his office had not scheduled a meeting, but he is “always happy to connect with the people who come to share their beliefs, experiences, and views on legislation.”

“I walked into the office with my chief of staff, in the middle of a time-sensitive task. I said hello to the teachers and they said hello to me, and then I went into my personal office with my chief and we kept working,” Dorazio told the Report.

Teacher pay and public school funding

Gov. Greg Abbott made teacher pay an emergency item during the current legislative session and promised to fund public schools more than the state has ever done before.

Both the House and Senate want to dedicate $4.85 billion for public schools. The Senate wants to use a majority of the money to increase the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a program districts can use to give their highest-performing teachers more money. The Senate is also considering giving all teachers $4,000 raises and giving rural teachers an additional $6,000 raise.

The House wants to increase the basic student allotment from $6,160 to $6,380, with the stipulation that 40% of the funding increase be used for raises for teachers and other district workers.

Even though a survey by the Texas Education Agency found that 62% of teachers who responded for the 2023-24 cycle agree or strongly agree that pay should be tied to performance, teacher advocates said bills that would expand funding for TIA is not the answer to low teacher pay, and pay shouldn’t be tied to performance because not all teachers are eligible to be considered for TIA bonuses.

Public school advocates also say the $220 proposed increase for the basic student allotment isn’t enough. The basic allotment of $6,160 has not been increased in five years, and the Texas AFT recommends increasing it by at least $1,386, which is how much the allotment would have been in 2024 if adjusted for inflation.

Low teacher pay doesn’t just affect teachers, advocates said it also affects school support staff and paraprofessionals.

Karen Cook is a food program manager for Arnold Elementary in San Antonio Independent School District who said she joined the teacher rally because she sees how teachers at her school struggle financially. Cook said she also struggles financially on her current wages.

“It’s a fight I can fight,” Cook said about the advocacy day at the capitol.

Before working at Arnold Elementary, Cook worked in the cafeteria of a school that was closed by SAISD last year as part of a “rightsizing” effort to address falling enrollment and a $51 million budget deficit.

Some school districts in San Antonio have also opted to give teachers retention bonuses instead of across-the-board raises to avoid deepening their budget deficits.

During a school board meeting in February, North East Independent School District also approved the closure of three schools in an effort to shrink a $38 million budget deficit.

Superintendent Sean Maika blamed the need to close schools on a lack of “significant” state funding and expressed pessimism on the possibility of getting more funding from the state during the 89th Legislative Session, which kicked off in January.

“Hope is not a strategy… There is this belief that a windfall of money is potentially headed to education. I don’t believe that,” Maika said during the February meeting.

Increased funding for public schools didn’t pass during the last legislative session and the four special sessions that followed because House Republicans would not approve a universal school voucher program, a condition for public schools to receive $7 billion from the state.

HB 3, the House proposal for education savings accounts, and Senate Bill 568, the proposed overhaul of how to fund special education, both have their first committee hearings March 11.