For the first time in history, the Texas House passed a school voucher program, also known as education savings accounts (ESAs) — costing taxpayers $1 billion — for families to pay for private school tuition, textbooks, therapy and other education-related costs.
The bill passed 86-63 in the early hours of Thursday morning after a marathon debate and unsuccessful attempts from Democrats to put the plan out to voters on a statewide ballot.
“We fought all day until 2 a.m. on the House floor for public education, unfortunately, we were outnumbered,” Rep. Josey Garcia (D-San Antonio) said hours after the vote on Facebook.
The move came just hours after the House also approved a $7.7 billion public school funding bill — a record boost aimed at appeasing critics who say vouchers will bankrupt public schools that receive funding based on attendance.
“We can have freedom for families and thriving public schools and I am proud to be a part of this moment,” state Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio), who was elected primarily on the issue of school choice, said after Thursday’s votes.
School voucher advocates have been trying unsuccessfully to approve such a program in Texas for decades, and Democrats and rural Republicans in the House have traditionally teamed up to stop them.
Thursday’s vote, however, came after 11 of the chamber’s pro-public education Republicans lost reelection last year, including Rep. Steve Allison (R-Alamo Heights), who was a top target of Gov. Greg Abbott’s expensive campaign to rid voucher critics from the party.
Compared to last session, when 21 Republicans partnered with the full House Democratic Caucus to stop school vouchers, this year it sailed through on a nearly party-line vote, with only two Republicans joining the Democrats.
“The governor met with members behind closed doors and even brought President Trump on the phone to whip votes,” state Rep. Ray Lopez (D-San Antonio) said of the loss of Republican allies.
Here’s how Bexar County representatives voted on school vouchers:
San Antonio’s three House Republicans all supported the bill. One, state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio), who faced tough pushback for supporting plans to tie school vouchers to public school funding vouchers last session, declined to comment on his vote.
State Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio), one of the delegation’s most conservative voices, said the ESA program adds “an extra tool in the toolbox for parents whose children have unique learning needs which are not being met by a traditional education.”
All seven San Antonio area-Democrats voted against the bill. In an interview Thursday, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) lambasted his GOP colleagues for approving a plan that allows the voucher budget to grow without restraint in the coming years.
“Every Republican who voted for vouchers, they were willing to forsake other values, like being a fiscal conservative,” Martinez Fischer said.
As written, he said, Thursday’s voucher bill calls for increases in the $1 billion voucher budget that put the state on track to direct more money to private schools than public schools by 2030.
“That is a very profound data point,” Martinez Fischer said. “Even [many] voucher proponents are very sensitive about the amount of money they send to private schools. They don’t want to forget about public schools.”
Rep. Diego Bernal (D-San Antonio) told the Report the $1 billion bill is projected to grow to $7 billion.
“When you’re looking at how underfunded our public schools are, that’s just hard to stomach,” said Bernal, who serves as vice chair of the House’s Committee on Public Education, which was tasked with getting both proposals to the floor.
State Reps. Phil Cortez (D-San Antonio), Liz Campos (D-San Antonio) and Barbara Gervin-Hawkins (D-San Antonio) did not respond to requests for comment on their votes.
Striking a deal
Going into this legislative session, most lawmakers were clear-eyed about the inevitability of a voucher program.
But as House Republicans fought over their competing House Speaker candidates, Democrats were hopeful that by giving their support to new Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), their ideas for how to shape a voucher program would get sincere consideration.
On Thursday, the House’s version of the voucher bill did include some elements aimed at protecting public schools, such as tying the voucher value to the amount public schools receive for educating the same student.
It also gives first priority to students from low-income households and students with disabilities, if there’s more interest in vouchers than the $1 billion will cover.
But Bernal — one of the few Democrats in a position to influence the plan — said his suggestions were largely ignored. He called the provisions in the school voucher bill meant to prioritize special education and poor students “hollow.”
“There were things that I wanted in place that I thought would make it more fair or equitable,” he said.
During House budget negotiations last week, lawmakers filed many amendments to put limits on the school voucher program and redirect money earmarked for ESAs toward public school funding and teacher pay, but they were swiftly killed, along with 100 other amendments.
The House will vote again on both the policy and spending bills, largely a formality, before they head to the Senate.
The conservative-dominated Senate already passed its own $1 billion voucher plan earlier in the session, and the two versions will have to be hashed out between the two chamber’s leaders, so no details are final yet.
The differences are relatively minor, since the House took up the Senate’s framework for expediency, but in a state with 5.5 million school-age children, minor details can still carry tremendous impact.
“This is an extraordinary victory for the thousands of parents who have advocated for more choices when it comes to the education of their children,” Abbott said in a statement after Thursday’s vote, adding that he would sign the bill into law once it reached his desk.
Money for public schools
Under the House’s overall budget approved this year, Texas’ K-12 public schools are expected to receive $7.7 billion through the Foundation School Program, which is expected to increase the base amount schools receive per student by $395, from $6,160 per student to $6,555.
“It’s unfortunate that it happened at the same time and kind of got overshadowed by the voucher debate … but as someone who spent years working on Education Policy, there’s there’s a lot of good in it,” Bernal said of the public education bill.
The basic student allotment has not increased since 2019 and is a major priority of public school advocates.
Last session the money for public schools was approved by lawmakers, but never made it into the hands of school districts because Abbott said it must be tied to the creation of a school voucher program, which lawmakers rejected.
Public education advocates have said the basic allotment needs to be increased by at least $1,000 to account for rising costs and inflation — far more than the $395 lawmakers approved this year.
But overall, public education advocates are pleased about many of the elements of the $7.7 billion public school funding bill.
“I think it’s going to make a difference for years to come,” said Julia Grizzard, executive director of the Bexar County Education Coalition, which lobbies on behalf of Bexar County’s many independent school districts.
“It updates how we fund special education. It puts more emphasis on teachers who have been in the classroom five and 10 years. It puts more resources for teacher recruitment. It provides a lot of the increase to the bilingual allotment, which hasn’t been touched in 40 years,” Grizzard said.
Despite being overshadowed by the passage of school vouchers, Bernal is also optimistic about the public school funding bill.
House lawmakers also approved spending for a “supplemental budget” for unexpected expenses, money to pay down the unfunded liabilities of state employees’ pension fund and money for the Texas University Fund, a multibillion-dollar endowment created by the Legislature in 2023 for “emerging” research universities around the state.
