Public school teachers have been in a frenzy with the potential of school choice making an appearance in our great state. Multiple school districts had teachers and administrators engaging in potentially illegal electioneering in order to prevent this. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed multiple lawsuits against these districts since his power to criminally prosecute illegal electioneering was taken away from him by the courts and the power was given to the local DAs. The Denton County court took action and two administrators have been indicted for “unlawful use of internal mail system for political advertising.”
Lindsey and Jesús Luján both engaged in electioneering in different ways. Reports say that Lindsey, the Principal of Alexander Elementary School, promised staff members coverage if they wanted to go vote early. She made a list of “friendly” and “unfriendly” candidates according to their stance on school choice.
Jesús is the head of school at Borman Elementary School. He told employees to use a “purple mindset” and “vote for candidates who support public education and school funding.” Both of these Denton County ISD administrators used both school time and school property in order to encourage other staff members to vote their way. They are due for their hearings in May and June.
Despite many efforts, some legal and some not so much, by public school staffers many school choice candidates still won their races and took out longtime incumbents. Many school staff have been misled about what school choice will actually do to their funding. School choice will not reduce what schools receive from the state if they retain students. Nothing will change in rural areas that only have public schools because they will retain all of their students. In city schools, it will create more of a competition to retain students, so if the public school improves to parents standards, then their funding won’t be reduced. Public school districts are also very top heavy with more than 500 superintendents making more than Governor Abbott and 5 that make more than the President. It isn’t a funding problem, it’s a distribution problem.
The establishment fought hard to prevent school choice from entering the state of Texas. They even went as far to put the ideas in the minds of educators that this would be an issue worth being indicted over. We will continue to update this story as the details come.