ESAs / School Vouchers

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I personally believe that my views on ESAs / school vouchers is irrelevant to running for a school board, but since people have asked me... 

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In Texas, the estimated distribution of K-12 students across different types of schooling is as follows:

• Public Schools (including Charter Schools): ~91-92%

• Private Schools: ~6-7%

• Homeschools: ~3-4%

 

Q1: What was the change in school attendance for Florida when they adopted school vouchers?

A1: Public school enrollment decreased by 1 to 3% in some districts. 70% of the voucher students had never been enrolled in public schools.

 

Q2: What was the change in school attendance for Arkansas when they adopted school vouchers?

A2: Don’t have state-wide numbers, but the Dumas School District attendance dropped by 13%. The first year of the voucher program, 95% of the voucher students didn’t attend public schools in the previous year. 80% the second year. Hence, a far majority of the private school students were already attending private school before the vouchers.

 

Q3: a.) If Texas enacts the voucher program, will it be paid by my taxes? b.) Will my taxes increase? c.) Will public schools get less money?

A3: a.) Yes, b.) No, the voucher program is being funded by the state’s budget surplus which is still derived from your taxes. The budget surplus in 2023 was $32.7 billion; 2024 was $24 billion; 2025 is projected to be $18.6 billion. The proposal is to not divert the resources currently used for public schools. c.) Yes, funding is tied to enrollment [technically, it is tied to attendance], so the drop in funding will correspond with the drop in enrollment. A decrease by 1 to 3% in public school attendance due to the voucher program is a safe estimate. A 5% drop would be an extreme scenario.

 

Q4: a.) Tell me about the voucher funding. b.) Tell me about public school funding.

A4: a.) $10k per student; $11.5k per student with disabilities; $2k per homeschooled student, b.) basic allotment per student is $6,160. $13,039 is the total average per student. “Total annual state and local FSP revenue per student in ADA increased from $9,015 in FY 2014 to $13,039 in FY 2025, an increase of 45 percent. When adjusted for inflation, total annual state and local FSP revenue per student in ADA increased from $9,015 to $9,857 an increase of 9 percent.” (TEA website) The average total funding per student with disabilities ranges between $15k to $17k, 2.4 to 2.8x the basic student allotment, but this is not always enough to cover their costs.

 

Q5: Is there enough budget surplus to cover the costs of vouchers now and in the future?

A5: This was touched on in question 3. The projected surplus for 2025 is $18.6 billion. If 5% of the public school students leave the public schools and use vouchers à 5% x ~5.4 million students x $10,000 per student = ~$2.7 billion. That’s well within $18.6 billion. But the student voucher program will likely become more expensive over the years as more students use them. The total revenue per student, when adjusting for inflation, has only increased by 9% from fiscal year 2014 to 2025. It is just a guess on my part, but I think that the public schools would benefit greatly with about a 10% or more injection of funding. That would be an increase of $7.04 billion.

 

Q6: What is Jeremiah’s position on school vouchers.

A6: Short Answer, against it. Long Answer, against it, but for different reasons than what I see all over the internet.

 

At first glance, I was for vouchers. I am a conservative, and so the freedom of choice / free market argument sounded reasonable. But this is very significant and very impactful legislation that warranted a deep analysis, and so I had a Socratic discussion with myself guided by my conservative values while doing my best to silence my biases and preconceived ideas so that I could come to my own conclusions. Don’t get me wrong- even when I thought I that I would be for ESAs / vouchers, I was still against Governor Abbott’s tactics of holding the basic student allotment hostage since 2019 as a bargaining tool to get the legislature to pass the ESA / voucher program. The discussion with myself didn’t take long at all. In essence, an ESA / school voucher program increases the tax burden to increase a social program that requires more government regulation. Using socialism to promote free market capitalism – this a paradox. The word “socialism” has a sting to it for conservatives, but what I mean in using that term is the using of taxpayer money to fund private enterprise. Conservatism is not anti-social programs, but conservatism does scrutinize social programs, especially when they are enacted.

 

Given the nature of this legislation, my advice to the conservative politicians is that the ESA / school voucher legislation needs to be put to a vote by the public, and that is done by an amendment to the Texas Constitution. When we vote on propositions at the ballot box, we are voting on amendments to the Texas Constitution. They need to be ethical about it too by giving the facts such as I have provided in the Q&A above, and not by giving selected facts that can be misleading when not accompanied by all the facts. The ads I’ve seen online concerning ESAs / school vouchers have only been ads against them, and some of the information is false or misleading.