Inside the Secret Plan to Bring Private School Vouchers to Texas

[LetMyPeopleVote]

I have a land line and I will answer calls from pollsters. It is never hard to figure out who is paying the pollster and I enjoy adding my opinions to these polls even if the pollster was hoping for different results. I have been polled twice this year by two different pollsters (one electronic and the other a live person) on adopting vouchers for private schools in Texas. The GOP really wants to kill public schools and force children to go to private schools.

Greg Abbott, Dan Patiick and the Texaz GOP really want to kill public schools and replace these schools with vouchers for private schools.

Link to tweet

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/inside-the-secret-plan-to-bring-private-school-vouchers-to-texas/

The proposal landed on Greg Bonewald’s desk like a pipe bomb. Bonewald, a soft-spoken career educator, had served as a teacher, coach, and principal in the fast-growing Hill Country town of Wimberley for fifteen years. In 2014, he took a bigger job as an assistant superintendent in Victoria, about two hours to the southeast. But he maintained an affection for Wimberley, and when its school board sought to bring him back as superintendent this year, he was thrilled. His honeymoon would be short.

In a document obtained by Texas Monthly, stamped “Confidential” and dated May 3—the day after Bonewald was named the sole finalist for the job—a Republican political operative and a politically connected charter-school executive laid out an explosive proposal for “Wimberly [sic] ISD.” (Out-of-towners frequently misspell “Wimberley,” much to the annoyance of locals.) Apparently, the plan had been in the works for months and had been vetted by the outgoing superintendent. But Bonewald said no one had bothered to mention it to him.....

Their confidential proposal went like this: Wimberley would partner with Harris and Bennett’s Texans for Education Rights Institute to create a charter school tentatively dubbed the Texas Achievement Campus. But “campus” was a misnomer, because there would be none. The school would exist only on paper. Texans for Education Rights would then work with ResponsiveEd, Whitehurst’s group, to place K–12 students from around the state into private schools of their choice at “no cost to their families.”

Their confidential proposal went like this: Wimberley would partner with Harris and Bennett’s Texans for Education Rights Institute to create a charter school tentatively dubbed the Texas Achievement Campus. But “campus” was a misnomer, because there would be none. The school would exist only on paper. Texans for Education Rights would then work with ResponsiveEd, Whitehurst’s group, to place K–12 students from around the state into private schools of their choice at “no cost to their families.” .....

Two weeks later, on August 3, the board voted 4–2 to scrap the proposal. At that meeting, trustee Andrea Justus, upset that a majority of the board had changed its mind, argued that “TEA is 100 percent supportive of the program.” That’s not the only evidence of high-level TEA support. In June, Bonewald met with two TEA charter specialists; afterward, he summarized his notes in a missive to his board. According to Bonewald, Morath was “aware of this potential partnership and would support TEA staff providing technical support to the District at no cost to WISD.” The notes also reference a set of “challenges” raised by TEA, including a question of how WISD would “ensure private schools serving WISD students outside the community” are following state-mandated curriculum.

When I spoke to Basel, he conceded that his reputation didn’t help his cause. But he hasn’t given up on passing the voucher program. “It’s still my goal,” he told me. “Other districts are considering it.” He declined to name which ones.

[msongs]

1. shifting taxpayer money to catholic and other religion schools nt