Hundreds from around the state gathered at the Texas Capitol Saturday to protest legislation relating to public education, including school vouchers. The demonstration, which drew over 600 attendees according to a Department of Public Safety official on site, was organized by Save Texas Schools, a nonpartisan coalition of volunteers who advocate for public education.
The rally featured congressmen, state representatives and activists from around the state. Austin-area Representatives Lloyd Doggett and Greg Casar critiqued education policies proposed in the Texas legislature, including Senate Bill 10, which would mandate the display of the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms, and Senate Bill 2, which proposes a school voucher system for the state.
Leander resident Catherine Winslow came to object to the bills on behalf of her five grandchildren, who she said rely on public education as the foundation for their future.
“I want my tax dollars going to public schools for all those children,” Winslow said. “We need to up the funding that we’ve been denying them for the last six years, and what they’re proposing is like giving a crumb to a starving child. That public money doesn’t need to be going to private institutions that have no accountability. … You don’t know what indoctrination is happening (at private schools).”
Winslow said that public schools already offer choice for parents, and that giving taxpayer dollars to private schools is a misuse of those funds.
“If you want to send your kids to private school, you have the choice today to send your kids to private school,” Winslow said. “And you have some choices even in public school to be able to go to a different campus than you’re originally assigned. We know the private schools are not (located) where the kids that need (them) most are, so they don’t have access to it. That money needs to go to public schools, to teachers, to our children.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin), who spoke at the rally, said in a social media post afterward that he plans to continue to speak out against the use of public funds for private education.
“We won’t stay silent as they wreck our public schools with vouchers and tax credits to shift public resources into private academies and dismantle federal aid to education,” Doggett wrote. “When public education wins, democracy wins!”
Julia, an attendee from Austin who asked to be identified by only her first name, said she is a product of public education and knows the value it can offer. However, Julia said the erosion in Texas’ public education system has been severe, making her doubt that her parents would have made the same choice for her today that they did when she was a child.
“Texas has been on a systematic (path for) multiple years of reducing the funding that we use for public education to put the system into crisis so that they can then say they’re not working and privatize the education system overall,” Julia said. “You need to fix the underlying problem before you create an unnecessary solution.”
