TEXAS, USA — Election results across The Lone Star State show Governor Greg Abbott will now have enough votes in the Texas House to put one of his top priorities into law -- a school voucher program.
The governor took a victory lap Wednesday, hosting a press conference at a private school in Tyler, TX to talk about the concept of school choice.
"All families in the state of Texas deserve school choice, and that's going to happen because of the elections that happened last night," Abbott said at the press conference. "I made sure that we would elect Republicans to the Texas House of Representatives in sufficient number to be able to pass a school choice plan just like the Texas Senate has passed many times."
On the night of Election Day, the Republican boasted on the platform "X" about how every candidate he backed in the Texas House General Election races won. The governor poured money into and joined several of the candidates he was backing on the campaign trail. They were primarily candidates who had beaten a handful of Republican incumbents in the primaries who had voted to remove the school voucher program from a massive education bill.
Also known as education savings accounts, the concept of a school voucher program is designed to let families use state funds to send their children to private school.
It is an idea that critics say there is no place for. Many of those critics include leadership in Texas public schools. They say Texas public education isn't funded adequately enough and school vouchers could cause further damage
"That's completely false," Abbott said. "The reality is we can have the best public schools in America and also have school choice at the very same time, it does not have to be one or the other. We will have separate pots of money. One for public schools which we will fully fund, teacher pay raises which we will fully fund and then a separate pot for school choice."
Abbott told those at the press conference that it takes 76 votes to get the school voucher plan passed in the Texas House, and by his counting he would have 79 votes based on who won the election.
With that support, the governor is vowing to make school choice in the state of Texas universal, on top of fully funding public schools, providing teacher pay raises and teacher incentive pay and enhancing career and job skill training programs.
"To ensure that for the kids who do not want to go on to a college, they will be able to go on to a high-paying job here in the state of Texas where there's high demand from some of the best employers in America," Abbott added.
The next legislative session starts in January and that's where lawmakers will have to hash out how or what a school voucher program could look like for Texas. The debates and conversations had will most likely include concepts that have already been discussed, including who would qualify for the program, how much money would be given out and what it would also mean for public education.