Texas teachers grapple with their raises caught up in voucher fight

By Maia Pandey
The Texas Tribune

When she first began teaching 13 years ago, Katrina Rasmussen, a studio art teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in the Dallas Independent School District, said her salary was enough to make a living. But between rising inflation and minimal teacher salary raises, Rasmussen and her husband, who is also a public school teacher, now both rely on second jobs to keep their family afloat.

Many teachers she knows have begun looking for jobs outside education — and not because they no longer want to be in the classroom, Rasmussen said. “It’s a simple matter of economics for us,” she said. “If we can’t provide for our own families, if we’re struggling to put food on the table and gas in our cars every single month, that wears on us, and the job is already hard.”

Texas teachers — whose average salaries are $7,652 less than the national average, according to the National Education Association — were the only state employees who didn’t receive a raise during this year’s regular legislative session.

In fact, lawmakers failed to pass legislation on public school administrators’ three biggest priorities during the regular session. Proposals to raise teacher salaries, increase the base amount schools receive per student and overhaul the public school system’s funding formula all fizzled amid a political standoff over school vouchers, which would allow families to use state funds to pay for their kids’ private schooling.

Now, as attention swivels to a long-awaited special lawmaking session to tie loose ends in education, it’s unclear whether raises or any other public school funding measures will even be on the table. Public school advocates have worried that teacher raises would be used as a bargaining chip to reach an agreement on school vouchers. But the only education priority Gov. Greg Abbott listed in the agenda for the special session was education savings accounts, a form of school vouchers (other items in the agenda including border security and vaccine mandates).

But even if lawmakers find a way to insert raises into the conversation, some teachers say they would rather forgo a salary bump than see school vouchers implemented in Texas. Proponents say a voucher program would give Texans more freedom to choose how to educate their children, but critics worry it would take away funds from the state’s public education system.

“If it comes down to it, and it’s vouchers or being able to stay in the job that I care about — unfortunately, I’m gonna have to leave,” Rasmussen said. “That’s not a compromise that I can make values-wise.”

Public education funding and vouchers

Many teachers disagree with the idea of using taxpayer dollars to fund private education — and potentially diverting funding from public schools.

Stacey Ward, a fifth grade science teacher at Centennial Elementary School in Humble ISD, said she worries that public school funding would be siphoned off to private schools at a time when some Texas schools are going into deficit budgets to keep up with costs.

Ward, a teacher for 28 years, said she often pays out of pocket for teaching costs not covered by school funding. She also said she would oppose a vouchers bill, even if it meant a salary raise.

“If I didn’t have to spend hundreds of dollars every year on crayons and colored pencils and construction paper and glue sticks and scissors and plastic cups and everything else that we need for science experiments, I wouldn’t have a problem with [vouchers],” Ward said. “But the problem is the public school system is not fully funded.”

The basic allotment — the amount of money the state gives school for each student — was last raised in 2020 to $6,160. Public school advocates say that amount has not kept up with inflation.

On Saturday, hundreds of teachers, school administrators and parents rallied at the Texas Capitol against vouchers — and for increased public school funding. State Reps. Gina Hinajosa, Vikki Goodwin, Donna Howard and Sheryl Cole, all Democrats from Austin, were also in attendance.

Leander ISD Superintendent Bruce Gearing said at the rally that his district is “strongly opposed” to any form of voucher that would feed public dollars to private schools.

“No amount of money that they offer us will cause us to say yes to vouchers,” Gearing added.

Who would benefit?

Jason Forbis, a first grade teacher at Spring Valley Elementary in Midway ISD, said he, too, would rather not get a raise than see vouchers pass.

“With choices come the responsibilities of choices, meaning if you choose to put your child in a private school, then it’s your job and your choice to pay for that education,” Forbis said. “I don’t feel like taxpayers’ money, which is supposed to pay for public schools, should go to parents who are choosing to put their children in other private or charter schools because our schools already are underfunded.”

School voucher advocates, however, argue that parents’ ability to choose a different school for their child should not be limited by socioeconomic status. Parents should be free to pick the public or private school that best fits their child, said Mandy Drogin, campaign director of an education initiative for the HPublic Policy Foundation.

“We should acknowledge that not every school works for every child,” Drogin said. “Dictating to children that they must attend a specific school simply because they live in a home on a specific street — it’s counter to the freedom that we all hold dear.”

Some educators in rural and poorer areas of the state also expressed concern that a voucher program would only benefit a small number of students in their district, if any.

Education savings accounts, the voucher program championed by Abbott, would give families who exit the state’s public education system access to a certain amount of state money to pay for private school tuition, home-schooling costs or other educational expenses. Senate Bill 8, introduced by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, was the primary savings account proposal on the table during the regular session and would have given families up to $8,000 per student.

But opponents of the bill argue that $8,000 would not cover full tuition at many private schools. The average cost of private education in Texas is $10,400, according to the Education Data Initiative.

Veronica Borrego, an educational diagnostician for Brownsville ISD, works in a district where 26.5% of residents live in poverty. Barely any families would be able to afford to pay the difference between the voucher allotment and potential private school tuition costs, Borrego said.

Drogin said voucher advocates hope to see a bill closer to $10,000 per student on the table during the special session, pointing out that many private schools also offer scholarships for low-income students.

A decline in standing

After the onslaught of the last few years — stalled raises, health worries during the pandemic, the injection of culture wars into the classroom — teachers said they feel respect for their profession is declining. In a 2022 survey, 77% of teachers said they seriously considered leaving the job.

Kristen Harris, a humanities teacher in the gifted and talented program at Walnut Grove High School in Prosper ISD, said it felt like “a slap in the face” when lawmakers did not grant teachers raises this year. Still, Harris said she would not support a bill tying salary raises with a voucher program, and neither would many of her colleagues.

“We want more money, but [not] at the expense of everything we believe in and everything we’ve been working for, and everything we want for our students,” Harris said. “And that’s just an awful, disrespectful place to put us in.”