Texas Senate Passes Amended School Choice Bill, Sending it to Governor Abbott for Signature

The Texas Senate today concurred with House amendments to Senate Bill 2, the school choice plan, sending the legislation to Governor Greg Abbott, who has stated he will sign it into law. This marks a significant victory for the school choice movement, which has long sought the use of public tax dollars for private education.

While the House maintained the universal eligibility aspect of the bill, allowing all Texas families to apply, Senate author and Conroe Senator Brandon Creighton lauded the House additions as improvements. “These amendments strengthen rather than dilute the legislation this chamber approved off the Senate floor,” he told his colleagues.

The Senate’s initial version of SB 2 allocated $1 billion to create $10,000 education savings accounts (ESAs) for all school-aged children, employing a lottery system if applications exceeded available funds. These funds could be used for private school tuition, fees, uniforms, and other educational services outside the public school system.

The House amendments modified the allocation of these ESA slots. Students from families with incomes above 500 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) will now be limited to no more than 20 percent of available slots. The revised bill prioritizes students with siblings already in private education, those with disabilities, and then students in families with incomes incrementally rising up to 500 percent FPL (currently $31,000 for a family of four in 2025).

Furthermore, while the Senate version proposed a flat $10,000 per account, the House amendment ties the ESA amount to 85 percent of the estimated state and local per-student public school funding. This allows the ESA value to fluctuate with changes in the state’s school finance system. Currently, this would amount to slightly more than the Senate’s initial $10,000. The House version also incorporates funding weights, ensuring that students with disabilities receive funding commensurate with their public school allocation, up to $30,000. The overall spending on the program is capped at $1 billion through the 2026-2027 biennium, regardless of the number of applicants or funding weights.

Opponents of the bill argued that the state should invest more in improving public schools rather than diverting funds to private institutions. San Antonio Senator José Menéndez stated, “The answer isn’t to give 100,000 children a lottery ticket to go to a private school or somewhere else and leave the other 5.3 or 5.4 million children trapped in underperforming schools, the answer is to invest and improve.”

Some members who voted for the bill expressed concerns about potential unintended consequences. Lubbock Senator Charles Perry worried about the growth of virtual private education and its potential to draw students away from public schools while providing inadequate education and reducing funding for local districts. While Senator Creighton acknowledged the current small number of students in fully online programs, he assured Senator Perry that the legislature would closely monitor any significant increase in such programs.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, a strong advocate for the bill, celebrated its passage. He emphasized that despite the new program, the state remains committed to public education, highlighting increased public education funding over the past decade. “We will always cherish public education and that’s where 95 percent of kids will be, and we want to have the best public education system in the world,” he said.