Breckenridge Texan

Gov. Abbott’s plan would mean chaos.

Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared in The Dallas Morning News, where Glenn Rogers is a contributing columnist.

By Glenn Rogers

Gov. Greg Abbott is following up his scorched earth removal of pro-public education Republican legislators with a plan to eliminate school property taxes, a move that could effectively dismantle the public school system as it currently exists.

The endgame for the theo-oligarchs who control Texas state politics is complete dominion over what they call the Seven Mountains: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Dominion over the education mountain is top priority and requires privatization and elimination of Texas public schools.

But I have a few questions.

First, if public education is as irredeemably broken, wasteful, ideological, incompetent and dangerous as some politicians insist, why not pull the plug now? Not a slow and gradual death, but overnight closure of every public school. Just shut the doors.

After all, we have heard for years that public schools are failing children, indoctrinating, mismanaging funds and producing poor outcomes. If that is all true, why keep them open one more day? Why subject another child to such a vile system?

Then, what happens after schools close? Here’s what: 5.5 million Texas students do not go anywhere. Parents — many of whom work hourly jobs or hold positions that do not come with flexibility — suddenly must answer a basic question: Where does my child go? Employers feel it immediately. Hospitals, construction sites, factories, restaurants, small businesses — everyone feels it.

Gone, too, are special education services, speech therapy, behavioral support, school meals, transportation, counselors, dyslexia specialists, nurses and bilingual support.

What about structure and predictability? Where will children be expected to show up, learn, interact and receive supervision for the bulk of the day?

We received a glimpse of this nightmare during the pandemic. Remember how quickly we decided that school closures were catastrophic for kids? Remember how we said (correctly) that schools are more than buildings, more than instruction, more than test scores? Remember how we watched learning loss grow, mental health concerns skyrocket and parents reach a breaking point?

Now the memory of pandemic era applause for educators has faded into oblivion. Using teachers as a scapegoat for societal woes and attacking public schools is trendy and scores political points; feeding the rage machine controlling our toxic political environment.

Can you imagine the mad scramble to replace the public school system? Parents will demand it, and fast. There won’t be enough private schools to meet the need, and the ones that exist will need more funding. So there will be rules to write, funding formulas to create and accountability measures to establish. How will complaints and lawsuits be managed? Topics related to access, oversight, inequities and organization will need to be addressed. Solutions will need to be scaled across urban, suburban and rural Texas.

Every solution requires trade-offs. Every reform creates new tensions. Every simple fix collides with reality.

There is a cold hard fact not mentioned often enough, or loud enough: The Texas Legislature does not just influence public education; it owns it! Article 7 Section 1 of the Texas Constitution makes it crystal clear that lawmakers are responsible for establishing and maintaining a system of public free schools. Neither school boards nor superintendents nor teachers nor the Texas Education Agency has this level of responsibility.

Any failure in the Texas education system falls directly on the recipe created by the Legislature.

For years, lawmakers have complained about outcomes while layering on mandates, underfunding priorities, outsourcing oversight to a bloated agency and then acting shocked when the results do not align with their rhetoric.

The modus operandi for current government leaders is to satisfy the megadonors and maintain power with little concern for pressing issues affecting local government and public schools. The political formula is simple: Starve a system, tie it in knots, delegate the management to a burgeoning bureaucracy and then stand at the microphone pretending to be an innocent observer of the mess.

My message to my former colleagues and newer legislators: Write better laws, fund what you require, remove mandates that do not work, fix accountability systems you designed, take responsibility for outcomes you control and please stop pretending public education is some rogue operation happening to you rather than something happening because of you.

So go ahead and close the schools. Perform the experiment. Absorb the chaos and then observe how quickly you begin rebuilding the very system that you spent years tearing down.

Maybe when you realize that educating millions of children is complex, human, imperfect work that requires structure, investment and responsibility, the conversation will shift.

Public education is not failing Texas. Texas is failing to own what has always been its responsibility.