Democrat Gina Hinojosa explains her bill (Photo by Brandt Bingamon)
Is it a temporary blip on Texas political radar, or is it even more interesting: the beginning of the movement?
Last week, a group of conservative Texans travelled to Austin to stand behind one of the state’s most progressive lawmakers, Rep. Gina Hinojosa, who introduced a bill that would reduce Texas education institutions and redirect them from the budget to the state’s public schools.
Hinohosa called it a tea effort. “It is a zero-based budget bill that cuts nonsense, bureaucracy and vendor contracts, and repeats that money to something important.
Zero-based budgeting has been supported by conservatives since the Reagan era as a way to reduce agency growth. Hinojosa’s Republican allies reflected criticism of the growing tea bureaucracy and questioned the value of its core work, like the oversight of standardized tests in schools. They also criticized their own party leaders for expanding their tee budgets, simultaneously refusing to fund more public schools and simultaneously creating a statewide budget crisis for public education.
“Paying vendors, public/private partnerships, contracts and consultants takes priority over funding for all classrooms,” said Lynn Davenport, a conservative of Dallas. “And it starts at the top. It comes from the national level. And my own party has been in power over the last few decades.”
William B. Travis State Office Building, home to Texas Educational Institutions
According to the Texas Tribune, tees are the 16th largest of the state’s over 100 institutions in terms of employment. It oversees over 400 contracts worth around $1 billion, and handles STAAR testing, curriculum development, services and more for students with disabilities. Hinojosa presents state budget data dating back to 2016, showing that TEA has increased by about 50% over the past decade under Governor Greg Abbott, but the proportion of students who have passed the state’s assessment test has declined.
“Paying vendors, public/private partnerships, contracts and consultants takes priority over funding for all classrooms.” – Lynn Davenport, Dallas conservatives
A spokesman for Tee told the Chronicle that while agents have grown, the increase in employees has been permitted by Congress, and most have grown rapidly in recent years, it was designed to serve students who need special education services. The spokesperson said the agency had hired new employees to consult with the school about safety measures, maintained that it did not hire registrations for public school staff who are engaged in inappropriate relationships with minors, and helped to prepare educational materials. The spokesperson added that the Sunset Advisory Committee, which regularly audits all state agencies, looks at tea in 2015 and will do it again in 2029.
HB 5419 will move its Sunset Advisory Committee audit for two years to 2027. From 2016 onwards, you will need to review contracts that cost over $100,000 since YEA signed. It also requires lawmakers to prioritize public school funding over agents.
Non-partisan education Chandra Villanueva said that every Texan is unsure how much support Hinojosa’s bill will support, but believes that this is a good time to audit tea. “Public education, that’s billions of dollars,” Villanueva said. “So when you have such money in your budget, you’ll see these contractors want their slices. We want to know that the government is a good steward of our taxes. And now I don’t think I’m getting that level of transparency from tea.”
Suzanne Belsnider, Spearman’s newspaper publisher at the top of the Texas Panhandle, said she ran nine hours to support Japan’s bill as small town schools like her are in crisis. “I attended a school board meeting in our community on Tuesday night, where the school board passed an initiative to move to four-day school week,” Bellsnyder said. “These are the types of decisions that rural communities have to make, because money is in the classroom, not where it is supposed to support teachers.”
Hinojosa’s bill comes at a chaotic moment for public education. Donald Trump dismantled the U.S. Department of Education in 1979 to ensure that the nation provides equal education to economically disadvantaged students, minorities and people with disabilities. Governor Greg Abbott’s group of far-right allies has brought the bill to afloat to completely eliminate tea, which appears to be at odds with the governor’s main priorities. Meanwhile, grassroots Republicans are coming with Democrats to oppose Abbott’s voucher plan.
Bellsnyder calls opposition to vouchers and calls support for public school funding from the right a “movement.” This is a bipartisan example that Congress has not seen in many years. “It created some strange companions,” she told the Chronicle. “But public education is not a partisan issue. It’s like roads. It’s like water. It’s about the state needs to do and it’s about partisan stuff.”
