Happy Hour 197 - Why Private School Vouchers Are A Terrible Idea For Texas

The battle over private school vouchers sees a major milestone on Tuesday, as House Bill 3 - the GOP-controlled House's latest scheme to redirect money earmarked for public schools to private and parochial schools instead - comes before the Texas House Public Education Committee. This is a debate that has become partisan at the legislative level, though not as completely as some other issue areas have - in fact, Governor Abbott (who has been well-paid by billionare benefactors to continue this push) has had a hand in ousting House members of his own party who disagreed with his plans on behalf of the schools back home in their rural districts, who will be among those vouchers would hurt worst. The people in those districts - many of whom were misled into voting for Abbott's cherry-picked replacements - are beginning to realize what's at stake and pipe up, but we're about to find out whether that awakening will come too late for public schools, both rural and urban, across Texas.We wanted to cover, in the most basic terms possible, WHY a private school voucher plan is a bad idea not only for Texas schools and the families of our school kids, but ultimately for ALL Texas taxpayers. So we've brought in representatives from the non-profit Every Texan, who have done extensive, non-partisan research on the subject, and also Democratic State Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin, who sits on the House Public Education Committee and has been at the forefront of the fight against private school vouchers for nearly a decade.See the website that utilizes Every Texan data to show how YOUR public school district will be affected by private school vouchers at https://dontdefundmyschool.com/.Learn more about Every Texan at https://everytexan.org/.Learn more about Texas House Rep. Gina Hinojosa at https://www.ginaforaustin.com/.San Antonio listeners! Progress Texas will visit the Alamo City for the first time in far too long on May 6! Please join us for a fun fundraising gathering of progressives and a LIVE podcast taping. RSVP here: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/sanantonio_mixerThanks for listening! Learn more about Progress Texas and how you can help support our important work at https://progresstexas.org/.