In Texas, where pre-K is scorned by some conservative activists as “godless,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s major education initiative is giving classrooms far less money than many once thought, causing even the district of the governor’s high school alma mater to now rebuff his plan.
Texas handed out $116 million in pre-K grants to nearly half the state’s school districts this week, delivering on one of Abbott’s biggest pledges when he took office last year — that classrooms willing to implement tougher pre-K standards would be rewarded with as much as $1,500 extra per student.
But in reality, those schools are getting less — way less.
Districts will instead receive $734 per student, state education officials confirm. That’s less than half of the potential maximum dangled in front of financially struggling school administrators and reluctant lawmakers in 2015, when the typically bipartisan idea of improving pre-K confronted pushback from influential tea party activists who called preschool something “historically promoted in socialistic countries.”
So diminished was the ultimate amount of funding offered that even the Duncanville school district that claims Abbott as one of its most famous alumni — he lent the governor’s mansion in April to host his high school’s 40th class reunion — was among more than 20 districts that applied for but ultimately passed on the money.
“It kind of became diminishing returns,” Duncanville school district spokeswoman Lari Barager said Wednesday of the decision to reject the funds.
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Five weeks after being sworn into office, Abbott declared early education the first emergency item of his new administration, enticing schools with more money if classrooms adopt more rigorous pre-K benchmarks such as enhanced teacher training. “Our children and their future have no time for delay,” he said then.
Texas gutted classrooms of $5.4 billion in 2011, and schools cheered a new governor putting more education dollars on the table. Yet the $130 million that Abbott proposed still wouldn’t restore what the Republican-controlled Legislature cut from preschools four years earlier, nor would the money let districts enroll more pre-K students.
The plan also fell short of what education groups say are truly meaningful pre-K reforms such as low teacher-to-student ratios.
Meanwhile, conservative activists close to Texas’ powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, tried derailing the legislation with a letter scolding incentives to remove children from “half-day religious preschools” to a “Godless environment” that didn’t produce results.
The grants were announced earlier in the week. We already knew that the total amount allocated fell well short of what was cut in 2011, this is just a vivid demonstration of what that means. If Abbott really cares about expanding access to pre-K, he’s going to have to push back against the radical nihilists in his own party to make it happen. He has no trouble fighting for his own priorities when his opponents are mostly Democrats. Does he have the political will and leadership in him to overcome members of his own party, or does he not actually care about this enough to publicly disagree with Dan Patrick? It’s not like Abbott would be on his own, or wholly dependent on Democratic support for this – the business community would be right behind him. His actions will make it clear if he meant what he said about pre-K or not.