Gov. Greg Abbott School Choice tour hits Houston

Protestors will demonstrate against the Republican leader during a 'Parental Empowerment' rally in south Houston.

Gov. Greg Abbott School Choice tour hits Houston
Texas Governor Greg Abbott talks to a crowd of supporters

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott continues his state-wide tour promoting school vouchers during a “school choice” event at the Reflections of Christ’s Kingdom Church in Houston on May 2.

Parental rights are a top priority for the governor for the current legislative session. He’s advocated for the creation of education savings account programs which are considered to be taxpayer-funded vouchers that parents can use to pay for their children to attend private school.

In April,SB 8 and SB 1474 that formalizes the voucher program passed in the senate and is awaiting a vote from the House Legislature public education committee. If it is signed into law, tax dollars that are used to fund public schools will be used for parents to enroll their children in private or charter schools.

Several local organizations, including the Community Voices for Public Education, Mother’s against Greg Abbott, ACLU, and Black Lives Matter stood at front of the venue location expressing their concerns about how the push for school vouchers will remove funding from public schools.

  • Protesters hold signs and stand in front of the venue location where Governor Abbott is speaking
  • Protesters hold signs and stand in front of the venue location where Governor Abbott is speaking
  • Protesters hold signs and stand in front of the venue location where Governor Abbott is speaking
  • Protesters hold signs and stand in front of the venue location where Governor Abbott is speaking
  • Protesters hold signs and stand in front of the venue location where Governor Abbott is speaking

“An 8,000 voucher sounds like a whole lot of money to people, and people say ‘wow 8,000 bucks, I can take my kid to an extraordinary school,’ but the reality is the schools that people imagine with extracurricular programs and 17:1 ratio, those schools cost 20 to 30 thousand dollars,” said Ruth Kravetz, co-founder of Community Voices for Education. “So, what this voucher plan is going to do is its going to dismantle public education opportunity for parents who are here.”

Abbott framed the topic of school choices as an option for parent to decide what “agenda” their children can be exposed to.

“The state of Texas wants to see all of our children well educated and the best way to do that is to empower parents to pick the school best for their child and for the state of Texas to pay for it,” Abbott said. “And this will not take a single penny away from our public schools.”

“I have some wealthy friends in Ohio which is a voucher state. My friends have two six-figure incomes and they received a $7,000 voucher to send their child to private school, said one Houston parent during the press conference. “I love my friends but I don’t want my tax dollars going towards private school education. How is this parent empowerment?”

Protesters disrupted the school choice event. Cesar Espinosa from the immigrant led civil right organization FIEL Houston shouted “You’ve got to go!” calling him a traitor in the middle of Abbott’s speech.

“You call people illegal and they’re not,” in reference to the governor recently referring to the five shooting victims who were killed in Cleveland, Texas as “illegal immigrants.” His team apologized soon after they learned at least one of the deceased was in the U.S legally.

Abbott made no references of the TEA takeover or his remarks about the shooting victims, but he reminded his base that the power is in the hands of the parents.

“It’s not either or, only public education or only school choice. You can have the best of both worlds. And the best of both worlds is when Mom and Dad are in charge.”