Forty Years Wandering the Desert: The Odyssey of Funding Public Schools
By Pat Epstein, PFAD Founder, past PFAD President, and LONGtime political activist, e.g., first a Precinct Chair in Dallas in the 1970s, marched for abortion rights in Washington DC in the 1980s, advocated for AIDS treatments in the 1990s. She is a past High School Athletic Booster Club President, Richardson ISD School Board Trustee, many times over PTA President and Council of PTAs officer, and retired State Board of Education Consultant for the Jewish Community Relations Council/Dallas. Retirement turned community activism into a “day job” (when not reading, writing, enjoying the grands, along with a whole lot of this, that, and the other).
Pat Epstein “came unstuck in time”. The last thing I remembered was walking into the Pflugerville Public Library for a forum on “The State of Public Education”, when poof… I found myself floating through decades of educational wreckage.
OVERVIEW
1984! (How à propos!) It all started when Democrat Mark White (1983-87) pulled up to the Governor’s mansion with billionaire Ross Perot in his side cart and together they, truly with the best of intentions, pushed through “reforms” that birthed the never-ending story of statewide standardized testing and its offspring, educational standards. These morphed across time from the hatchling (TAAS) to Peter Pan (TAKS) to middlescence (TEKS). As we clump along, who knows what the senior iteration will be. Regardless, here we are, fermenting in a never-ending genealogy of cartoonish decisions ushered in by the 1989 Edgewood Case.
Bill Clements-R (1979-83, 1987-91) oversaw the advent of “Recapture” along with its twin siblings “Accountability” and, the bane of today-world’s educational landscape, “School-Choice”. We were briefly lured into a sense of hope when our last Texas Democratic Governor, Ann Richards-D (1991-95) was elected and pushed for a return to site-based control; however, that crashed and burned when the legislature became more enamored by the lure of easy money: creating the state lottery. Of note, they said its proceeds would fund education. And I have a bridge to sell you!
The remaining defenses came tumbling down in 1995 when George W. Bush-R and Senate Bill 1 delivered unto Texas its first 20 baby charter schools. Opening in 1996–1997, they went forth and multiplied to over 100,000 charter students by 2003. Rick Perry-R (2000-2015) threw good money after bad, championing educator pay-for-performance (pfolks, this was a very stress-filled time for educators), charter school expansion, and rejection the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” program with its attendant funding because it was tethered to Common Core (which competed with the Texas TEKS). Since 2015, we’ve been strapped into the Greg Abbott-R Charter Express (there are 18 in Pflugerville ISD alone), and the hellscape that was but the mere whimsy of his predecessors: vouchers.
To be clear, I genuinely applaud all who have worked/now work and volunteer in the public education arena. Been there. Done that in one way or another and, now retired, I spend my time identifying, electing, and nurturing smart, dedicated leadership. As an education activist in the 1980s-90s-2000s, I hosted and participated in these exact same events. Like our hosts and panel, I bounced from committee to committee. Living in Dallas, I travelled to Austin to testify. I was pivotal in starting the Richardson ISD Foundation and went on to serve as a Trustee. But the Pforum jolted me. It revealed that we remain grievously frozen in 20th century vernacular, strategies, and artillery while $18 million Pflugerville tax dollars funnel into Charter schools each year.
The pforum revealed a basic reality: ABSOLUTELY. NOTHING. HAS. CHANGED. IN. FOUR. DECADES. Today
We host the informational, how-to forums… just as we did 40 years ago.
We elect stellar Trustees… just as we did 40 years ago.
We deliver the same testimony at that Capitol that lands on the same deaf ears, and
We are dedicated. We are active. We show up and fight over and over and over again... JUST AS WE DID 40 YEARS AGO.
But…
We fight with a depleted, aging arsenal of ideas, strategies, and weaponry, and
We regurgitate the same truisms; and
We raise $100,000 with our Foundations when we need millions, and
We do the same thing year-after-year, expecting a different result. We all know what that defines, right?
Listening to the Austin Council of PTAs President’s words, I realized that she and I are interchangeable – that I was her and she is me. I realized that together, across decades, we and others just like us have shown up and fought diligently and by the rules against an enemy who not only writes the rules but breaks and rewrites them with whimsy. I realized that, while honorable, our words and actions to save public education have become mere lamentations for a world that has moved beyond us, Republicans and Democrats alike, into the era of Charter and private schools… all on the taxpayer’s dime.
So agitating there in a Billy Pilgrim déjà-vu-all-over-again vortex filled with echoes of the past, the reality hit me: This is the post-apocalyptic educational world. It is time to realize that we lost. It is time to accept that after decades of nourishment from the right, today’s educational bureaucracy and its pivot toward privatization quite literally IS the institution, not the aberration. Our public schools are emptying while charters sprout like dandelions and vouchers speed-courier our tax dollars to private institutions. It is time to acknowledge that if we are to save community education, we may first have to blow the whole thing up.
It is time to mine the data and ask different questions. And, it is time to learn their game and maybe even turn it around on them:
Define (redefine) public education for 21 st century needs and realities.
Identify (without hyperbole) why people chose to exit public education 40 years ago and continue to do so each year.
Stop fighting Charter Schools and figure out their “why” and “how”. Then explore and develop steps to “capture” Charter Schools (pun intended) so we can use them to our advantage.
Explore becoming the first “Charter District” in Texas. Now bear with me here. According to a quick Google search, Charter Districts are a real thing via becoming a “home-rule school district charter” operating with charter-like autonomy from state regulations.
Would it be financially advantageous? Would it mean a return of more local tax dollars to our local schools for our kids’ education and our educators’ salaries?
Would it provide less or more classroom freedoms for educators?
How would it work for UIL activities, etc.?
Apparently, it is a difficult process verifiable by the fact that none have been attempted in Texas. I am not advocating this, but I am also not afraid to ask the questions and explore the options. Bringing our tax dollars home to our students and educators requires a revival of thinking. We can no longer fear to ask new, different, and heretofore questions deemed “unacceptable”. All options need to be on the table for our kids and educators.
I get that what I write here will likely unnerve some, infuriate others, and many will just roll their eyes at the insanity of it all. But right now, we think we are in a conversation about Charter Schools and vouchers versus funding public education while in reality, that ship sailed years ago. We are now living in the Charter School/Voucher Age. We are not going to turn it around with the same liturgy, Capitol testimonies, school closings, elections, etc. We turn it around when:
We get honest about the realities of our time;
We begin asking different and better questions about those realities;
We decide to win.
Either their ship or ours is going to slam into the iceberg. Let’s take steps to “recapture” the steerage of this conversation so 40 years nigh dedicated volunteers are neither meeting their younger selves at a pforum, or (worse) public education has disappeared altogether.
If you are interested in a “new” conversation, please feel free to reach out!