A source of conservative support for public schools in rural Texas

NEW HOME, Texas — Bright yellow uprights tower over what was recently a flat stretch of cotton fields, now converted to football turf. Nearby, cranes are pulling up the walls of what will soon become a new primary school.

Not too long ago, you could count the number of annual New Home Independent School District graduates on two hands. Now families are flocking to the windswept slice of West Texas just south of Lubbock, drawn to the very conservative farming community by the promise of good public schools.

“What holds this place together is the school,” said Ramon Benitez, 39, an agricultural science teacher at New Home.

Amid a growing national movement to give parents public money to spend on private schools, in places like New Home – where the football coach is a local fixture and students learn to read and how to judge the quality of a cut of meat – that the conservative campaign has run up against the realpolitik of rural Texas.

The school voucher movement, which aims to send public money to private or religious schools, has gained momentum in conservative states, where parents are battling public schools over books in libraries, teaching race and racism, and transgender issues. More than a dozen states have adopted some form of school vouchers. This year several, including Florida, Iowa and Utah, voted to create extensive new programs open to all students, an approach developed in Arizona.

But Texas has been an outlier so far, largely because of long-standing support for public schools in deep red communities like New Home. In remote districts across the state, parents and educators have defended their schools, which are often the largest local employer and center of community life.

Rural Republicans in the Texas State House have long voted with Democrats, representing larger urban schools, to prevent changes that could reduce the money available for public schools, often the only ones available in small, rural districts.

But that bipartisan backlash came under increasing pressure this year as Austin lawmakers have become caught up in the fraught national politics of public education. Gov. Greg Abbott led the charge and supported legislation that would give government money to parents for private or home schooling.

“Parents are angry about the wacky agenda being forced on their children in their schools,” Abbott said during an event to promote education savings accounts last month at a Christian school in Bryan, Texas. “Our schools are for education, not indoctrination.”

The governor has made the issue the centerpiece of his third term early on, crisscrossing the state to rally support at more than a dozen all-Christian schools. The state’s powerful Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is also a strong financier, as are big-pocketed Republican donors who aren’t afraid to support primary challenges to Republicans who don’t support their priorities.

If approved, the money could go to religious schools. An even further step is being considered in Oklahoma, where the state’s board of education discussed Tuesday the possible approval of what would become the nation’s first religious charter school.

“Districts get better when more options are available to parents,” said Michael Barba of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports Mr. Abbott’s efforts. “And so is rural Texas.”

The push follows years of bitter school board hearings across the country and a raft of legislation subjecting public schools to new rules on classes and books.

The debate in Texas comes amid increasingly aggressive efforts by state officials to oversee the direction of public schools, which are independently run at the local level by elected school boards. In March, the Texas Education Agency announced it would take over Houston’s public schools, replace the local school board and impeach the superintendent, citing failures at one of the district’s high schools. In Austin, the agency has moved to install a state conservator to oversee special education.

In the Capitol, the battle over vouchers has reached a critical stage. Last week, the state Senate passed a bill creating a voucher program to provide $8,000 in tax dollars per year to students who choose not to attend public school. That was opposed by the State House, which on the same day passed a budget amendment, by Democratic and Republican votes, to block state funding of a voucher program.

While the amendment was unlikely to make it to the final budget, the vote in the State House indicated that many rural Republicans remained skeptical about school vouchers, setting the stage for a tense final showdown in the coming weeks.

“The governor is putting a lot of pressure, a lot of state officials are putting pressure on those rural Republicans,” said Mark Henry, the superintendent of the Cypress-Fairbanks school district, outside of Houston and the largest suburban district in Texas. “We just hope they stay on the line.”

The Senate voucher bill also included a ban on the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity at all public school levels, similar to the restrictions passed last year in Florida, a provision that directly links the battle for educational content to the battle for financing.

The governor’s aides point to polls showing support for school choice, even among rural Republicans, though opponents argue such numbers depend on how the question is framed.

“There is no tidal wave for this in my county,” said State Representative Travis Clardy, a Republican representing rural counties in East Texas. Last week he voted against vouchers.

In New Home, nearly 400 miles northwest of Austin, parents said they did not yet see the problem as a threat.

“Let’s say they did this,” says Kayla Ferguson, a Republican who owns The Spot, a recently renovated small restaurant near the school where her three daughters study. “It wouldn’t be something where they wouldn’t have public schools, would it?”

Martina Torres, a parent who works at the restaurant, chimed in from behind the counter. “For me, the big shock would be if so many parents choose to go along with that decision, and it would reduce public school funding,” she said.

“I don’t like the idea,” Ms Ferguson said. “I would never send my kids to private school.”

Unlike many rural districts, where the public schools are the only nearby options, New Home is close enough to the town of Lubbock that parents can choose to send their children to nearby private schools at their own expense.

Instead, the opposite has taken place: many parents dissatisfied with Lubbock’s public schools have moved to New Home, rather than enrolling their children in private schools. Others stay in Lubbock, but drive their children 25 miles to and from school. Enrollments are skyrocketing.

Many say they are moving away from the more politically and culturally diverse Lubbock, seeking smaller class sizes and a place where values ​​more align with their own.

“We’ve doubled and doubled,” Shane Fiedler, the superintendent of the New Home district, said of the school’s population, which now numbers more than 630 students.

New Home is a special kind of rural place, a place that has quickly turned into a suburb. The dusty landscape is now dotted with sprawling modern farms or ranch-style homes and billboards for lots for sale. The official population is just over 300, although many families enrolled in the schools live outside the city limits.

The school district is predominantly white, middle-income, and Republican. Every Wednesday, a boombox of Christian pop music greets the arriving students. Corporal punishment is still used. A minute of silence is observed each morning after the Pledge of Allegiance.

“I’m probably the most conservative person you’ll ever meet,” said Chris Hall, 47, a physician and the parent of several students, as he watched one of his daughters play softball on a recent night. “That’s part of why we’re here. We want our children to be able to think freely and openly. But I do want to give them the chance to learn why we think the way we do.”

A small public school with broad community support can support that just as much as any private school, he and other parents said.

“It feels like a private school here,” says Mindy Jordan, a parent.

Seated in his windowless office, Mr Fiedler said he was not concerned that a voucher program would mean losing out to private school students. But because of the way Texas law is structured, he said, there’s another threat: Private school vouchers could drain the state funding pool available to public schools.

“I think of it as a fountain drink,” he said. “You add so many straws to a fountain drink over and over, you drain that thing.”

The additional state funds that have come into New Home with all new enrollments have not been enough to keep up with staffing needs.

Buses are mowing grass. Mr. Fiedler acts as a second maintenance person and repairs doors. On a recent night, the athletic director, Koby Abney, was the announcer of a home softball game.

Unlike some other school districts in the state, New Home has few sources of local funding aside from property taxes on homes, and relies heavily on money from the state, based on attendance.

“I have no industry. I have no oil. I don’t have any windmills to help fund our school,” Mr. Fiedler said. “Mine comes from rooftops and students in the chairs.”

But stimulating the student population also means building new facilities. The new primary school is under construction. In recent years, the high school has grown large enough to compete in standard football, no longer the six-man version common in small schools. To this end, the district is installing a new artificial turf field.

After some local complaints, the district began charging a $1,000 per child fee for the ever-growing number of students living outside the district.

But a voucher program could upset the delicate balance, Fiedler and others fear.

Local State House Representative Dustin Burrows had opposed educational savings accounts in the past. But during the vote last week, he sided with other Republicans and against Democrats who proposed the anti-voucher budget amendment. In a statement, Mr Burrows said he “did not want to end the debate and discussion prematurely”.

The vote was smaller than such votes in the State House in the past, suggesting that the reliable base of conservative support for public schools could crack.

Many in New Home worried that political shifts in Austin threatened to leave out the voices of rural Texans.

Mr Abney, New Home’s athletic director, said he was torn and felt his voice was being taken for granted.

“I am a very politically conservative person,” he said. “But the politicians I support on most issues are the ones who seem most focused on attacking public education, and that’s what I’ve devoted my life to.”