Sparks won the Republican primary easily and was unopposed in general election. In January, he was sworn into Seliger’s old seat, flipping it to favor school choice. According to NBC News, the freshman senator’s district contains 91 public schools that run from Texas to the Permian Basin. Sixteen of these districts are rural and have no private options.
Seliger claimed that the interests of these public schools are not fully represented in Texas’s Senate.
He said that “these powerful donors realized they could just purchase the campaigns.” “Those people now own the seats and will get what they want.”
Support for rural areas
Abbott, a private Christian school tour leader, has promoted school choice to empower parents to protect their children against a “woke agenda”, which he claims is being promoted by some public school educators.
Robert Lee residents find such claims to be absurd. Both the town and school district were named after the Confederate general who served in Texas before the Civil War.
In recent years, Hood has faced the most significant political controversy over the strictness in dress code. Hood stated, “When all your students are aged 5-18 in one building,” it is “a bit of a challenge to be conservative.”
Children line up for lunch at the Robert Lee cafeteria, which serves students kindergarten through 12th grade.
Matthew Busch for NBC News
Hood and other rural school officials believe that conservative districts such as Robert Lee will suffer the most severe consequences of the Republican plans.
Texas’ public schools are funded using a mixture of local tax revenue as well as state dollars. State money is distributed per student basis. Rural districts may see their funding reduced in one of two ways. Either because they lose local students to vouchers or because the total pot of state funds has been diluted to pay for private and homeschooling costs of students from far-flung cities and suburbs. This leaves less funding per district.
Hood stated, “Imagine pitching that to a rural voter.” Hood said, “You are going to take our tax money to give it to a Dallas suburbs parent so their child can attend a private school.” No.
These criticisms have been addressed by Republican leaders. Senate Bill 8, which is the most important school choice bill in the Legislature, would allow parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive $8,000 each year in an education savings fund. Districts with fewer than 20k students will receive $10,000 per year from the state in order to compensate for any student lost through the program. However, this is only for the first 2 years. The savings accounts are only available to students who are currently enrolled in public schools or children entering kindergarten.
