School Voucher Election Update
- G. Noelke
- Mar 6, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 8, 2024
"Be good to your neighbor" is a message I regularly ask of my neighbor up the hill who so readily spends my tax dollars, and I do my best to exchange the sentiment, especially on the big issues where we agree.
Updates: This page was initially posted on the morning following the election, March 6, 2024. The latest update was on March 8 and can be found here.
The AP has called the winner, Drew Darby, an unapologetic anti voucher incumbent, in the local state House of Representatives election. The contest was really over a single issue - school vouchers that are being sought by the financial backers of Governor Greg Abbott. Here is the position I took opposing vouchers leading up to the election.
Government in the Sun is interested in the issue of open and transparent government, not political endorsements. That said, I am relieved that Darby won the contest. I differ with him, however, on a myriad of issues raised during the primary that were clearly conservative dog whistles intended to get out the vote. It was undoubtedly a nasty campaign.
It's not over until the fat lady sings, as they say, and on the issue of school vouchers I'm afraid that lady is nowhere in sight. Darby himself made the point when he was here in Mertzon that the issue of school vouchers dates back to 1957 when certain members of the state legislature were trying to get around the desegregation required by Brown v. Board of Education, only to be stopped by a filibuster by Henry B. Gonzalez. Racism is undoubtedly a hidden motivating factor for those supporting vouchers, and it needs to be called out as unacceptable at every opportunity. I address some of Mertzon's racist past on the bottom of this post.
Finally, back to my "be good to your neighbor" message. Flooding a neighbor from the campus of a public school with stormwater runoff is no less of an existential crisis for that neighbor's private residence than school vouchers are to that public school. Both flooding and vouchers relate to existence - existence of one's home, existence of a public governmentally supported education. Flooding destroys homes, and vouchers destroy public education. Local government, particularly rural public schools, can never be sure where their most ardent supporters are going to reside, so the best policy for them is, yes, be good to their neighbor. Their neighbor just might be principled enough to look past the politics and the billions of taxpayer dollars in play and do the right thing. They might do the right thing just because they believe in public education for their community.
That's a good neighbor to have. And that's also a constituent that Rep. Darby needs to remember.
Updates:
March 8, 2024. Here's a Texas Tribune article on the statewide turnout for the March 5, 2024 primary election. And, here is also a Tribune article about TEA this week placing the largest statewide charter school, IDEA Public Schools, under conservatorship. (My point: when tax dollars leave public education the funds are susceptible to waste and misuse. A more efficient way to improve public education is to merely engage the community in meaningful oversight of its public schools.)
March 7, 2024. In Irion County only, according to the Texas Secretary of States Office, of the 393 total votes cast in the Darby v. Stormy Bradley District 72 race, Darby received 237 votes and Bradley received 156 votes. (60.31% to Darby and 39.69% to Bradley.) Contrast these numbers to the school choice proposition on the ballot and it is clear there was some voter confusion. That proposition read, "PROPOSITION 11: TEXAS PARENTS AND GUARDIANS SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO SELECT SCHOOLS, WHETHER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE, FOR THEIR CHILDREN, AND THE FUNDING SHOULD FOLLOW THE STUDENT." This proposition in Irion County received 387 votes total, and of those 254 votes (65.63%) were in favor and 133 votes (34.37%) were against. Thus, voters voted in quite a large percentage (65.63%) in favor of school choice in the proposition, but also voted in quite a large percentage (60.31%) in favor of the candidate, Darby, who was not favoring school choice. Overall for Irion County for the Democrat and Republican primaries combined, the turnout was 32.84% or 401 total votes cast out of the total 1,221 registered voters.
Copyright 2024 G. Noelke
