How many West Texas voters support programs that would let families use public funds to pay for private school tuition? That’s what Lubbock resident Angela Cardenas wanted to know.
The debate around the plan to create Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) recently inspired the mother of two to plan a town hall with Rep. Carl Tepper, the Lubbock Republican who represents her in Texas House District 84. But Cardenas never anticipated the contentious back-and-forth that would follow. The situation has now led her to question whether state lawmakers are listening to rural voters’ worries about school voucher programs, especially at a time when ESAs seem poised to pass at the statehouse.
A teacher by trade, Cardenas said her experience as a public school parent is what drove her to start organizing the event.
“My son graduated a couple of years ago from public school. My daughter's still in public school,” Cardenas told KTTZ. “So, while I am an educator, I'm a mom first.”
Earlier this year, Cardenas noticed posts from educators and parents on Rep. Tepper’s Facebook page — specifically, their comments and responses disagreeing with his pro-voucher social media posts. Tepper has been in favor of the proposed ESAs as outlined in Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 3. The latter is currently co-sponsored by 75 House Representatives, including Tepper.
While the Texas Senate and House plans differ in a few significant ways, the basic concept is the same: Both bills would create an ESA program designating $1 billion in public funds for Texas parents to cover private school costs and other approved educational expenses. The proposals have drawn passionate support — especially from state leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott — and fierce opposition from some public school parents and teachers.
After exchanging comments on social media with Cardenas last month, Rep. Tepper agreed to a local town hall meeting to discuss the issue with West Texas voters.
“He actually said, ‘Okay, I'm happy to have a town hall if you can organize it. I am happy to come and talk to the people,’” Cardenas said. “He gave me a couple of weekends that he was available, and so that's exactly what I did.”
After about a week and a half of discussion with Tepper’s staff, Cardenas said she had finalized the date and location. On March 3, a press release and invitation were approved and ready.
“Probably three minutes later, my phone rang,” Cardenas said. “I didn't recognize the number, but I answered, and it was Mr. Tepper.”
Cardenas recorded the ending of her call with Tepper.
You can find the transcript and recording here:
- Cardenas: “I want to hold you accountable to the people that you serve, which is us, Mr. Tepper.”
- Tepper: “I'm accountable to my voters.”
- Cardenas: “Right, but you're scared to stand in front of those voters. That's why you just canceled a town hall meeting.”
- Tepper: “No, we're not going to fall into the little trap that you guys have set up, where we’re yelled at, and become a cute little video for you, set up on Facebook. So I think apparently we're not going to agree. I mean, this goes without saying: you are prepared to yell at us, cat call and all that stuff, and we're deciding we’re not gonna put up with it. So good luck to you. You do what you need to do, and I'm going to do what I need to do. I can't wait to vote on ESA accounts. I can't wait. Okay?”
- Cardenas: “Yes, sir.”
- Tepper: “Alright, bye-bye now.”
Cardenas said she left the call stunned.
“To put in all that work and then just have him call and make a personal attack and cancel all of it?” she said. “To be honest, I was just absolutely shocked.”
Cardenas told KTTZ she then sent a text message to the number Tepper called from, informing the representative that she had recorded the call. “Great. Spread far and wide,” the number texted back.
KTTZ reached out to Rep. Tepper to discuss the phone call. He acknowledged the request via email, but did not respond to the station’s additional voicemail or emailed requests for comment.
Vouchers have support from Lubbock legislators this session
Despite past resistance from Texas Republicans who serve rural areas — including an effort that sank similar proposals during 2023’s regular and special legislative sessions — the passage of some sort of voucher bill seems all but certain this year.
Since 2023, Gov. Abbott successfully pushed several anti-voucher Republicans out of the Texas House, where last session’s proposals died. Abbott is confident he has the votes he needs in that chamber.
Now, each of Lubbock’s state lawmakers has made various public assurances that an ESA program will reach the governor’s desk this session.
In a Sept. 2024 public education discussion panel produced by Texas Tech Public Media and community partners, including students with Tech the Vote, Lubbock state Senator Charles Perry said he’d been neutral on the issue of vouchers.
“You know how you get taken off of an Education Committee is you vote against a voucher bill one time, and that's okay. It wasn't a good bill,” said Perry, a Republican, of his actions during the 2023 legislative session. “I voted for — and I voted against — vouchers.”
Last month, though, Perry voted in favor of SB 2, the Texas Senate’s voucher legislation.
Lubbock’s other House representative, Dustin Burrows, promised to advance a voucher bill in his hotly contested — and successful — bid to become the newest Speaker of the Texas House earlier this year.
When the House filed its voucher plan in February, Burrows called it a “true universal school choice program.” Burrows also joined Gov. Greg Abbott at an event earlier this month where he told the crowd he would be voting in favor of the voucher bill.
Earlier this week, Burrows rejoined Abbott to promote Texas’ ESA bills alongside Doug Ducey, the former governor of Arizona, where an ESA program has been active since 2011. During his last year in office, Ducey signed legislation that expanded Arizona’s ESAs to become available to all students — what’s called a universal school choice program.
While the former governor touted its successes, the picture from Arizona is more complicated. Last year, public school closings in the state were attributed to poor funding and a ballooning private school voucher system, as the state faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall.
This year’s legislative session began with a $20 billion surplus for the State of Texas. Speaker Burrows assured those attending Tuesday’s press conference that Texas can support “competition through school choice” by passing private school vouchers and funding the state’s public education system.
“We are committed to fully funding it and having a robust public education system that is there as a good choice for many students as well. And I do believe those private schools are available throughout a lot of the state,” Burrows said.
While various types of voucher plans have been proposed in states across the country in recent years, the issue has always proved controversial among voters, particularly in rural areas.
And Cardenas’ example is not the first time a town hall concerning ESAs has unexpectedly been canceled or ended in Texas.
Last month, a town hall in East Texas drew heated response from parents and educators toward Palestine’s local representative, Cody Harris, and Representative Brad Buckley, the author of HB 3. Shouts from an angry crowd who opposed the bill led the two Republicans to leave the stage about an hour before the event was initially scheduled to end.
This follows a broader, national trend: Since President Donald Trump took office, Republicans around the country have canceled similar in-person town hall events, mainly due to constituents' anger over the administration’s budget cuts.
After Tepper’s phone call with Cardenas, his political Facebook page was taken down, but one local news station soon announced he would make a TV appearance to take some pre-approved questions. Cardenas was not satisfied.
“That's not standing in front of your constituents and looking them in the eye and asking what their questions are, what their concerns are, and giving honest feedback,” Cardenas said.
Texas’ plan for ESAs comes as public school districts across the state face budget shortfalls
A little more than a week after the town hall Cardenas arranged was set to take place, Tepper appeared on EverythingLubbock’s Talking Points with Jen Phillips. They discussed his opinion on HB 3 and other public education bills up for consideration by the 89th Texas Legislature.
Watch the full episode of Talking Points, with Tepper and web extras here.
Tepper told Phillips what he’s heard from voters has indicated school choice is “very popular” among his constituents.
“A lot of voicemails, a lot of people called back,” Tepper said. “And when I explain, like we're explaining it today, how the bill is going to work, they all feel very satisfied after I get off the phone.”
Tepper, along with other supporters of the bill, has said the intention of HB 3 is to focus funds toward low-income families and students with special needs.
In the bill’s inital hearing, HB 3 author House Public Education Committee chair Brad Buckley (R-Killeen) said it provides greater opportunities for families “while prioritizing Texas' most high-needs and vulnerable students.”
“It's not sending rich people who are already sending their children to private school,” Tepper said in his conversation with Phillips. “This is heavily prioritizing the special ed and low-income children.”
Opponents of both the House and Senate proposals, though, have said this is not the case. In Tepper’s interview, he also noted that the ESA program HB 3 creates wouldn’t directly disperse cash to parents.
“You have to submit those invoices and your receipts to the program administrators, and then they would reimburse you for those costs,” Tepper said. “So you can't just go use it, trade it, buy beer with it, or what have you, it has to go towards someone's education.”
Tepper added the funds would have to go to an “accredited” private school. This is another point of contention for opponents of voucher programs, who argue access to alternative schooling is limited in more rural areas.
According to the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission, nine accredited private schools exist in Lubbock, compared to 76 in Austin and 162 in Houston.
“Frankly, the biggest push we're seeing for school choice — that people will actually just be fighting to use it — will be in Harris County, Houston, the Dallas area,” Tepper said.
Unlike Speaker Dustin Burrows, his fellow Lubbock Republican, Tepper said the House’s proposed ESA program is “not universal.”
“Not universal, meaning it’s not whoever can go, that’s sort of the Arizona model,” Tepper said. “We're looking at more of the Florida model.”
Florida has the largest voucher program in the United States, costing almost $3.2 billion in the previous fiscal year. While the program has grown over the past four years, the percentage of the budget for public school funds has decreased by a similar 10% in the state.
Other states have made efforts to require open admissions or new education standards for private schools and homeschool families participating in voucher and voucher-like programs, but Tepper said that will not happen in Texas.
“We're not interfering with the private school processes. That was a concern on the other side,” Tepper said. “Homeschoolers can get up to $2,000 for this program, and we're not interfering with them either.”
According to Tepper, some lawmakers in Texas think HB 3 doesn’t go far enough with allowing financial flexibility for private schools and homeschool families, many who, according to Tepper, are trying to “get away from overbearing government.”
But Tepper thinks these legislators have been convinced to start in “baby steps.”
“Let's try it, and it might just remain a smaller program,” Tepper said. “Certainly compared to the public school programs.”
Despite a historic $31 billion surplus in the state’s budget two years ago, a much-anticipated boost to the student allotment and teacher pay for public schools failed in the Texas legislature because of rejected voucher legislation that was linked to increasing public school funding.
Tepper said the effect of this year’s voucher legislation on West Texas schools will be “minimal.”
“I think the public schools need to have a little more self-confidence about what's going to happen in Lubbock County,” Tepper said. “I don't think school choice is going to affect them very much at all.”
KTTZ spoke to Lubbock-area public schools in August 2024 about local budget struggles, as school districts across the state were dealing with deficits.
Lubbock ISD superintendent Kathy Rollo said that if a voucher program must be considered, it should be considered separately from public school funding.
“If vouchers are worthy of consideration, and funding public schools with a record surplus is worthy of consideration,” Rollo said. “Let those two stand on their own merit and let people choose with their votes what they support.”
Read more: Lubbock-area superintendents talk budget struggles, state and local support
Financial concerns at Lubbock ISD eventually led to the closure and consolidation of three elementary and middle schools in December, described as “Phase 1.” Lubbock ISD staff said the closure plan was developed so as to avoid layoffs and new bonds while working out a $15 million deficit, largely attributed to lower enrollment and the failure of Texas legislators to approve expanded public school support in 2023.
This year, lawmakers have broken public funding away into a separate bill in HB 2, a nearly $8 billion expenditure to boost the per-student allotment for each school by $220, increase the money for teacher raises, and restrict the ability to employ uncertified teachers.
Lubbock-Cooper ISD came in $6 million short last year. Superintendent Keith Bryant attributed the deficit to Gov. Abbott’s refusal to increase public school funding without voucher legislation during the 2023 session. He said this placed the fast-growing district in a tough position with limited funds to educate all the new kids in the area.
While he also didn’t think Lubbock would be heavily impacted by vouchers in the short term, Bryant said it could have a “tremendous effect” on finances going forward and likely still will not be enough to meet the individual needs of low-income students.
“It won't be that we lose thousands of kids, it'll be that we lose funding because there's not as much money to go around,” Bryant said.
The funds for HB 3 will not come from the public school budget but from the general fund. Still, according to the Legislative Budget Board, the cost for Texas’ ESA proposal would start at $1 billion in 2027 and could grow to almost $5 billion by 2030.
When asked what would make him reconsider his support for ESAs, Tepper said in his TV interview that the legislature is often constructed to benefit major urban areas like Austin and Houston, and he would be against it if the program only benefited the metroplexes.
“If all the money was somehow bracketed to go to Houston or something like that, yeah, I'd have a problem with that,” Tepper said.
In a 2023 Texas Tribune analysis of Texas Private School Accreditation Commission data, the highest concentrations of private schools in the state were found in Harris, Dallas, Travis and Bexar counties. West Texas and the Panhandle were described as “private school deserts.”
Even if private schools expand into rural communities, the competition created by a school choice program with public schools could reduce per-student funding in districts already facing financial challenges.
In Austin, Texas lawmakers are halfway through this legislative session, and ESA advocates continue to say enough votes are in the House to pass HB 3 in a matter of weeks.
In West Texas, voters are still considering the costs and benefits of ESAs, and whether their legislators are listening. After her conversation with Rep. Tepper, Angela Cardenas said she doesn’t think so.
That won’t happen “until people decide that it matters enough to get out to the polls,” Cardenas said. “And to vote, to vote in their best interests — I don't know how we change it.”
While Texas voters will likely never see the direct question on a ballot of whether they want to let families in the state use public funds to pay for private school tuition, voters in rural states across the country have consistently shown their opposition.
This story is part one of a two-part series. Read more next week about what’s been happening in other rural states in part two.