With vouchers fast-tracked, other Texas public education issues to watch this session

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It only took the Texas Senate 22 days from the start of this year’s legislative session to introduce, debate and pass its priority school voucher bill.

Senate Bill 2, which would allow families to use taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s private school tuition, now awaits a vote in the House where similar legislation repeatedly hit a dead end two years ago. But while the Senate has moved swiftly on vouchers, state officials and education advocates have expressed a need for significant investment in public schools, which the state has a constitutional requirement to fund and where 5.5 million children receive their education.

From declining enrollment, budget deficits and program cuts to student absences, teacher shortages and campus closures, public schools walked into the 2025 legislative session with major challenges.

Here’s what lawmakers are prioritizing:

Teacher pay and school funding

Gov. Greg Abbott declared teacher pay an emergency item during his State of the State address this month, allowing lawmakers to fast-track any proposals on the topic during the legislative session that ends June 2.

It is unclear how lawmakers will implement teacher pay raises, but Abbott said during his speech that he wants to increase Texas teachers’ average salary to an “all-time high” and place more teachers on a pathway to a six-figure income. The state’s average teacher salary sits at $60,716, which ranks 30th in the nation, according to the National Education Association, an organization tracking educator pay across the U.S.

Abbott would like to see an expansion of the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a program that allows school districts to award bonuses to instructors based on classroom observations and their students’ academic growth over time. The Senate in its recent budget proposal designated $750 million for changes to that program. More than 25,000 teachers — across almost 500 school districts — participated last school year.

Abbott has also vowed to provide additional funding to public education more broadly. During the last legislative session, schools missed out on a $7 billion funding boost after lawmakers declined to pass a school voucher program. Abbott had promised not to sign a bill increasing public education funding without the passage of vouchers, his top legislative priority in recent years.

The House and Senate this year have each proposed allocating at least $4.85 billion in new funds to public schools.

The Senate wants to direct a majority of that funding to the Teacher Incentive Allotment and increasing teacher pay. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Senate, said in a recent press release that his chamber’s budget plan would increase teacher pay by $4,000. Teachers in rural areas would receive an additional $6,000 pay bump, for a total of $10,000. Patrick said the raise would close the salary gap between urban and rural teachers.

Some teacher advocacy groups said the funding falls short of what teachers need.

“That doesn’t come close to covering their pay deficit which now trails the national average by more than $9,000,” Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina said in a statement responding to the Senate’s budget proposal. “Legislative budget writers need to start over, and they should start by scratching out the money set aside for vouchers and allocating it to public schools.”

The House has also indicated a desire to increase teacher pay, but it has not outlined specifics.

Lawmakers have also filed bills that would increase the base amount of money school districts receive per student — $6,160 — which has not increased since 2019. An increase to that number would allow districts to increase salaries for teachers and support staff. It would also allow schools to combat inflation. One bill seeks to increase that per student funding by $1,000 and adjust the amount each year for inflation.

Teacher preparation

Lawmakers have yet to implement many of the early 2023 recommendations of a teacher vacancy task force responsible for identifying the causes for and solutions to the state’s teacher shortage. Some public education advocates hope they decide to do so this year as Texas has had to rely heavily on teachers without formal classroom training.

The number of teachers without formal classroom training in Texas’ public schools has skyrocketed, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of state data. Those uncertified teachers accounted for more than half of newly hired instructors last school year, according to the Texas Education Agency. A recent Texas Tech University study highlighted that kids lose three to four months of learning when they have a new teacher who is both uncertified and lacks experience working in a public school.

Since the start of the pandemic, the percentage of educators who left the profession has also increased significantly. Roughly 13% of teachers exited the classroom during the 2022-23 school year, a high after consistently hovering around 10% since the 2007-08 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency.

In a survey conducted by the teacher vacancy task force, teachers listed an unsustainable workload as the primary driver for leaving the workforce. They also cited campus morale, discipline and a lack of adequate mental health support as contributing factors to workplace stress.

“I think the respect for teaching as a profession has eroded over the past year, and until we're able to get that respect for the teaching profession back, it's going to be very, very hard to recruit young people into the teaching profession,” said Lisa Meysembourg, superintendent of the Woodville school district, located in East Texas.

The task force called on lawmakers to raise teacher pay through increasing the base amount of money school districts receive for each student and the minimum amount of money teachers make per year of experience.

The group also recommended more training and support for teachers, which the panel of educators and administrators said could include the Legislature establishing and funding teacher residency programs. Those programs help cover the cost of aspiring teachers’ education and provide them with classroom experience under the guidance of seasoned teachers. They also place aspiring teachers on the pathway to certification.

“It’s just thinking differently about how we can give our teachers experiences so they can be successful and have positive experiences and want to stay in the field,” said Cara Malone, chief of schools for the Hutto school district near Austin, which oversees its own residency program. “Districts need the funding to be able to try things and have staff that can truly support our teachers, and if we don't find ways to do that, we're going to continue to be a revolving door.”

Special education

Republican and Democratic lawmakers will continue their yearslong push to overhaul the way the state funds special education. Texas currently bases the funding school districts receive for special education on how much time a student spends in a particular setting, not accounting for the specific services a student with a disability may need. Two students, for example, placed in the same classroom but who require different levels of support receive the same dollars under the current funding model.

Two special education task forces in the last half-decade have recommended the state change the current settings-based funding model to a system that accounts for the types of services students with disabilities require.

Under federal law, students with disabilities must receive what’s known as a Free Appropriate Public Education, or FAPE. The “appropriate” component means those services must “meet the individual educational needs of the student as determined through appropriate evaluation and placement procedures,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.

“In our opinion, we are finding that with the amount of funding that school districts are currently being given or allotted by the state, they are not being set up to be able to provide students with disabilities with a free and appropriate public education,” said Sabrina Gonzalez Saucedo, director of policy and advocacy for The Arc of Texas, a disability rights organization. “We're hearing that from families and from educators and school districts.”

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, has filed legislation this session that seeks to change the model and increase special education spending. Lawmakers unsuccessfully attempted to do so last legislative session in wide-ranging education bills that had school vouchers attached to them.

“We're filing it with the expectation level that everybody agrees that special education is an important point that we need to improve in Texas,” Bettencourt told The Texas Tribune about the bill he introduced this year.

House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, recently told Permian Basin civic and business leaders in Austin that House Public Education Committee Chair Brad Buckley, R-Salado, and Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath are working together on a five-tiered approach to the special education funding model that would account for the intensity of services students with disabilities need.

Burrows said those changes to special education funding will come through public education legislation and the House’s forthcoming school voucher proposal, which lawmakers in that chamber have not yet filed.

“We have to do a better job,” Burrows said about special education. “We're going to make a historic commitment to that, and that is going to be something the House leads on.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Abbott recently called on state lawmakers to consider extending the state’s diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — ban to K-12 public schools. The law currently applies to Texas’ public universities.

“Schools are for education, not indoctrination,” Abbott said during his State of the State speech.

Under the current DEI law, universities cannot create diversity offices, hire employees to carry out diversity-related initiatives or require any DEI training as a condition for employment or admission.

Since the law’s passage in 2023, universities across the state have shuttered DEI offices and efforts. Those offices sought to help Black, Latino, LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented students adjust to life on college campuses and foster a sense of community among their peers.

With no bill yet filed to extend the ban on diversity initiatives, it is unclear how the ban would apply to K-12 schools. Public schools routinely observe occasions like Black History Month and host initiatives to support immigrant students and children with disabilities.

Meanwhile, the Republican who previously helped lead a push for restrictions on how public schools can teach about America’s history of slavery and racism, Rep. Steve Toth of The Woodlands, has once again proposed a bill that seeks to ban instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.

“The State of Texas recognizes only two genders – male and female,” Abbott said. “Any educator who tells students that boys can be girls should be fired on the spot.”

State officials’ push to extend the diversity ban to public schools comes as lawmakers are making an effort to infuse more Christianity into public education. Lawmakers have filed legislation to require schools to display the Ten Commandments in the classroom, which Patrick has declared a priority. Patrick also plans to prioritize legislation that would grant school districts the power to adopt policies requiring their schools to provide students and employees “with an opportunity to participate in a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text on each school day.”

Career training

Abbott in his State of the State address also declared career training an emergency item.

“Many of the most in-demand jobs are careers like welders, plumbers and electricians,” Abbott said. “To prepare students for these careers, high schools must provide more career training programs so students can go from graduation directly into a good-paying job.”

The governor called for, among other things, increased funding to the Jobs and Education for Texans Grant Program, which offers grants to schools and colleges for the purchase of equipment in career and technical education courses.

Abbott also wants more financial investment in a program that helps rural school districts increase career training opportunities for students that align with regional workforce needs. Rep. Gary Gates, R-Richmond, has filed legislation that would create another program offering students opportunities to simultaneously earn their high school diploma and complete a certificate program focused in careers like carpentry, plumbing and welding.

Disclosure: Texas State Teachers Association, Texas Tech University and Arc of Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.