Texas Happy To Send Taxpayer Money To Religious Schools, Just Not Yours.
They're blocking Muslim schools, in case that wasn't obvious.
Texas is supposedly in the process of rolling out its new “school choice” program, the Texas Education Freedom Account (TEFA), to fund private schools with taxpayer money. Many of the schools in the program are Christian, because who cares about the First Amendment anymore? In fact, dozens of schools in the program openly discriminate against non-Christians and LGBTQ folks, because God tells them to. (Bigotry is protected by the First Amendment, after all, and the only real discrimination would be not sending taxpayer funds to bigoted church schools.)
But there’s a catch, because while the state is happy to defund public schools by diverting tax dollars to religious schools, the state comptroller’s office wants to ban some schools from the program. The pretext is that some of the schools allegedly have “connections” to the government of China, or in the case of some Islamic schools, because they’re supposedly “connected” to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim civil rights group that Gov. Greg Abbott declared in November is a “terrorist” group. CAIR is suing over the designation, but hey, a pretext’s a pretext!
As as result, hundreds of schools have been shut out of the voucher program just before applications from parents are supposed to go live — at least for the time being. That’s despite the fact that there are only a couple dozen Islamic private schools in the state, which has already scared some Christian nationalists so much that they opposed the voucher program in the first place, warning that it would fund scary Muslim schools.
So why the holdup for hundreds of schools? As the Houston Chronicle reports (gift link), the comptroller’s request for clarification on banning them from the voucher program has held up approval for nearly every private school accredited by Cognia, the biggest private school accreditor in Texas. As a result, by Tuesday, “only 30 of the 600 schools accredited solely by the nonprofit were added to the list of approved vendors, most of them offering only pre-K and kindergarten.”
And how’s this for the power of the press? Most of those 30 were only added overnight on Monday, after the paper’s reporters started asking questions of state education officials.
The mess will probably maybe be kind of sorted out by the time parents start submitting applications for the voucher program on February 4, but rest assured, this being Texas and a trumped-up culture war panic, the voucher program will nonetheless remain a huge boondoggle.
In December, acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock requested an opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office on whether some schools could be barred from the voucher program if they had links to “foreign terrorist organization” or a “foreign adversary.” CAIR was already suing the state over Abbott’s “terror” designation before Hancock piled on.
Those alleged “links” are pretty damned tenuous: Hancock wants to ban schools that have hosted “Know Your Rights” events in which CAIR was among the participants. As we already know from wingnuts across the nation, telling people the Trump regime may crack down on that they have rights is the same as obstruction of justice, so we can throw some immigration panic into the mix here, too.
“Hosting civil rights education for students is lawful. So is teaching students about their rights under the U.S. and Texas Constitutions,” a spokesperson with CAIR Texas said. “Any attempt to penalize schools for learning about their civil rights from an organization Greg Abbott happens to dislike would raise serious First Amendment concerns.”
Sure, people have “rights” and all that, but what about the sacred right of Republican politicians to shore up political support through fearmongering, huh?
The alleged infiltration of the schools by Chinese Communist Enemy Foreign Influence!!! seems just as tenuous. Hancock claimed that one private school in the state “may be owned or controlled by a holding group linked to foreign adversaries seeking influence over U.S. education, specifically, an adviser to the Chinese communist government.” How many degrees of Kevin Beijing are we talking about here? Damned if we’ve been able to find any details of that alleged “connection.”
But don’t worry, Hancock said he was just asking for legal guidance after “credible concerns” were raised about CAIR and China, and he’s certainly not out to prejudge any of these schools with possible connections to terrorists or the godless Chi-Coms. He just wants to, ummm, “safeguard personal data from foreign adversaries and ensure that no public funds are used, directly or indirectly, in a manner that conflicts with Texas law or undermines the security interests of our state.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
In his December request to Paxton’s office, Hancock noted that the schools in question had been accredited by Cognia, but they’re only a handful of the hundreds of schools that have been blocked from approval for the voucher program. At least 15 Islamic schools, all accredited by Cognia, should meet the accreditation standards for the program, but none have been approved.
A Cognia spokesperson told the Houston Chronicle that the nonprofit is aware that schools it accredited have seen delays in their approvals for the voucher program, and that it’s working with the comptroller to resolve the issue. That statement may be nonconfrontational enough to avoid further angering the powers that be, but it’s hardly a great comfort to the schools being singled out for discrimination.
The comptroller’s office said it has implemented “additional safeguards” to “ensure every participating school complies with Texas law,” in accordance with the concerns in Hancock’s letter, but did not explain why other Cognia schools have been unable to register. The program will invite “additional batches” of schools to participate in the coming days, and those requests should be completed and processed quickly, the office said.
“Schools that are not affected by issues referenced in our OAG opinion request should not experience any difficulty participating,” the statement said.
Look, folks, have a little patience. Texas is doing everything it can to exclude Muslims from getting in on the school voucher grift without framing it in a way that would scream “we hate Muslims” too openly. They’ll figure something out.
[Houston Chronicle (gift link) / Texas Observer / Texas Tribune]
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Jabari Brisport
@JabariBrisport
Imagine what would happen if we slashed fire department funding to give people individual vouchers to buy personal fire extinguishers.
That's what charter schools do to public schools.
"which has already scared some Christian nationalists so much that they opposed the voucher program in the first place, warning that it would fund scary Muslim schools."
They're right, but for the wrong reasons.
If you don't want school voucher funds going to schools that teach values with which you disagree, then the solution is to oppose vouchers for religious schools altogether, or just oppose vouchers, period.