To read Part 1, click here.
As I noted in Part 1, Spring Valley is one of four RISD elementary schools that are closing because of budget constraints . . . in other words, because the Texas legislature has failed to adequately fund our state’s public schools. As most of my friends know, I am a passionate defender of our neighborhood public schools. For one thing, I have four grandchildren in the public schools, and my daughter has taught 1st grade in public schools for two decades.
Also, I have the privilege of serving as a trustee of Pastors for Texas Children since its founding in 2013. Part of our mission is to urge Texas legislators to increase the funds for public schools; tragically, our governor is holding those funds hostage to his misguided efforts (aka voucher schemes) to provide public funds to private schools. In other words, he’ll support increased funds for public schools on the condition that the lege also gives taxpayer funds to private schools that want to turn our children and grandchildren into profit centers, commodities to line the pockets of Abbott’s wealthy “donors.”
So Spring Valley, where I attended 4th & 5th grade from 1960-1962, is a victim of private greed and public stinginess.
It was a bittersweet alumni gathering on Saturday, May 11 – a bright return to a place where teachers and administrators invested in our lives, and those of many others, for the past 64 years, dimmed by the knowledge that children would soon have to travel beyond their neighborhood for their schooling.
This neighborhood’s schooling has come full circle. When I started 1st grade in 1957, there was no elementary school in the neighborhood. I had to take a bus to Richardson Heights Elementary School, about 4 miles away. However, Texas Instruments had just brought new growth to Richardson, and the district began building a new elementary school every year for the next few years. In 2nd grade, I attended the new Terrace Elementary School, still about 4 miles away. 3rd grade? I was moved to the new Dover Elementary School, 1.5 miles away. (I’m getting these mileages from Mapquest, by the way.) Then, in 1960, when I entered 4th grade, they finally opened a school in my neighborhood, Spring Valley Elementary, just a couple of blocks – a short bike ride – from my house.
Now the legislature – by failing in their (Texas) constitutional obligation to fully fund our public schools – has turned the clock back 60+ years, relegating this neighborhood’s children in 2024 to the very same situation my neighbors and I faced from 1957-1960. How tragic!
Public education is in crisis. Three prominent culprits are (1) failure of legislators to provide adequate funding; (2) political pressure to divert public taxpayer money to private schools (by way of voucher schemes) – applied by deep-pocketed interests seeking to turn our children and grandchildren into profit centers; and (3) narratives – driven by voucher proponents – aimed at scaring parents, narratives that falsely accuse public school teachers and administrators of “indoctrinating” children with sexual and political agendas.
A few examples:
1. In “The Funding Crisis Behind Teacher Layoffs” (The Atlantic, 5/16/2024), Lora Kelley reports that “district officials in Arlington, Texas, announced plans to remove 275 positions at the end of this school year.”
2. In “Abbott denies responsibility for public school budget crisis” (The Texas Tribune, 5/15/2024), Tricia Cave reports that “Texas has an estimated $32 billion budget surplus and $4 billion earmarked for public education in the current state budget.” Yet, she goes on to say, “Those funds were tied to a voucher under House Bill (HB) 1 in the third and fourth special sessions (in 2023) and weren’t released to schools following the failure of a voucher to pass.”
Abbott claims that public schools’ budget crisis is the fault of the schools. He makes three specific assertions in defending himself. In her article, Cave documents that each of Abbott’s claims is a blatant lie. You can read her response to Abbott’s assertions here.
3. In “A GOP Texas school board member campaigned against schools indoctrinating kids. Then she read the curriculum.” (The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, 5/15/2024), Jeremy Schwartz reports, “Weeks after winning a school board seat in her deeply red Texas county, Courtney Gore immersed herself in the district’s curriculum . . . She was searching for evidence of the sweeping national movement she had warned on the campaign trail was indoctrinating schoolchildren. . . . But after taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Gore was shocked by what she found – and didn’t find. The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory.”
Schwartz adds that Gore also examined social-emotional material that some Christian conservatives claimed “encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings” and found instead that they simply “taught children ‘ how to be a good friend, a good human.'”
The vicious attacks being carried out on public schools – from withholding funding, to diverting taxpayer money to unaccountable private interests, to promoting demonstrably false narratives that impugn the character and motives of schoolteachers and administrators – are harming our children and grandchildren, as well as the devoted public servants who give of themselves to provide them an education.
In “When Public Schools Close, Our Communities Suffer” (Public Voices for Public Schools, 12/15/2023), Jessica Piper writes, “When communities lose their schools, they lose their mascot and their teams. Children lose their teachers and can be bused for over an hour to reach their new school miles away. . . . Community members who work for the school district receive a paycheck and health insurance through the school, while disadvantaged children are fed through the school year through the free lunch program. School closures can damage small businesses and decrease property value. . . . When schools consolidate or close, our communities may never recover.”
So Spring Valley students will now be dispersed to other schools away from their neighborhoods, likely be separated from many of their neighborhood friends, and have to spend a couple of hours – or more – each day riding a bus, time that could be better spent studying, doing their homework, or playing with their friends in their neighborhood.
It’s a tragedy. Welcome, Spring Valley neighborhood kids of 2024 to my world of 1957. I long for the day when we have a legislature that looks forward, not back, and won’t stop my advocacy efforts until we do.