Choosing School Choice

As I began writing this on Thursday, March 20, President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. So I want to give just a little space for that celebration, and then we’ll talk about the school choice debate in general, and more specifically in the Texas Legislature.

President Trump signs EO on Department of Education;
Photo from Washington Post, title from White House

 

Dismantling the Department of Education

President Trump did not, and could not, abolish the Department of Education unilaterally with an executive order; the Dept. of Ed was originated by a Carter EO, but was then established by Congress as an administrative body. Since education is not among the enumerated powers, it was never a good idea, but its establishing principles are not that terrible. Glenn Beck read through these on his show:

It is the intention of Congress in the establishment of the Department of Education to protect the rights of state and local governments and public and private educational institutions in the area of educational policies and administration of programs and to strengthen and improve the control of such governments and institutions over their own educational programs and policies.

I looked it up. The part Glenn Beck read is p. 4 under Federal-State Relationships. There was a more complete list, starting on p. 3, under Purposes, which already seem to go beyond what they had any business doing, but are not the controlling strings they’ve become over time. 

I’ve said myself that, while the federal government does not have education as an enumerated power, you could construe that there is a government interest in an educated populace. So, if there were something at the federal level (not that I would encourage it necessarily), it would be as an information source, a clearinghouse where states and local education entities could look to for research findings, and to share what they had tried and what their results were.

If this founding purpose was what the Dept. of Ed had ever kept to, we would not be needing this dismantling today.

Now, the dismantling—not abolishing—is a cut to about 50% of the workforce in the Department. Services deemed necessary by law are being kept there—such as Pell grants. Eventually—if Congress does its job in following up—those required services (if actually necessary) can be administered by other departments, and the Dept. of Ed can be completely abolished. And that would prevent it from being resurrected and re-expanded by a future administration.

But all in all, this was an important day’s work.

 

Parents Control the Care and Upbringing of Their Children

Eventually I’m going to get granular into the school choice legislation in Texas. But first I want to recommend a discussion between Jordan Peterson and author/school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis.

 

Jordan Peterson and Corey DeAngelis, screenshot from here

DeAngelis outlines a great many objective societal goods that come from increased school choice—even just the additional choice of charter schools. These include 30% increase in likelihood of graduation, and increased additional education opportunities after high school, and lower crime. Additionally, no school choice program has led to less funding for public schools (they’ve actually gotten more), nor government intrusion into private school curriculum or greater control over homeschooling.

Let’s start with his reference to the 1983 Nation at Risk report on education, which showed us doing much worse than in earlier decades. There was a push to spend more and more money on education—but we not only haven’t gotten better; in many ways we’ve gotten worse. DeAngelis says:

We spend about $20,000 per student per year now, which is about 52% higher than the average private school tuition in this country, that spending in the government schools has increased by about 164% inflation-adjusted since 1970. Have the outcomes gotten 164% better? No, obviously not. But it's because they're not focusing on math and reading; they're focusing on gender ideology and Critical Race Theory in the schools. And if you're focusing on those things and teaching kids to hate your country, it shouldn't surprise us that the academic outcomes aren’t getting any better.

If our interest was actually to get an educated populace, the data is actually telling us that paying private school tuition is both more cost-effective and more likely to get the outcomes we want (homeschooling aside—which is even more cost-effective and outcome-producing). No one in any state legislature is pushing to dump public schooling and give everyone a private school (or other) tuition voucher. School choice is always tentative—with probably far too much deference given to keeping public schools thriving.

Right now there are nearly as many desks open in private schools as there are students on waiting lists for charter schools—in other words, students who aren’t getting their needs met in public schools. It ought to be a simple solution, then, to give those families a way out of the public schools—to which they are bound by law to attend unless they have the personal resources, in addition to taxes they’re already paying, to pay for private school or homeschooling.

Opponents to school choice may claim to have many reasons, certainly worth addressing as legislation is crafted. But it comes down to saying they want to force students who are without family resources to remain in schools that are failing them.

DeAngelis uses an analogy of a grocery store.

In most places in America you live where you live, and you're assigned to a school just based on your address, which gives them no incentive to spend additional dollars wisely. I mean, just imagine if you had to shop at a government grocery store that you were assigned to based on where you lived, and they had empty shelves, no food. And when they did have food, imagine if you got food poisoning, or it was expired. And if you wanted to go somewhere else, they'd tell you to go complain to the grocery board, who wouldn't listen to you and would try to cut off your mic—which is what happens with the school boards right now. And if you had to just move houses to get access to a better grocery store, that would make zero sense. Or if you had to pay twice, basically once through taxes for the government grocery store you're not using, and then again out of pocket for a grocery store that actually provided you with healthy food.

 

That's what we have with the government school system today. You cannot go somewhere else unless you pay twice, essentially, and low-income families are basically just screwed in the worst failure factories that we call public schools.

To press the point, he adds that in places like Chicago, 33 public schools have 0% of students showing proficiency in math, while they’re spending $30,000 per kid. And of course the teacher union boss sends her child to a private school; they know they’re failing. 

So, do I believe in public schools? I do not. But in the real world, where we spend half of the state’s revenue in taxes on education—and public schools are the huge elephant monopoly in the room—pushing for options is something reasonable people ought to do.

 

Texas School Choice Bills

School choice is likely to pass in Texas this legislative session. Unlike last session, when 21 House Republicans joined with all the Democrats to scuttle school choice, this session there are 76 Republicans who have signed on as co-authors. That’s enough to pass a bill. A Senate version, SB 2, has already passed—although it hasn’t been assigned to a House committee yet. The House bill, HB 3, had a committee hearing on March 12, but was left pending, meaning no decision was made yet, so there will have to be another committee hearing on it. Eventually it will get sent on to the floor for a vote. And then there will have to be reconciliation with the Senate before a final version gets sent to the Governor for signature—which Governor Abbott will sign, because school choice in any form has been a priority for him since last session and before.

I wrote about the school choice legislation in general a few weeks ago. Today I thought I’d do a deep-dive comparison of the two bills. Normally the Senate is more reliably conservative than the House. But there are actually several things I prefer in the House version.

Both bills are essentially ESA programs (education savings accounts). That’s where a set amount of money is allocated for a specific purpose—like a health savings account. You can’t use that money for some other purpose, but within the parameters, you can choose how to use the funds.

Both bills have funds coming through the general fund—through the State Comptroller. This in no way diminishes money going to public schooling; that state allotment is untouched by this bill. (There are other bills working to increase public school funding, mainly aimed at raising teacher salaries.)

Both have similar administrative and legal accountability/anti-fraud provisions. I had AI produce a chart summarizing the differences for me. I put a red * by features I prefer; I’ll point out a couple of things below:

Feature	S.B. No. 2	H.B. No. 3
Funding Amount	Provides $10,000 per year for children in accredited private schools ($11,500 for students with disabilities); $2,000 for homeschooled students	Provides 85% of the statewide average per-student funding for K-12 students; up to $30,000 for students with disabilities; $2,000 for homeschooled students *
Online Education	Prohibits using ESA funds for online or virtual education services	Allows funding for online courses or programs *
Income-Based Prioritization	Defines low-income as households under 500% of the federal poverty level but does not prioritize beyond public school history	Prioritizes children with disabilities and low-income families, dividing them into specific income brackets (e.g., below 200% and between 200-500% of federal poverty level)
Meal Coverage	Does not allow ESA funds to be used for student meals	Allows ESA funds to cover breakfast and lunch at private schools
Payment Schedule	ESA accounts are funded semiannually	ESA accounts are funded quarterly
Funding Cap & Growth	Capped at $20,000 per student	No cap beyond general program appropriation limits *
Application Priority	Priority given to students who were in public school for 90% of the prior year	Prioritizes returning ESA participants over new applicants *
Parental Responsibilities	Requires parents to administer an approved standardized test	Does not explicitly require standardized testing *
Appeals Process	ESA funding decisions by the Comptroller are final	Allows parents to appeal eligibility decisions *
Special Education Services	Offers additional funds but does not require public schools to provide evaluations.	Requires public schools to conduct special education evaluations upon parental request

Funding is set in the Senate bill, but in the House bill it is tied to statewide average per-student funding, which would mean the bill wouldn’t have to be redone with annual cost increases (or decreases, if that should ever happen).

The Senate bill prohibits spending for online or virtual education resources. These have been common resources used by homeschoolers since well before we homeschooled. And those resources have only grown. To prohibit use of them is a tremendous drawback in the Senate bill.

The prioritization is aimed at the most vulnerable, with more emphasis on that in the House bill. The amount allotted on this “trial” of ESAs is comparatively small, which means it’s only going to offer relief to a few select winners. In my view, any parent whose child is not being well served by the public school system is vulnerable—unless that parent already has plenty of money and/or time to homeschool. A similar problem has always existed with charter schools as well; children get in by lottery. I’d like to see more opportunity, so the result seems less about luck. But this bill is a start, if there’s the intention of expanding in future years. Those who intend to say, “Well, you said competition would improve quality and lower costs,” should realize that this program is too small to provide those outcomes yet.

The Senate bill prioritizes people who are coming from public schools; this is a first-year mentality. The House prioritizes returning ESA students—so those families don’t have to re-win the lottery in order to keep their schooling choice year-to-year. I think that’s essential.

Accountability differences are significant. The Senate bill requires participating students to take an approved standardized test. The House bill does not require testing. One of the problems (among many) that people have with public schools is the standardized testing—which inevitably turns into teaching toward the test, rather than simply teaching. And we’re never happy with the standardized tests.

When I homeschooled my kids, I did annual testing, but I never used a nationally recognized standardized test. For elementary years, we used one aimed at homeschooling families once or twice. I found it to lack rigor in most things and overemphasize memorization of some certain things the company valued (memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution, for example, rather than understanding what the words mean, but memorizing can be a starting point). For my older kids, we had a PSAT and later SAT prep program by Kaplan (back then it was a thick book and a CD to use on the computer). You could take tests, and then they showed you what kinds of errors you were making, so you could improve your study. This also made taking the eventual SAT or ACT test less stressful, because they’d done that so many times. I would very much have resented anyone forcing me to have my kids take a certain test—which was supposed to be a grade on me, the teacher, and wouldn’t do anything to help my kids learn and study anything they might be missing.

 

Government Strings

One of the “conservative” arguments against school choice is that anything you do will be used as a way for government to gain control over private and homeschools. While that’s a valid concern, it’s mostly irrelevant. We’re dealing with people who opt in—most of them coming from public schools. So any “strings” are what they’ve been dealing with all along. Any “choice” is better than no choice.

Texas State Capitol, from a visit in 2018

The concern seems to be, “if a private school accepts a student with ESA money, then they have to do what the government says.” In reality, that has been limited to “public schools must be accredited.” I do have a problem with that, because most private schools are not accredited, and there is no correlation between accreditation and learning outcomes.

But there’s nothing in there related to curriculum. A church-related school can continue its curriculum as always. So, then you’ve got the other side exclaiming that we can’t have government money going to a religion-related entity—as if that church/state argument even applied here.

DeAngelis points out that we have many places where government funds are used in this manner: Pell grants, GI bills, for example, and Medicaid vouchers can be used at religious hospitals. There’s no interference with the school or hospital by the government, and no religious limitation on the user. A GI bill can even pay for a person going to a seminary to become a pastor. Why would we create such limitations on K-12 education?

I’m on a social media thread with precinct chairs across the state. You would think these would be conservatives—and they think they are. But there’s a subset in this group that are virulently anti-school-choice. They claim that any Republican voting for the school choice bill (for which there is not a final version yet) ought to be censured. They are ridiculous. They claim there are all kinds of strings attached. So I looked.

As far as I can tell, here are the “strings”:

·        The STAAR or other standardized testing is required in the Senate bill. This is already not in the House bill, and I will let my representative know I’m against standardized testing in the bill. In the House version, if a parent uses a standardized test, they’re required to send the result to the Educational Assistance Organization (EAO), which will use it to measure program effectiveness. This seems reasonable.

·        No spending on online, virtual, or out-of-state tuition in the Senate bill. Again, this is not a limitation in the House bill, and I will let my representative know I prefer the House version on this point.

·        Payments can’t go to family members. I understand the purpose for this; a person could use the money to directly pay a family member (to a third-degree relationship) for, say, tutoring or music lessons—whether the service is offered or not, or whether the service is of qualifying quality. It’s an accountability decision, and while I think it’s unfortunate, it is reasonable to prevent fraud and abuse.

·        Funds are administered by Comptroller-appointed Education Assistance Organizations (EAOs), which verify qualifications of students (so they don’t receive benefits while also attending public schools), and to disperse the funds according to the law. I don’t see an EAO as a “string,” per se. Someone has to disperse the funds, or else the Comptroller’s office has to create additional departments to handle these across the state, which is essentially what an EAO is.

·        Mentioned just above, a student can’t receive benefits while also attending public school. I understand the “double-dipping” argument, but I hope it’s one we can eventually overcome. Why shouldn’t a student be able to use part of their allotment for a public high school class—such as band or theater or being on a sports team? That would be real choice. I’ve suggested that idea to my representative, and she says our state just isn’t there yet (even though the “less free” state of Washington was essentially there 30 years ago). Texas led the way on getting homeschool freedom, but in practically ever other way, our schools are stodgy.

·        Education providers must be pre-approved by the Comptroller. I don’t know exactly what this means. I think it means, if I were a music teacher, I would need to get some sort of certification. I have taught music (at under standard rates) without a certificate. I don’t know if this would burden the education provider or the parent. It’s to satisfy those “accountability” worriers, but it’s unfortunate.

·        Only accredited private schools would qualify—leaving out all unaccredited private schools including micro-schools, which proliferated after the COVID shutdown, when parents figured out ways to do what needed doing.

·        Parents, providers, and vendors must comply with state auditing and monitoring procedures, as you would expect. (If we’d had such compliance all along at the federal level, DOGE wouldn’t need to be doing that job now.)

Overall, while it’s not perfect, and not as large a program as I would like to see, nor as open to mixing and matching options (actually, none of that at all), the House version is probably the best school choice bill I’ve seen come before the Texas Legislature.

I think it will pass. I think, to use a retail term, it’s the “loss leader,” the thing the legislature is using to convince us they’re doing conservative things, while they fail on some other fronts, which will have to wait for their turn in future sessions. We’re still kind of swampy in Texas. But we’ll take what’s pretty good and work toward better in the future. It’s a good start.

Anniversary and a Check-In on How We’re Doing

It’s the anniversary of this blog—14 years this month (the actual date was March 4, 2011, but I was in the middle of something else last week). I often use this time to review what the Spherical Model is, which I also do at year’s end and sometimes other times. This was the end of 2024, with some links to other Spherical Model info. You can also always get a full description on the SphericalModel.com website.

In brief, the Spherical Model is an alternative way of looking at political ideas: rather than right/left, it is a three-dimensional sphere, with tyranny south and freedom to the north. (This is not to say anything negative about Australia or anyplace else in our southern hemisphere; it is a metaphoric way of showing ideas, not related to our world’s geography.) The longitudinal lines represent the level a particular issue or responsibility pertains to, from individual/family, to local community, up to county, state, region, nation, continent, on up to global. So the left-to-right movement is neutral—except that any issue should be handled by the lowest possible appropriate level. If a higher level usurps that from a lower level, that moves the placement on the sphere down toward tyranny.

The Political Sphere of the Spherical Model

And the same spherical model can be overlaid with economic and social ideas. The Economic Sphere has poverty in the south (related to a controlled economy) and prosperity in the north (related to a free market economy—not to be confused with crony capitalism or monopolies, which are south on the sphere). The Social Sphere has savagery in the south and civilization in the north. Civilization is described this way:

In the northern circle that is the goal [above the 45^th parallel on the sphere]—Civilization—families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

 

Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

 

There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

 

Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

 

People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

I tend to spend more time on civilization-related topics than actual politics or economics, although they are all interrelated (note the heading for this blog).

Last year was a very active news year. But that has shifted into overdrive since the inauguration in January. So much so that, if there’s not a major announcement—or two or three—in a given day, we feel like we’ve missed something, or maybe things are slowing down.

The question is, are all these changes leading toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization?

There’s a cohort (with friends of mine among them) that are certain each and every change is the end of life as we know it—and they think that’s a bad thing.

There was a piece by Robert Reich (advisor to Presidents Clinton and Obama) the other day that got passed along on Facebook. It’s too long to quote entirely; I won’t use up all my available word count on it. But a few quotes will exemplify this alternate world we’re talking about. I will note that this screed against all that President Trump has done since taking office contains no specifics of anything. We’re just supposed to see the self-evident facts, I guess, of this incarnation of worse-than-Hitler. Most of the piece is on how to cope with living under this tyranny. 

Ha! We who have lived under their tyranny—and their attempts to make that tyranny permanent—know about coping by clawing our way back toward the Constitution and civilization. [As an aside, I was looking on Substack for the original but didn't find it, so I'm not including a link. But I did find this other title: "The Trump regime will arrest some of you in the middle of the night because you spoke your mind," apparently with no awareness of the irony.)

Reich calls this a “despicable regime.” He claims, “The choice is democracy or dictatorship. Self-government or oligarchy.” He decries those defeatists who seem to have given up the fight: “Those in this defeatist camp think nothing can prevent us from an apocalypse—the end of America, the termination of civilization, the death of the planet.” And then he adds, “But defeatism is exactly what Trump, Vance, Musk, and Putin want us to feel.”

As for details, the sum total is this sentence: “The reality is that Trump, Vance, and Musk have done truly terrible things over the past seven weeks that are already hurting millions of people.” The “truly terrible things” remain unnamed, however. And a surprising 76% of those polled following President Trump’s speech to Congress approve of what he said. So I guess the horrors are not self-evident after all.

Among the ways to cope, Reich suggests turning to some voices from the past:

People who lived through Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin, or through Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” or Pol Pot’s “killing fields.” Some are keen observers of what occurred (Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism) or historians (William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany provides a chilling account that echoes today).

It's odd that he’d think people who lived through such regimes would approve of Biden’s lawfare, censorship, propaganda, corruption, and warmongering and would instead disapprove of Trump’s corrections of those tyrannical things.

So, what has been happening, and, maybe, where would such policies be placed on the Spherical Model?

Cabinet

President Trump’s cabinet and leadership team are now fully assembled. [Full list here.]  To name a few:

·        Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

·        Tom Homan, Border Security

·        Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense

·        Pam Bondi, Attorney General

·        Kash Patel, FBI Director

·        Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services

·        Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence

·        John Ratcliffe, CIA Director

Trump Cabinet and Officials
images assembled from Wikipedia

On Friday, March 14, speaking at the Department of Justice, President Trump said that people ask him what he’s done about all the problems, and he said he’s appointed the right people, who will do the job of making things right.

As I was watching the speech online, an ad came on, a Democrat candidate, saying “Trump doesn’t want to lead this country; he wants to rule it.” That seems to be the propaganda line they’ll keep going with, regardless of reality.

The amount of alarm from the opposition to any given leader is an indicator of their likely effectiveness. So far, in just a few weeks, border crossings have dropped 90%, without any change in law. That means the flood of illegal immigrants under Biden was intentional. As President Trump quipped, “All we needed was a change in presidents.” And a very stern Tom Homan is helpful too.

Keeping our border secure is one of the essential duties of our federal government; it’s about time.

We see some evidence of improvement in law enforcement from Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, but we haven’t yet seen all the file dumps we have been anticipating. We’re waiting and watching. The opposition claims they are going to weaponize the judicial system. No. That’s what the previous administration was doing. What we want is transparency and accountability. If people did illegal, unethical, corrupt acts, we want to see the evidence publicly, and we want them held accountable. That isn’t a matter of revenge; it’s a matter of deterrence. If they get away with what they’ve done, they and others will keep trying to do those things. I believe we’ll see what we’ve been promised.

RFK Jr is just getting started. But we’re looking forward to better information, no more government-controlled propaganda and censorship. We’d like to see more real science, instead of claims that “the science is settled” and “I am the science!” BTW, we’d like to see the octogenarian Fauci held accountable for COVID deaths, for the shutdown and masking, for forced vaccinations, for deaths by Remdesivir, and a full list of his crimes against humanity. I expect God will take care of final justice, but for this life maybe RFK Jr can send that evidence over to Pam Bondi.

All of them (including the couple of former Democrats mixed in there) are more capable and more trustworthy than anyone from the Biden administration. We’re definitely moving northward on the sphere, away from tyranny and toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

 

DOGE

You may have noted that Elon Musk was not on the list above. That is because he does not hold a cabinet-level position. He was tasked with heading DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), an existing department that used to be called United States Digital Services (USDS), and comes under the authority of the President, directed by the White House Chief of Staff (which is Susan Wiles, by the way). He and his team have access to digital information made available to them, with which they look for waste, fraud, corruption, and possible savings. Then they make recommendations.

There have been a lot of recommendations. And a lot of money we can save going forward. Musk does not fire workers in various other departments; he makes recommendations, mostly in general rather than specific individuals. And then the head of the targeted organization makes the authorized decision on hutting workers or programs. If the head of the organization is not convinced by DOGE’s evidence, they don’t have to follow the recommendations.  So those clamoring about Musk not being duly authorized are either misinformed or, possibly, in favor of (benefitting from) the waste, fraud, abuse, or corruption that has been uncovered.

Musk is working as an employee—although, as is the President, he is doing it without compensation, which he does not need.

Is there reason to be suspicious of Musk? Maybe. He’s very rich, which, in his case, seems to draw the ire of the opposition. I wouldn’t offer the same trust to Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, or a number of others. Musk isn’t what I’d call a Constitutional Conservative. But he is smart, and effective, and has a good track record.

And I think his purchase of Twitter (now X) was a turning point; government shouldn’t be censoring a free-speech platform. Maybe, now that he has accomplished so much in his life, he’s interested in doing the good that interests him, and that he’s particularly well-suited to do. I think he’s enjoying himself.

What he is not doing is setting up shell corporations and law loopholes to enrich himself later. I think—and I believe he thinks—that enriching will come naturally, for him and the rest of us, when the waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption are excised. I don’t see that leading toward fascist tyranny. If we get rid of enough of the corruption—and enough of the anti-constitutional regulatory state—we’ll move solidly northward on the sphere.

 

USAID

There have been other targets of DOGE, but USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has been hit hard. It is not, as the acronym implies, foreign aid; that is handled entirely separately, by the Office of Foreign Assistance, which also comes under the State Department. USAID has been used, frequently, as a means of changing policies—and even regimes—in other countries. And the policies it was intending to change to coincided with the Obama-then-Biden regimes: DEI, ESG, LGBTQ, and also a lot of old fashioned money-laundering schemes. DOGE is finding those things, following the money trail. Will there be some errors, some things recommended to be cut that were maybe doing some good? Maybe. If we find those things, they can be corrected later—assuming those things qualify as constitutional.

The opposition has been straining to find examples of mistakes, in an effort to claim the whole of what DOGE is doing is just unjustly flexing power, or something.

As an example—this one from NIH, not USAID—there was something about transgenetics that got interpreted as “transgendering” mice; the explanation was supposed to be that it was about genetic therapy research. However, a fact check showed that the experiments were not aimed at making mice transgendered per se; they were about studying various effects of gender-affirming hormone therapy, and using mice (and probably other animals) in those experiments. Some of the outcomes seemed to show harms from the hormone therapies, and that might be worth knowing. But if the purpose was to assume gender-affirming hormone therapy as a societal good, then we’ve still got a problem. So, we’ll see.

But I think we’re still going to have trouble with paying our tax dollars for a transgender opera in, say, Peru, or for Sesame Street in Iraq. Getting rid of these ridiculous drains on our prosperity—and on our morality—will definitely move us northward on the sphere.

 

Ukraine and Russia

Things are serious in international diplomacy. What we have is a hothead, installed, dictatorial president of Ukraine demanding (and so far receiving from the Biden administration) $350 Billion to fight an unwinnable war, because the bad guy Russia invaded. In other words, you’ve got two bad guys. Ukraine is definitely the underdog. In a civilized world, Russia would not have invaded. But in a sane world, you would not have the US tossing out NATO memberships to Russia’s close neighbors, against our word.

And that $350 Billion? That amount—close to half of the entire US military budget for a year (including underpaid troops)—has disappeared, quite probably to oligarchs and other corrupt actors, including Zelensky himself (I don’t have the receipts; I’m just repeating what I’ve heard). I have sympathy for the Ukrainian people. I’d like to see them liberated.

President Trump has brought the two leaders into negotiations. Peace would be best for both. Neither will get all that it wants. But Russia is likely to get the ethnically Russian portion of land taken, plus a promise that NATO will not expand to threaten Russia, which will mean no Ukraine in NATO. Ukraine will stop losing its male population and get peace. It may also get protection through complying with the US’s desire for rare earth mining. We’ll see.

The opposition will call this colluding with Russia. But let’s remember: the whole Russian collusion hoax was a product of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC; they were charged and convicted—but only fined, which is why they’re willing to keep using that line. They think it works. And, on those who already assume Trump is evil, it does work.

As of Friday, Putin and Zelensky have agreed to a cease fire. I don’t know how this will turn out. But seeking peace and negotiating for fairness seems to at least move us northward on the sphere, away from tyranny, which would benefit all involved.

 

Israel

What we know is that Israel was mostly peaceful during the first Trump administration, and surrounding countries were signing on to treaties. We got the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, because a weak Biden was in office.

Trump has offered suggestions. About rebuilding Gaza from scratch—which would require neighbors to take in refugees, something they’ve been unwilling to do for many decades. This would eradicate Hamas from Gaza. There’s certainly something to be said for that outcome.

 

Department of Education

The Dept. of Ed put out an announcement on Tuesday of a 50% reduction in force. That’s a start. For those gasping that Trump is against education, I remind you that since its inception in the Carter administration, education levels have been in decline. We didn’t need it before, but it hasn’t been improving things.

As we often say at the Spherical Model, whenever government attempts to do something that is not the proper role of government, there will be unintended consequences, and they are likely to be the exact opposite of the stated goal of the policy. So, if we want a good education for the upcoming generation, government taking that on is a pretty sure way to interfere with that goal.

The opposition is panicking nevertheless. But the press release included a response to most of their fears: 

The Department of Education will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.

Getting rid of the entire department—eventually—will be better. But a 50% cut in the first two months of the administration is a good start. At least there’s a level change from nation to state. The closer we get to local community and family, where this responsibility belongs, the better our education will be.

 

In summary, we’re moving northward on the sphere, away from tyranny, not toward it. That might be shaking up some would-be tyrants, but the rest of us can be happy at what we’re seeing so far.

Bus Barn Blues

image previously used here; original link no longer available

There’s a school board election this coming November—yes, in an off-off-year election, when that, and possibly some propositions for state constitutional amendments coming out of the current legislative session, will be all there is on the ballot. And, as much as you’d prefer not to think about elections again after the previous season, this is the time to be seeking and vetting candidates for those positions.

I think our local school district is a good example of what parents and community members can do to change out “woke” school boards. A few years back, during COVID, parents became aware, and alarmed, at the things being taught in our district—similar to what was happening elsewhere around the country. 

Background

We’re in a relatively conservative section northwest of Houston, much of it suburban. And while much of the area is middle to upper-middle class, more than half of the student body are on free or reduced cost lunch. It’s a mixed demographic area, with a lot of Hispanics, and a significant need for ESL. My particular neighborhood also has a high Asian population, mainly Vietnamese, along with some Indian. Among students, I wouldn’t say we have significant racial problems. But our previous Board acted as if we did.

Curriculum aimed to teach the LGBT agenda, SEL, ESG, DEI, and the various acronyms that those letter combinations morph out of and into as community members become aware of them—those were a problem. Porn and LGBT agenda books are still a problem in the schools, despite policy changes.

Anyway, this new awareness culminated in something of an uprising, at Board meetings—which led to no changes. So we worked in 2021 to replace Board members. That year there were three positions on the ballot. As I recall, the incumbents were all running. Through a good vetting process and sheer grit and determination, we managed to replace all three of those positions on the Board. But that left us still in a minority on a 4/3 Board.

Then in 2023 the other four positions were on the ballot—and we were able to replace three of them. One incumbent remains. So we have only had a conservative majority Board taking action since January 2024, after they were sworn in and got to work. Simultaneously, we got a new superintendent, after the previous one retired at the end of December 2023. We had been concerned about the timing of that change, because it put the old Board in charge of the hiring. But they did include the newly elected Board members in the process, and all of them approved of Dr. Killian, who has, I think, been better than we expected, despite the dire circumstances we were left with just over a year ago.

The Catastrophic Budget Problem

At that point, in January of last year, the district faced a $138 million deficit for the 2024-2025 school year budget, which had a deadline for approval of July 1. So let’s be clear: that entire budget debacle was the doing of the previous, “woke”-majority Board and Superintendent.

We are a huge district, with around 118,000 students. We’re the largest district with a Limited Optional Homestead Exemption (LOHE). This is a property tax reduction on school rates for residents occupying their home, a benefit offered since 1983, which is significant, since maintenance and operations budgeting comes from property taxes. The problem is that the state assumes our district (and others that offer the exemption) could get the full property tax amount. We’re missing about $63 million a year. But the LOHE has been baked into property purchasing decisions here for more than four decades. You can’t simply stop giving it.

I did a little math. According to the CFISD (Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District) website, the exemption is for 20% plus $100,000. If I understand correctly, then, the amount exempted is 20% of the full value of the home, plus add $100,000 to that. For example, for a home that is worth $300,000 (a bit below median home value in the district), 20% would be $60,000. Add $100,000 to that, and the exempted portion would leave $140,000. That would be the amount that would be charged the school property tax rate. This year (2024) that rate was $1.0869 per $100.

There are 1400 units of $100 in $140,000; multiply that by $1.0869 = $1,521.66. It’s paid annually, but for household budget purposes, our hypothetical family in the $300,000 home would be paying essentially $126.81/month in property taxes for schools.

If you took away the LOHE and charged property taxes on the full home value of $300,000, that would be 3000 units of $100; multiply that by $1.0869 = $3,260.70; if this were paid monthly, then, it would be $271.73. You’ve more than doubled the cost for that family living in a home in the district.

Let’s just admit, you can’t do it. No Board is going to suggest it. So our alternative is to get the state to stop penalizing us for offering the exemption that we have virtually no choice about. This year, because of the efforts of our new Superintendent, we did get a one-time half payment from the state, to help with our budget deficit. And they’re lobbying the legislature now for greater relief, which may help with upcoming budgets.

The Superintendent tells us we have the fourth lowest administrative cost ratio in the state. So, while cutting administrative costs was a first step, it didn’t make much of a dent in the deficit.

Right away, the Superintendent set up methods for community input on how to decrease the budget deficit. The goal was to cut that deficit by a third. The rest would be balanced out of the fund balance (the district’s rainy day fund, used to finance the beginning of a school year until the tax money comes in after calendar year’s end). And then there’s hope the state will increase per student allotments during the legislative session, which I’m told hadn’t been done since 2019.

Part of our sudden deficit had to do with the ending of COVID grants from the federal government. These were given for specific purposes—to help pay for additional COVID-related health issues, and to add tutors and other personnel who were to help bring students up to par after the loss of learning caused by the COVID shutdown.

It appears in our district the money, at least a sizable chunk of it, was spent on buses. (You could claim the COVID money was for safety, and added buses are for safety; it’s a stretch, but I guess that’s how they justified it.) 

As I understand it, since COVID, bus routes were added, offering buses to nearly all CFISD students. This wasn’t exactly new. Back in the early 2000s, we had friends living on a street right behind the elementary school; they were required to be bused. They got picked up first and dropped off last—a 45-minute bus ride, rather than a 3-minute walk—which would have meant literally just walking across the street from the bus stop to be on the grassy field property of the school. This was one of the insanities I rolled my eyes at as we pulled our kids out of the district to homeschool. But around 2008, with another budget crisis, bus routes were cut to what is something of a state standard, and had only gotten more luxurious again since 2020.

The COVID funds were intended to be temporary. Schools knew when they were ending. They should not have had those funds attached to anything that was expected to continue beyond the need for making up loss of learning and temporary COVID safety precautions (now long past). Maybe Transportation was a separate budget issue, not directly related to COVID grants; I'm not getting clarity on that. But, regardless, with the looming budget crisis, all departments were expected to make cuts.

Transportation Budget

Transportation was one of the areas in which there would need to be cuts to the budget. I wrote about the budget crisis in some detail last May, while budget decisions were underway. So we can see what the Board recommended.  But I think there’s more that needs to be added to that story now.

A year ago, in January, the Board and Superintendent became suddenly aware of the huge deficit—after not a hint of it in the months leading up to the election and turnover. If we’d known, we’d have used that issue as part of the campaign. I don’t know whether the non-conservative Board members all knew but remained quiet. But then Board President, Tom Jackson, who retired and didn’t run in 2023, is a numbers guy. An accountant, I believe. There’s no way he didn’t know. Julie Hinaman, who was the only incumbent holdover, I assume also knew about it. Our conservative members apparently didn’t know—and that may be because of the lack of subcommittees we now have as a mechanism for Board members to gain more detailed knowledge on specific issues without violating the open meetings act, and then they can share that info at Board meetings. So, lacking that information source was a disadvantage for the pre-2024 Board.

Anyway, this was dropped in the laps of the new conservative majority Board without warning. I can’t emphasize enough how wrong that is: “Congratulations! Here’s an impossible problem to solve. And the community will think it’s your fault if you fail"; laughing as they walk out the door.

Right away the Superintendent set up a Budget Reduction Advisory Committee (BRAC) to get community input and to give recommendations.

So let’s look mainly at their recommendations regarding transportation.

I had two friends on the BRAC. One of them talked with me about it recently. According to him, most of the BRAC committee consisted of CFISD personnel or those closely connected to personnel. In a committee of maybe 70, made up of teachers, principals, district administrators, parents, and Board-appointed community members, the guess is that probably only 20% were parents and Board-appointed community members. (At each table of 5-6 people, usually only one was a non-employee.)

There were three transportation plans the BRAC voted on. The least draconian was to essentially bring back the bus routes of 2019—before COVID. That would save about $4.7 million out of the $68 million savings they were targeting to achieve. The most draconian—which may have been to eliminate almost all buses—would have saved only $11 million. The BRAC committee—not including my friends—voted “the more draconian the better.”

That didn’t make sense. Unless—and this is speculation—it was a setup to make the new Board look bad, so they could have leverage in the next election. And they claim school board elections aren’t political!

My friend warned the conservatives on the Board. He thought actually it would be better to leave the buses as is and find budget savings elsewhere, just because of the PR nightmare. In hindsight, he was probably right.

The Board actually went with the least draconian option, which was a return to pre-COVID routes, despite the BRAC recommendation to cut more. Safety considerations were part of the deal. This solution is no worse than bus routes in surrounding districts.

from the budget presentation at the CFISD School Board meeting, May 6, 2024,
screenshot from here

This was already settled in May. All that remained was making assignments and notifying parents of any changes. If the district had gotten this plan out to the community in June, it wouldn’t be an issue. But the Transportation team somehow couldn’t identify the routes based on these criteria. (Because they had no record of routes from five years ago? Or no current maps?) And, even though they’d had enough bus drivers to fill all the routes up through the end of the school year (albeit with some subs and some workers doing bus duty in addition to other assignments), they claimed they couldn’t hire enough drivers for the lower number of routes two months later. They claim they had been about 50 drivers short last year; they cut 79 routes. They should have had plenty to fill the unfilled slots plus some. There's no real explanation for the inability to hire the needed lower number of drivers. Because other districts paid more and siphoned them off? Why suddenly now? That explanation makes no sense.

Then the Communications team, which was to notify the public, sent no communications out in May, or June. And of course not in July, because that’s when district employees take their vacations. It also didn't help that we had Hurricane Beryl on July 8, which caused days of power outages (not as many as from the derecho in May, however). They did put up a warning on their Facebook page in June, just a heads up that some routes would be changing. Nothing on the official webpage. Nothing in texts or emails to parents. They waited until just a couple of weeks before school started to tell parents that they wouldn’t have buses in many expected places. These included places that did not meet the transportation plan criteria for safety.

Of course many parents were up in arms; they couldn’t have their kids walk those unsafe routes! And how were they supposed to come up with solutions in only two weeks, when they should have had several months to plan, if they’d only known?

It was a debacle. Add to that, there were, in the first couple of weeks of school, several incidents, injuries and near injuries, involving children and cars in these unsafe places—places, which, I repeat, were supposed to have buses, and would have had them, if the Transportation team had done their job and planned routes according to the safety standards set down by the Board!

And it would not have caused such a public outcry, if the Communications team had done their job in a timely manner. And really, who believes they could put out a statement immediately after their vacation—if they hadn’t prepared it before they left? Why not leave for vacation one hour later and provide parents at least another month to plan?

Two possible answers: on purpose, or incompetence. Incompetence could explain a lot. But in this case I’m leaning toward on purpose. That BRAC committee had wanted a transportation debacle. They wanted things to be worse—much worse—than the Board required. And they got worse.

I’ll just add one more thought here: The Board does not handle day-to-day operations in the District; the Superintendent is over that. Ultimately, he is responsible for the Transportation team and Communications team and for making sure they are doing their job according to policy. Was there intentional failure there? I do not know.

Was It Political?

I don’t know who the Transportation and Communications teams are in the district. I don’t know whether they were on the BRAC committee, or in communication with committee members. I don’t know how they vote. But I know they could have prevented this entire PR nightmare, yet they didn’t.

There’s a school board election this coming November, with three positions on it. So far I don’t know the candidates. I believe at least two, possibly all three of our conservative members will run again. And I’ll support them. Or, if not them, then we’ll find another conservative worth supporting in their stead. But the opposition will be going all out. If they could oust our three, then they would have a majority “woke” Board again—a Board that doesn’t care about budgets, as long as they can do their indoctrinating.

Since school started in August 2024, the Board has been trying to solve the bus problem. They’ve allotted higher pay. They’ve encouraged recruiting. They keep getting told they can’t find enough drivers. Board members have hesitated to blame employees; they have to continue working with them and depending on them. I don’t have that issue. It’s not the Board; it’s employees not doing the job that they’re required to do: hire drivers to fill the routes that were set up for safety.

This bus issue will be a club the opposition will use to bludgeon our incumbents. It’s their doing—people in the district who resent our conservative voices interfering with their plans. They wanted results to be as bad as possible; I almost think some may have been delighted if a child had been killed, because they’d get more emotional mileage from that.

Why else would they want more austerity? More staffing cuts? More libraries that they could claim were closed (they weren’t—and that was another decision made by employees, by principals, that got blamed on the Board)? So they could go to the community, and lie, and blame this Board for taking away their buses and making their children unsafe, and for taking away other things that the community values.

What we need to do is better understand what has happened, and why—so we can better explain it to voters. Because, when we can tell the conservative story clearly, the voters in our community are with us. That’s how we got this conservative majority Board—a Board focused on raising literacy rates, and empowering families to get the education they’re forced to pay for, and get it free from “woke” indoctrination.

A conservative-led school district is better for the whole community. Now that we’ve got one, we need to work to keep it.