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Education battles to come
You're going to be hearing a lot from Brandon Creighton over the next few months.
Not only is the Conroe state senator taking the lead on getting the private school voucher plan out of the Senate again, but the Republican said he is also more determined to get a pay raise for Texas teachers and is planning to expand his fight against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Texas.
With the Legislature firing back up on Tuesday, I talked to Creighton, 54, about the battles that lie ahead. Here's a taste of what he told me:
Will teacher pay raises pass? In 2023, Creighton passed a pay raise bill out of the Texas Senate that would have given rural teachers a $10,000 pay raise and $3,000 to urban teachers. The bill never passed the House and eventually, Gov. Greg Abbott declared he wouldn't sign the pay raise bill unless his school voucher program passed as well.
"I'm always dangerously optimistic," Creighton said. "I am confident that we will deliver on that. We worked really hard in the Senate keeping that as a separate bill, making sure that that legislation and the rest of its provisions of the Teachers' Bill of Rights was a focus point and a top priority and we continued to send that bill separate from all other bills over to the House. I think we'll come back again with that same mindset."
Another push for school vouchers: Creighton led the effort in 2023 to allow parents to use tax dollars for private school tuition. That Education Savings Account program is modeled after what other states like Iowa and Arizona have implemented and would provide about $10,000 for students to cover a portion of their private school tuition. Public school advocates have warned it will hurt them in the long run, but Creighton insists that won't happen.
"I would not be doing anything with seven public school teachers in my family to accomplish this unless I fully believed that not only would it not hurt public schools but that it would support them immensely," said Creighton, who first won his seat in the Texas Senate representing Montgomery County in 2014.
He pointed to Florida where school choice has had private school vouchers for years and test scores and the school system has largely improved over the years. He said he knows a lot of public school groups are worried, but he said in the end just 1 to 2 percent of the students will ultimately take advantage of the program. Reporter Edward McKinley has written a lot about these programs over the last few years and how they work.
Not the end of the DEI fight. In 2023, Creighton's legislation ended DEI programs on all of the state's public college campuses. While the University of Texas alum said they are still waiting for reports on the overall impact of that effort and if schools have fully complied, he's already charting a plan to make sure DEI practices aren't being used in hiring public school teachers.
"We will advance a DEI ban specific to hiring for K-12," Creighton said.
 | Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter |
Who's up, who's down
Up: Film Incentives.
Five stars with ties to Texas — Dennis Quaid, Matthew McConaughey, Renée Zellweger, Woody Harrelson and Billy Bob Thornton — star in a new commercial aimed at getting the Texas legislature to ramp up incentives to bring film, TV, commercial, music video and video game production to the Lone Star State. Called "True to Texas," the four-minute, nine-second video, which was released Tuesday, is directed by Nick Pizzollatto, best known as the creator of the HBO series "True Detective."
Down: Donald Trump.
New York's highest court on Thursday declined to block Donald Trump's upcoming sentencing in his hush money case, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as the president-elect's likely last option to prevent the hearing from taking place Friday.
What do you think? Hit reply and let me know.
What else is going on in Texas
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Pick of the day
Photo by: Illustration by Susan Barber
State prisons were so short staffed in 2023 that the state spent more than $111,000 on rental cars for correctional officers to drive to far-flung rural facilities to cover temporary shifts that couldn't be filled locally. Reporter Eric Dexheimer writes that once there, the guards needed a place to stay. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice's bill for hotels and travel meals that year came to nearly $14 million – double what it was the year before. The travel and lodgings expenses, obtained by the Houston Chronicle through an open records request, highlight the creative contortions the state prison agency has had to perform to keep watch over a suddenly surging inmate population.
What else I'm reading
The winter storm blasting through Texas is wracking havoc with the state's airports with flight delays reported all over the state. The Dallas Morning News reports 1,600 flight cancelations at DFW Airport and Dallas Love Field.
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