Interview: Dr. Roach reviews special session
The third special session of the Texas Legislature appears to be ending without movement on Gov. Greg Abbott’s immigration and school choice agenda items. As the 30-day session drew to a close, the governor added school funding proposals, such as teacher pay raises and a much-needed increase to the basic student allotment to the pot. He also proposed paring back standardized testing to try to persuade reluctant rural House members to back the school voucher program.
The Enterprise talked with Olney Independent School District Superintendent Dr. Greg Roach about the special session proposals.
Enterprise: What do you think about all the carrots that Gov. Abbott is dangling in front of House members to get his voucher plan passed?
Dr. Roach: [The proposed House bill] is increasing the basic allotment to where it will weigh more than what it probably should be - from $6,160 to $8,947. That’s too much in my opinion. We need about $7,0007,500 and that ought to be a good. An adjustment for inflation - a $15,000 raise for teachers, a $5,500 raise for all other public school employees. That’s the House bills. We’ve got the Senate bill, where they’ve got the voucher program and the parent’s bill of rights and they’re dangling all these carrots with these bills and the governor’s dangling carrots [saying] ‘We’ll redo the STAAR exam. We’ll quit testing so much. We’ll just test in math and reading. We’ll cut it way back if I can just get these vouchers, or school choice.’
Enterprise: Do you know how many students OISD would have to lose before it affected the District?
Dr. Roach: I actually believe that the loss of students in rural districts will have minimal impact. That said, theoreticallythey were going to reimburse you for [the students you’ve lost] which is interesting too. Say a student receives $8,000 for a voucher or education savings account. and you lose the student, well they’re going to give you $10, 000 for every student you lost, or thereabouts. So they’re going to pay $8,000 for them to get their education voucher, and then they’re going to pay $10,000 to the district if you actually have lost enrollment because students have exited. So that would actually cost the taxpayers $18,000, and the schools would probably be forever chasing those funds because the bureaucracy involved with it would be so intense that you’ve got to show all this and show all that and do all this and then we might get the money if we can jump these hoops and be audited and be reviewed. It’s ridiculous. It would be very difficult for rural school districts to recoup a loss in students.
Enterprise: What’s the best outcome for the special session?
Dr. Roach: About $7,500 for the basic allotment, $100,000 teacher pay scale through 30 years, and expand their health insurance coverage … to where the state covers all of it. Give the teachers health insurance as good as the highway department folks. Do away with the accountability aspects of standardized testing. Just require schools to post everywhere what their test scores were and then people can decide, do I want to go to this school? If you want to look at testing, just require all of your students to take the reading and math required by the federal government and the pre-ACT, the PSAT, the ACT, and the SAT, and publicly report your scores. The best pie in the sky scenario for public education would be for the federal government to get completely away from and out of public education and for the state to minimize its role and place the responsibility on the backs of locally elected Boards of Trustees.