Gov. said Sunday that he would veto a toned-down version of a bill to offer school vouchers in Texas and threatened to call legislators back for special sessions if they don’t “expand the scope of school choice” this month.

“Parents and their children deserve no less,” he said in a statement. His dramatic declaration came the night before the House Public Education Committee was scheduled to hold a public hearing on , the school voucher bill. That measure passed the Senate more than a month ago but has so far been stalled in lower chamber as it lacks sufficient support.

The committee is set to vote Monday on the latest version of SB 8, authored by Sen. , R-Conroe, which would significantly roll back voucher eligibility to only students with disabilities or those who attended an F-rated campus. This would mean that fewer than a million students would be eligible to enter the program.

Abbott doesn’t believe the revised version does enough to provide the state with a meaningful “school choice” program. Since the start of the legislative session, Abbott has signaled his support for earlier that would be open to most students. The governor also said he has had complaints over the new funding for the bill, saying it gives less money to special education students. It also doesn’t give priority to low-income families, who “may desperately need expanded education options for their children,” he said.

The centerpiece of the original Senate bill was education savings accounts, which work like vouchers and direct state funds to help Texas families pay for private schooling.

The version approved by the Senate would be open to most K-12 students in Texas and would give parents who opt out of the public school system up to $8,000 in taxpayer money per student each year. Those funds could be used to pay for a child’s private schooling and other educational expenses, such as textbooks or tutoring. But that idea has faced an uphill climb in the House, where lawmakers signaled their support last month for in the state.

Last week, state Rep. , R-Killeen, chair of the House Public Education Committee, prepared a version of the bill in which children would be eligible only if they have a disability, are “educationally disadvantaged” — meaning they qualify for free or reduced lunch — or attend a campus that received a grade of D or lower in its accountability rating in the last two school years. A child would also be eligible if they have a sibling in the program.

About 60% of Texas’s 5.5 million students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and kids in special education programs account for 12% of the total student population. Last year, about 7% of all school campuses graded received a D or lower but were labeled “not rated” because of coronavirus interruptions.

But even that proposal seemed to hit a brick wall in the House. Last week, the chamber denied Buckley’s request to meet in order to vote the new version of the bill out of committee, signaling that there was still deep skepticism.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Gov.  on Monday appointed former U.S. Secret Service agent John P. Scott as the Texas Education Agency’s first chief of school safety and security, a position the governor created in response to the Uvalde mass school shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

Scott formerly served as a Secret Service agent in the Vice Presidential Protective Division from 2006 and 2010 during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later helped lead the Secret Service field office in Dallas.

In his new role, which started Monday, Scott will “take every action possible to ensure schools are using best practices to safeguard against school shootings or other dangers,” according to from Abbott’s office.

Abbott to create the position four months ago in June, just over two weeks after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.

Abbott’s press release on Monday listed other actions the governor has taken since the Uvalde shooting, including his to “enhance school safety and mental health services” in Uvalde and across the state.

Since the shooting in May, Uvalde parents have called to raise the age to buy semi-automatic rifles — the kind of guns that the Uvalde gunman bought immediately after his 18th birthday in May — from 18 to 21. In August, to raise the age, that Texas cannot ban 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying handguns. Since then, Texas has started the process to , but Abbott has not said whether a successful appeal would change his stance on the constitutionality of raising the age to buy semi-automatic rifles.

On Friday, publicly endorsed Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Abbott in November, just hours ahead of the two candidates’ only planned debate. O’Rourke that he would focus on raising the age to buy semi-automatic rifles to 21 if he were elected next month in addition to supporting universal background checks and red-flag laws, which would allow judges to seize firearms from people deemed dangerous.

O’Rourke attacked Abbott at the debate for refusing to call a special legislative session to discuss school safety and gun laws after the Uvalde shooting. He also for expanding gun access in Texas by signing a law allowing Texans who can legally carry guns to carry handguns without a license or training and for sending a video message to the National Rifle Association’s conference in Houston just days after the shooting in Uvalde.

Scott and the TEA could not be immediately reached for comment.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The Uvalde school board is formally urging Gov. to call state lawmakers back to Austin so they can raise the legal age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21, more than two months after a gunman used such a weapon to kill 19 elementary school students and two teachers days after he turned 18.

Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District trustees approved the largely symbolic resolution in a unanimous vote on the same night they voted to delay the start of the school year. Trustees moved the first day of school from Aug. 15 to Sept. 6 so that more security improvements can be made to campuses and district staffers can receive trauma-informed training.

Uvalde County commissioners Abbott, who in June asked the Texas Legislature to form to make recommendations in the aftermath of the shooting, to call a special session to increase the legal age to buy an assault rifle. Democrats have made similar calls since the May 24 shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary. The governor is the only Texas official with the power to call special legislative sessions.

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In an emailed response to The Texas Tribune, a spokesperson from Abbott’s office said the governor “has taken immediate action to address all aspects” of the massacre in Uvalde.

“As Governor Abbott has said from day one, all options remain on the table as he continues working with state and local leaders to prevent future tragedies and deploy all available resources to support the Uvalde community as they heal,” the spokesperson said. “More announcements are expected in the coming days and weeks as the legislature deliberates proposed solutions.”

The vote on both items comes more than a week after detailed a series of “systemic failures” that allowed for the gunman to enter Robb Elementary in Uvalde and remain inside two adjoined classrooms for more than 73 minutes before law enforcement confronted him. Nearly 400 officers from numerous agencies responded to the campus that day. At least , the gunman had threatened women, carried around a dead cat and been nicknamed “school shooter,” according to the investigation.

At a school board meeting last week, Uvalde residents called for district officials to fire district police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was among the first officers to arrive at the school the day of the shooting. School board members were scheduled to discuss that Saturday, but the school district postponed the meeting at the request of the police chief’s lawyer.

For weeks, state leaders have said Arredondo was the incident commander and blamed him for law enforcement waiting more than an hour to confront the gunman. Arredondo, who was placed on administrative leave last month, that he did not consider himself the incident commander. The school district’s active-shooter response plan that he co-authored, though, says the chief will “become the person in control of the efforts of all law enforcement and first responders that arrive at the scene.”

The House report explains how the gunman — who also shot and wounded his grandmother, Celia Gonzales, before storming the school — was able to stockpile military-style rifles, accessories and ammunition without arousing suspicion from authorities, then enter a supposedly secure school unimpeded.

The report also revealed that, “while the school had adopted security policies to lock exterior doors and internal classroom doors, there was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks.” In violation of school policy, the report said, three exterior doors to the west building of the school were unlocked on the day of the shooting — one of which the gunman walked through with ease just moments before entering classrooms 111 and 112.

Trustees said Monday that they plan to add extra police officers, install bullet-proof windows, put up metal detectors and create single points of entry for visitors. School officials have also requested that state troopers be on every campus at the beginning of the school year.

Residents at the meeting questioned what additional police officers would accomplish when there were already hundreds who responded to Robb Elementary on the day of the shooting.

“Just remember it’s not about extra security,” one resident said to the school board. “Over 400 officers and 77 minutes later already proved where that got us.”

The House report also concluded that alerts set to reach the phones of school personnel in emergency situations also failed to do so in a timely manner during the shooting because of “low quality internet service, poor mobile phone coverage, and varying habits of mobile phone usage.”

School officials said they would continue training for their emergency alert system. They also said they would soon begin a Wi-Fi audit across campuses.

The investigation said frequent “bailout-related” alerts — which come when officers chase a vehicle containing suspected undocumented migrants, who then purposely crash and scatter to avoid apprehension — led teachers and administrators to respond to cautionary messages with less urgency. The predominantly Hispanic city is about 50 miles east of the border with Mexico and sits at the intersection of major highways from the border cities of Del Rio and Eagle Pass.

, who’s been reluctant to entertain changes to the state’s gun laws, has since called the House committee’s findings “beyond disturbing” and said there are critical changes needed as a result.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Nearly a decade ago, Texas lawmakers created the school marshal program, a way for educators to carry weapons inside schools. It was the state’s rapid-fire legislative response to an unthinkable national horror 2,000 miles away when 20 first graders and six adults were shot and killed in a Sandy Hook, Connecticut, classroom just before Christmas 2012.

“Whoever is serving as the school marshal acts immediately,” state Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas, said at the time, explaining how his bill would protect Texans in active shooter situations. “The whole point of this is to reduce response times from minutes down to seconds.”

The legislation empowers school districts to identify employees with a license to carry a firearm to volunteer as school protectors. Those individuals would undergo an 80-hour training and psychological exam, granting them access to a gun on campus. It is otherwise against federal law to have a firearm in a school zone.

But since the bill’s passage into law in 2013, just 84 school districts have opted into the program, a sliver of the more than 1,200 school districts across the state. Of those districts, only 361 people have ever become a licensed school marshal across a state that has 9,000 campuses and more than .

Now, as Texas grapples with the Uvalde school shooting in which 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman wielding two assault rifles, state leaders are again pointing to the school marshal program as a way to improve school security.

Last week, Gov. sent a letter to Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath urging him to find ways to encourage more school districts to increase the number of school marshals and other law enforcement officers on school grounds.

“In the wake of this devastating crime, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that our schools provide a safe and secure environment for the children of Texas,” Abbott wrote.

Since the shooting in Uvalde, the Bosque County sheriff has school districts in his county just northwest of Waco adopt the program. Meanwhile, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, also known as TCOLE, which oversees the program, has seen an uptick in the number of requests for information about it since the shooting, a spokesperson for the licensing agency said Friday.

Yet education advocates argue that the fact that the voluntary school marshal program has had so few takers over the years signals that school districts and teachers are not interested in leaning on educators to deter mass shooting events.

“If we have a school marshal program already and districts are not taking advantage of it, maybe it makes more sense to figure out why districts don’t want to do that rather than push another opportunity,” said Jayne Serna, a veteran Austin-area secondary school teacher who now teaches at Austin Community College.

Pre-kindergarten teacher Michelle Cardenas says safety is one reason she is not interested.

“I don’t want a gun around my students,” she said. “We already have to pay for our own professional development and our own school supplies. There’s no money, but yet they’re going to find money to train and arm teachers?”

But Villalba, who is no longer in the Legislature, blamed the low participation on the state’s decision not to allocate funding for the marshal program to help districts purchase the firearms or provide stipends to marshals. He also said the state did not properly educate districts that the option was available.

“I’m heartsick that we haven’t implemented this plan in a more robust fashion,” he told The Texas Tribune. “Unfortunately, it takes a catalyst like Uvalde and Santa Fe before action is taken. Hopefully this will be a moment when the state decides to mandate a program and provide necessary funding to pay for it.”

School marshals by the numbers

TCOLE, the agency that both oversees the school marshal program and provides training for it, is legally prohibited from releasing the names of the districts that have school marshals. Only a parent can make a written request to their child’s school to find out if there is a marshal on campus.

Instead, the agency releases the number of school districts that have a marshal. When the program began, schools could have one marshal for every 200 students. Between 2013 and 2017, the state expanded the program to allow public junior colleges and private schools to utilize school marshals.

Yet at the start of the 2017 school year, only 21 school districts were employing a total of 32 marshals.

A few months later, 26 people were killed in a church in Sutherland Springs. Six months after that, eight students and two teachers were shot and killed in a high school in Santa Fe.

By the start of the 2018 school year, the number of school districts with at least one school marshal inched up slightly to 39.

As lawmakers convened in Austin in 2019, Abbott included increasing the number of marshals among his recommendations to improve school security.

That same year, state lawmakers eliminated the cap on the number of marshals a school district could appoint at a single school.

By fall 2020, the number of districts had risen slightly to 58, yet the number of individual marshals had jumped 73% from 138 marshals to 239.

Zeph Capo, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said the incremental increases make it clear that it has very limited appeal.

“Nothing has changed,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it continues to become a solid position that educators don’t want to take responsibility for being police officers or take on responsibility to deal with the other 364 days that they have loaded weapons in a classroom with 30 children.”

Kathy Martinez-Prather, director of the Texas School Safety Center, said she often hears from districts that the 80-hour training and other required steps can be arduous for teachers to maintain on top of the myriad other responsibilities they have in and out of the classroom. School marshals must renew their license every two years.

The governor’s office did not respond to questions about either the school marshal program’s historic low participation rate or whether changes to it were in the works following the Uvalde shooting. But Texas Senate and House leaders have organized committees at Abbott’s request to consider ways to address firearm safety, school safety, mental health, social media and police training.

Guardian plan

In 2020, the Texas School Safety Center, which provides research and best practices on school safety to school districts, and found more school districts are turning to a program that requires fewer hours of training, outside of the state’s regulatory purview.

This “guardian plan” allows anyone designated by a local school board to carry firearms on campus, including staff. But instead of going through TCOLE and taking 80 hours of specialized firearms training, “guardians” training is determined by local school boards.

This plan was born in the wake of two other mass shootings: the shooting in 2007, where 32 people were killed, and the 2006 shooting at an Amish school that killed five students.

In 2007, Harrold Independent School District Superintendent David Thweatt near Wichita Falls to first approve a policy that allows him to start arming staff in his rural schools as a way to protect campuses in areas where law enforcement might be 15 to 20 minutes away.

Since then, the program has spread to 280 school districts across the state as of 2020, according to a Texas School Safety Center audit of 1,022 public school districts. Fayetteville Independent School District, a rural district halfway between Austin and Houston, implemented the guardian program in 2018.

In Fayetteville ISD, Superintendent Jeff Harvey said the district added the guardian program instead of the more heavily regulated marshal program because it allowed the district to designate a variety of people outside of school staff to be guardians. He requires monthly target training and a psychological exam.

While the district has not had to use the guardians, Harvey said a few years ago it received a tip that a suspicious individual was approaching a campus. They initiated a shelter-in-place order and deployed guardians across the campus.

“It turns out no one came toward the school, but we were prepared and ready,” Harvey said. “It felt really good having the program in place at that time and how well it performed in terms of readiness for that specific encounter.”

In a state as large and diverse as Texas, he said it’s impossible to find a “one size fits all” program for all school districts. But he feels local leaders should decide what works best for their students.

“We’re independent school districts for a reason. Because we know what’s best for our individual districts and I think it’s imperative we have that ability,” he said.

While the Texas School Safety Center doesn’t provide guidelines to districts about how to implement the school marshal or the guardian program, Martinez-Prather with the center told the Tribune that it does advise school districts that they should consider possible risks that can come with arming staff on a campus.

“When an officer shows up to the school and there’s a shooting, and you have a firearm, they’re not going to ask you if you’re a guardian,” Martinez-Prather said she tells school districts. “They’re there to neutralize the threat.”

Harvey, the Fayetteville ISD superintendent, said it’s established a way for law enforcement to identify guardians on campus but declined to provide details.

Aaron Phillips teaches first grade in the Amarillo Independent School District in the Texas Panhandle, which he called a more “firearm-friendly” area of Texas. It’s unclear if Amarillo ISD has a school marshal or guardian program, but board policy does allow teachers and staff to keep a firearm in their vehicles.

He said he thinks people’s positive opinions about programs like arming teachers are based on “feelings” rather than reality.

“I think it makes people feel like, ‘Oh, we’re safe because there’s a gun on campus,’ without any accounting of the fact that this actually happens,” he said. “If we’re going to be next, then there’s zero reaction time and the absolutely worst happens so quickly that you have no time to go unlock your gun and stop the number of lives from being lost.”

In 2019, New Mexico State University public health professor Jagdish Khubchandani and James Price at the University of Toledo took a look at school security practices and their effectiveness.

They found no evidence that more armed teachers reduced gun violence in schools.

“Armed school personnel would have needed to be in the exact same spot in the school as the shooter to significantly reduce this level of trauma,” the researchers wrote. “Ten seconds is too fast to stop a school shooter with a semiautomatic firearm when the armed school guard is in another place in the school.”

For Phillips, the broad calls from Texas Republicans to increase school security in the wake of the Uvalde shooting is a “cop out.”

“It allows politicians to say, ‘we’re doing something even though they’re really not doing anything and ignore all the real solutions in favor of just lip service,” he said.

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

In recent days, Cruz has endorsed five opponents to Abbott-backed candidates in primary runoffs for the state House, all within a couple weeks after the governor announced his endorsement in each race. Cruz had already endorsed a challenger to an Abbott-backed incumbent before the primary, tallying six total runoffs in which they are now on opposite sides.

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The dueling endorsements are raising eyebrows since Abbott and Cruz tend to align politically. But both are ambitious Republicans — each has left the door open to running for president in 2024 — and Cruz appears to be flexing his well-documented affinity for candidates who support school choice, a term Republicans have used for several years to describe programs that give parents state money to send their kids to schools outside of the state’s public education system.

“Sen. Cruz believes that school choice is the most important domestic issue in the country,” Cruz spokesperson Steve Guest said in a statement. “He doesn’t hesitate to endorse and support candidates in primaries that will fight for school choice across Texas.”

Most notably, Abbott and Cruz are on opposite sides of two runoffs in which incumbents — state Reps. of College Station and of Graford — face challengers who would be reliable votes for school choice. Abbott has backed the incumbents while Cruz has endorsed Ben Bius, who is challenging Kacal, and Mike Olcott, who is running against Rogers.

In a sign of how important the runoffs are to school choice advocates, a national group called the School Freedom Fund is launching TV ads Wednesday against both Kacal and Rogers. The 30-second spots as the “most liberal Republican in the Texas House” and that Rogers is “beholden to education union bosses working against you,” referring to his support from groups like the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.

The School Freedom Fund — a super PAC affiliated with the Club for Growth, a national conservative group — said it is spending $220,000 in the Kacal-Bius runoff and $92,000 in the race between Rogers and Olcott. It’s airing the ads on Fox News and radio stations.

​​“Standing against school choice is standing on the wrong side of history,” School Freedom Fund’s president, David McIntosh, said in a statement.

Also driving the tension is the fact that two of the runoff candidates that Abbott has backed — Justin Berry in House District 19 and Barron Casteel in House District 73 — were by the Texas AFT, a union that school choice advocates see as an obstacle to their cause. Cruz has endorsed both of their opponents — Ellen Troxclair, who is running against Berry, and Carrie Isaac, who is running against Casteel.

Cruz has spoken openly about his thinking when it comes to endorsements. In January, he that if someone voted against school choice, the chances of them getting his endorsement are “essentially zero.” And if someone supports school choice, Cruz added, he will consider “engaging and engaging hard.”

Abbott’s runoff endorsement strategy is not as obvious and his picks have left some school choice activists frustrated. He has generally supported the concept and, earlier this year, he that in the next legislative session Texans will see a “stronger, swifter, more powerful movement advocating school choice than you’ve ever seen in the history of the state of Texas.”

Abbott’s picks in the runoff are largely seen as the more mainstream Republicans in each matchup. And they come after Abbott weathered more than a year of nagging criticism from his right — over his pandemic response and his legislative agenda — that ultimately culminated in a decisive March primary win.

“Governor Abbott supports the best candidates for office who will fight for the people of Texas, defend our conservative values, and secure the future of our state for generations to come,” Abbott campaign spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement for this story.

The broad concept of school choice is popular among Texas Republicans. In the March primary, 88% of voters approved of a ballot proposition that asked voters whether they agreed with the statement, “Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student.”

But the issue divides Republican lawmakers when it comes to school voucher programs, which would let parents use public money for private school education. Rural Republicans are often the most outspoken opponents, voicing concerns that such initiatives would hurt the public schools that are the lifeblood of their tightly knit communities.

The Texas House has long been a firewall against voucher proposals. During the last regular legislative session, the chamber on a budget amendment to ban school vouchers, with a majority of Republicans siding with Democrats.

Still, school choice advocates took encouragement during the last regular session from the passage of a bill that expanded grants allowing special-needs students whose schools closed due to the pandemic to seek support services elsewhere. And some believe Republicans’ growing focus on increasing parental involvement in the classroom — whether it be over determining COVID-19 policies or curriculum on race and gender — has also been helpful for the cause.

They may still not have the numbers in the House, but school choice groups like the American Federation for Children scored a victory last year when Brian Harrison, a former Trump administration official, defeated former state Rep. John Wray, a Republican of Waxahachie, in a special election for his old House seat in rural North Texas. Cruz had endorsed Harrison.

AFC also picked up another ally several weeks later when San Antonio Republican John Lujan won a special election runoff for a previously Democratic-held seat.

“We do see that school choice and parental freedom and empowerment is a driving issue in these [runoffs],” said Mandy Drogin, AFC director in Texas. “We see that parents now more than ever are engaged across the spectrum.”

The runoff debate over school choice was on full display during a forum Monday between Casteel and Isaac in the Hill Country’s House District 73. Abbott supports Casteel for the open seat, while Cruz has endorsed Isaac.

Minutes after the event started, Casteel got a question about the Texas AFT endorsement, and he promptly disavowed it. He said the local congressperson, Chip Roy, had brought the endorsement to his attention and he “immediately went to their website, where it is clear that I cannot even remotely begin to agree with a number of the things they propose.” Casteel said he “contacted them and asked them to take back their endorsement.”

Isaac and Casteel offered slightly different answers when asked about school choice. Isaac gave an answer broadly approving of “education freedom,” saying she supports the “right for parents to choose the best education for their children.” Casteel’s answer was more careful, focused on public charter schools as the main alternative for parents.

“I think that we need to continue to allow for more options, more accountable options, and I will continue to work for that,” he said.

While he repeatedly distanced himself from Texas AFT, Casteel boasted his Abbott endorsement, saying he was proud to have the support of the “most conservative governor in the United States.”

Abbott is not without high-powered allies in his runoff endorsements. House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, has also endorsed Casteel and Harris. As the leader of the chamber, Phelan can also be expected to defend incumbents Rogers and Kacal.

Phelan said in a statement he was supporting candidates “who have proven records of championing conservative values and being trusted leaders in their communities.”

The relationship between Abbott and Cruz spans at least two decades. As attorney general, Abbott gave Cruz a high-profile job in making him solicitor general in 2003. Cruz stood by Abbott through the intraparty heat he faced in his latest primary, saying he would be a if he did not support his former boss.

This election cycle is not the first time the two have been on opposite sides of a state House primary runoff. Cruz also endorsed an opponent to Rogers in 2020, when he was running for an open seat with Abbott’s support. Rogers defeated the opponent, Jon Francis, by a small margin.

Patrick Svitek is the primary political correspondent at , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. This article  at TexasTribune.org.

Disclosure: Texas AFT has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

In the midst of continuing Republican-led political fights over what is allowed to be taught in public schools — namely over race, gender and sex — Abbott has put parental rights at the center of his reelection platform. Last week, Abbott made a pitch that he wants to solidify parental rights as an amendment to the Texas Constitution.

“Parents will be restored to their rightful place as the preeminent decision-maker for their children,” Abbott assured those at his campaign event last week at a charter school in Lewisville.

Abbott’s announcement on Thursday has been a building up over the past two years as two things have placed public schools in the sightlines of conservatives: the move by public schools to include a more comprehensive approach when teaching American history — one that includes a frank discussion of racism and its impact — and parental stress over school closures caused by the pandemic.

So far, Abbott’s promise is light on details. But it’s not the details that are remarkable, but the gesture itself. Experts — and — say that parents already have rights — and the announcement can be seen by some as a way to score points with pandemic-weary Texas parents.

“‘Parental rights’ has become a proxy for the anger people feel about government, specifically towards public schools,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “This ‘bill of rights’ is mostly a repackaging of policies already in place, including current law and recently passed regulations, but the bright bow on the package is politically attractive.”

For the past year, many parents have felt like schools let them down and Abbott has seen a window to capitalize on that, Rottinghaus said.

Abbott has quickly become more outspoken about the actions of school boards and how schools approve books in their libraries as well as social studies lessons, particularly when it comes to teaching about history and slavery’s long-term on American society.

And with last week’s speech, Abbott is following a recent national conservative roadmap that is proving successful.

Across the country, conservatives are campaigning more on the notion that “critical race theory” is taught in secondary public schools and it must be eradicated because, as they say, it unfairly makes white children feel bad. Most notably, campaigned on a pledge to ban the teaching of so-called critical race theory, which in actuality is an approach to thinking about history that is so far not being taught at all in Texas schools.

In his speech in Lewisville, Abbott touted how he stood firm against schools requiring mask-wearing during the pandemic and how his administration pushed for the reopening of schools. Last fall, Abbott signed a bill regulating how race is taught in schools. He and others continue to label it a law that bans critical race theory but the measure never mentions it. Critical race theory is the study of how race has influenced not only human behavior but shaped laws and policies.

Regarding the state constitution, the Texas Legislature would first have to approve a joint resolution before such a measure goes before voters for final approval.

The “” section of the state education code gives parents a wide range of access and veto powers when it comes to their children. They can remove their child temporarily from a class or activity that conflicts with their religious beliefs. They have the right to review all instructional materials, and the law guarantees them access to their student’s records and to a school principal or administrator. Also, school boards must establish a way to consider complaints from parents.

Rebecca Deen, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the governor is most likely trying to mobilize voters before the primaries, where he is being challenged by Don Huffines, a former state senator who also has made so-called parental rights and limits on how race-related issues can be discussed in classrooms a part of . “This fits under the broader umbrella of concerns that social conservatives have about schools,” Deen said.

Rottinghaus also believes Abbott is setting the stage for the next legislative agenda, in which Republicans could use the parental “bill of rights” to make changes to the public education system.

“I don’t think Greg Abbott has a real horse in that race but he’s smart enough to see that this is what the Republican Party wants,” Rottinghaus said.

Education advocates and political opponents have criticized Abbott’s proposal, saying that it distracts from the real issues teachers, students and families are facing.

Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that Abbott is playing politics and creating more division. He said Abbott should instead be providing respect and support in a time where the pandemic continues to stress schools.

Shannon Holmes, executive director of the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said in a statement that the governor’s proposal won’t give parents any new rights and fears it will be used to place new mandates on schools.

“On behalf of the state’s largest community of educators, I urge voters to compare their personal experiences with Texas public schools to the governor’s rhetoric —and make up their own minds,” Holmes said.

Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for governor, said Abbott’s agenda serves only as a distraction to the real problems that public schools are facing during the pandemic, such as the lack of resources available to them and teachers facing burnout.

Republicans focus on schools

In the past six months, Republican lawmakers have continued to target discussions about race and sexuality in schools.

In late October, parents at a district pressured officials to remove a book from a high school library: “” by Maia Kobabe, a 239-page graphic novel depicting Kobabe’s journey of gender identity and sexual orientation. The book contains a few pages of explicit illustrations depicting oral sex, which outraged parents in the district.

During the same month, state Rep. , R-Fort Worth, sent a list of some 850 books about race and sexuality — including Kobabe’s — to school districts asking for information about how many are available on their campuses.

Then, in November, Abbott asked the Texas Education Agency to related to “the availability of pornography” in public schools, saying that the agency should refer such instances “for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”

Abbott has also asked the agency, along with the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the State Board of Education, to preventing “obscene content in Texas public schools.”

The TEA responded by into the Keller Independent School District and whether it ​gave students access to books with “sexually explicit content.”

Meanwhile, Texas Republicans are pushing to be more involved in school board races. On Dec. 6, the state Republican Party formed the to work with county parties on backing candidates in nonpartisan local elections, where hot-button issues like mask mandates and the teaching of so-called critical race theory have become political stances.

It’s not surprising, Deen said, that schools are a campaign target this election season. In the 1980s, there were debates over creationism and evolution and how sex education should be taught. Now, campaigns are focused on how racism and sexual identity is discussed.

“Schools in general and school board meetings specifically have re-emerged as a hotbed for politics,” Deen said.

Disclosure: Association of Texas Professional Educators, University of Texas – Arlington and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

Brian Lopez is an education reporter at , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. This article  at TexasTribune.org.

James Whitfield chose to resign from his position as principal of Colleyville Heritage High School and the school board unanimously accepted on Monday. His resignation won’t be official until Aug. 15, 2023. As part of a settlement between Whitfield and the district, he will remain on paid administrative leave until then.

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“I’m ready to turn that next page,” Whitfield told The Texas Tribune on Wednesday.

The agreement seemingly puts an end to Whitfield’s arduous battle with the school district that date backs to July 26, when he was by Stetson Clark, a former candidate for the district’s school board.

Clark said Whitfield was “encouraging the disruption and destruction of our district” because Whitfield, the high school’s first Black principal, wrote a letter to the community during the summer of 2020 detailing how hurt he was over the deaths of three Black Americans: George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.

In the ensuing days, Whitfield found himself at the center of the debate over how race is taught in Texas schools. He received a disciplinary letter from the district a few weeks later and was placed on administrative leave soon after that.

Colleyville is a majority-white city with only 1% of residents identifying as Black or African American, according to census data. The median household income tops $150,000.

Going forward, Whitfield believes his work in education isn’t done. Over the next year, he wants to work closely with educators and students, especially helping teachers who are fearful that what happened to him will happen to them.

“I know that there’s just so many people under these attacks and that’s my greatest fear because this profession means so much to me,” he said.

Whitfield added that he has no regrets over what has transpired over the last couple of months, he’s happy that he stood up for what he believed in and he hopes that’s what people can learn from his situation.

, or CRT, is an academic discipline usually taught at the university level. The theory’s central idea is that racism is not something restricted to individuals, but that bias is something embedded in policies and legal systems.

Opposition to critical race theory has become a rallying cry for Texas Republican leaders, who claim it’s indoctrinating students and teaching white students that they are racist. Lt. Gov. has called it a “ridiculous leftist narrative.” Gov. has called for it to be abolished in Texas schools.

Lawmakers eventually passed , which restricts how teachers can discuss current events, encourage civic engagement and teach about America’s history of racism. And during the second special session, lawmakers successfully passed , a more restrictive version of the House bill that will .

Among other things, SB 3 bans schools from making political activism part of a course and says teachers may not be compelled to talk about a “widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs.”

Now, GOP lawmakers have turned their attention to what books children have access to in schools.

Earlier this week, , along with the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the State Board of Education, to develop statewide standards preventing “obscene content in Texas public schools.”

State Rep. , who is running for state attorney general, recently launched an inquiry into the types of books students can access in Texas schools, which included an 850-book list. The titles in the list range from children’s books and anti-bullying tips to novels that discuss racism and sexuality.

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Gov. told the Texas Education Agency on Wednesday to investigate criminal activity related to “the availability of pornography” in public schools, saying that the agency should refer such instances “for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”

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It’s unclear why Abbott tasked the TEA to perform the investigation and not the state’s policing arm. The TEA does not employ law enforcement officers, according to , and a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement confirmed Wednesday that the education agency does not have any licensed peace officers.

Abbott’s request comes two days after , along with the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the State Board of Education, to develop statewide standards preventing “obscene content in Texas public schools.”

While those standards are developed, Abbott wrote to the TEA in , “more immediate action is needed to protect Texas students” against that inappropriate content, which he said is “a clear violation” of state law.

TEA officials could not be immediately reached.

The Texas Department of Public Safety typically investigates potential criminal activity within agencies that do not have their own law enforcement branch.

However, state statute gives broad authority to the Texas education commissioner, who oversees the TEA. According to the state’s education code,”the agency shall conduct hearings involving state school law” at the direction and under the supervision of the commissioner, which could be interpreted by the TEA as the vehicle to use for investigating any criminal activity.

Any civilian can also go to a prosecutor directly to provide what they consider evidence of a crime, but in most instances the prosecutors would then refer the case to a law enforcement agency to investigate independently before pursuing any legal action, according to Shannon Edmonds, director of governmental relations for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

As for who could be prosecuted under the investigation that Abbott requested, Edmonds said it depends.

Under the state’s penal code, a person commits a crime if they knowingly exhibit or distribute harmful material to a minor, or display it in a reckless way where a minor is present. Harmful sexual material is defined as “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors.” Most violations under that statute are a Class A misdemeanor, which can result in up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000.

However, the penal code also states that a defense against prosecution is that the material was exhibited by a person “having scientific, educational, governmental, or other similar justification.”

“That’s going to be where the battle may be,” Edmonds said.

In Abbott’s directive earlier this week about statewide standards, he cited two memoirs about LGBTQ characters that include graphic images and descriptions of sex, including “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe. The Keller Independent School District recently removed the book from one of its high school libraries after some parents raised concerns over the novel.

Kobabe’s book is about the author’s journey with gender identity, and at some points includes illustrations of oral sex and other sexual content, along with discussions related to pronouns, acceptance and hormone-blocking drugs.

Abbott also mentioned “In the Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado, which the governor said in his letter earlier this week was recently removed from classrooms in the Leander Independent School District. That book is a memoir that examines an abusive relationship between two women.

Abbott’s request comes on the heels of other Texas Republicans taking aim at some books in public schools.

State Rep. of Fort Worth, who is running for state attorney general, recently launched an inquiry into the types of books students can access in Texas schools, which included an 850-book list. The titles in the list range from children’s books and anti-bullying tips to novels that discuss racism and sexuality.

State Rep. of Bedford, meanwhile, has called on Texas Attorney General to launch a statewide investigation into Kobabe’s novel and others with similar content. The attorney general’s office has not responded to requests for comment.

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They pride themselves on their allegiance to a moral code, a firm compass that distinguishes them from progressives who are always — allegedly — trying to erode the core principles that make America great.

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Which is why it’s so tragicomic to witness conservative state leaders in , , , , and beyond search for some shred of principled moral reasoning to justify their mandates forbidding school districts from requiring masks on their campuses.

It’s a tough task, since most of conservatives’ usual lines just don’t fit. They certainly can’t justify their actions in the name of American federalism and local control of schools. It’s hard to squash local school boards’ abilities to determine whether or not students and staff must wear masks … in the name of local control. determining the masking rules for every locale in his state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott explained that “Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices.”

Nor can conservatives shield themselves in the name of protecting personal responsibility. If the last 18 months have taught Americans anything, it’s that the cautious also suffer when their feckless, carefree neighbors ignore the pandemic’s risks. Which, by the way, is also why they’ve shelved their “pro-life” rhetoric for this particular debate.

So conservative leaders have made a desperate grab for the banner of individual freedom. For instance, in his executive order limiting districts’ pandemic mitigation efforts, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis insisted he was acting to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.” That is, masks can’t be required at school during a still-raging pandemic because that would disempower families from choosing what’s best for their children and, presumably, teachers from managing their own tolerance for risking infection.

But this is a profound distortion of America’s traditional approach to freedom. about how virtuous behavior and personal responsibility were fundamental to sustaining individual liberty. It was obvious to them that the stability of America’s limited, representative government rested upon individuals behaving responsibly. “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,” George Washington wrote in his Farewell Address. And, when it’s politically convenient, modern conservatives know this. “Freedom relies on virtue for its survival,” announced . Its authors continued: “It is virtuous citizens taking personal responsibility for their actions and exercising mutual responsibility for the welfare of others who make ordered liberty possible.”

In his towering 1859 essay, “On Liberty,” English philosopher John Stuart Mill, articulated his “harm principle,” one of that tradition’s famous definitions of individual freedom. “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,” Mill wrote, “is to prevent harm to others.” The gist of the principle should be intuitive — indeed, to most Americans. It’s the intellectual ancestor of : my freedom to swing my fist ends precisely at the point where it hits your nose.

In that vein, then, the case for curtailing families’ liberty to send their children unmasked hinges upon whether or not this will cause harm to others. This is not a complicated calculation.

To be sure, throughout the pandemic, it has been both tempting and fashionable to claim that the coronavirus is not particularly threatening for children. Further, advocates from across the political spectrum have made a series of cavalier claims about the relative safety of school settings. Last March, Brown University economist and prominent school reopening advocate Emily Oster , “Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma.” In his executive order as proof that school masking was unnecessary.

However, much of the confident talk about the safety of school reopening comes from earlier moments in the pandemic when fewer children were being tested and attending in-person schooling. As in-person school reopening launches across the country, there is that children are to catching the Delta variant than previous strains of the coronavirus. It’s driving , perhaps because those under the age of 12 are still not yet eligible to receive any of the coronavirus vaccines. it increases the risk of hospitalization for people of all ages.

Data on the latest pandemic spike suggest that these concerns are warranted. Pediatric hospitals — — . Test positivity rates for school-aged children . That is, more of the kids being tested for COVID are testing positive. an overall as the baseline threshold for when it is safe for governments to reopen in general. Perhaps we might tolerate a slightly higher rate for school reopenings, but Florida’s positivity rate for kids is four times the WHO’s benchmark: in that state, . Meanwhile, over 98 percent of Americans live in counties .

Finally, in elementary schools with universal masking and widespread COVID testing, that nearly one-quarter of students will be infected in the first three months of school. Remove students’ masks, and their models suggest that nearly 80 percent of an elementary school’s students will be infected in the same time frame. These CDC models are looking gloomily prescient: as Georgia schools near the end of their first month since reopening, the state’s Department of Public Health reports that . Gwinnett County Public Schools, just outside Atlanta, by the end of the school year, and possibly more if case rates increase with colder weather — despite requiring masks at all times on campus.

In such an environment, at such a precarious moment for public health, the application of Mill’s harm principle is relatively straightforward. The new variant of the virus is already threatening the health of children and families, and it will threaten more if schools reopen without mitigation measures in place. Universal masking is just the simplest, easiest and cheapest of these. Political and education leaders are absolutely justified in taking all of the standard approaches to slowing the spread of the coronavirus — including mandatory masking, vaccine mandates and strict quarantine protocols for schools with new COVID cases.

Notably, as the Delta variant began taking hold of campuses around the country, even Prof. Oster and Brown University took touting Gov. DeSantis’ citation of her research .

That conservatives are abandoning their prior moral convictions to explain their behavior makes clear that the whole effort to “protect the freedom” of the recklessly unmasked is really about scoring political points in a moment of enormous peril for children, families and the country. Indeed, in the face of school districts’ opposition to his executive order, to families determined to send their children to schools unmasked. Note, of course, that this extension of freedom, in the form of “empowering families,” doesn’t isolate the risks only to the private schools willing to tolerate these unmasked families’ choice. It simply provides the virus with more vectors to transmit, threatening everyone in Florida — and the rest of the country.

Worst of all, it’s not even the first time that conservatives have tried to use the virus as leverage for attacking public schools and educators. Last summer, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that would allow parents to enroll in private schools willing to open into the teeth of .

To be fair, modern conservatives’ brand of radical individualism is taken into account elsewhere in the Western intellectual canon. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that this rugged freedom was something like humans’ natural state … each of us fending for ourselves and charting our own life courses. Famously, however, he warned that this was incompatible with civil society, for in this state of nature, life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Dr. Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. Find him on Twitter . The views expressed here are his alone.