As a prelude to a special guest speaker from Austin on Wednesday, groups of Nolan Catholic High School students entertained a waiting audience in the school’s Hartnett Arena.
Among them was the talented theater group performing the opening number of “Fiddler on the Roof.” At one point during “Tradition,” a puzzled parishioner asks the rabbi, “Is there a blessing for the Czar?”
“Yes, my son,” the rabbi responds, “God bless and keep the Czar — far away from us.”
The writer was likely the only one to spot the coincidence as we waited for Texas’ democratically elected Gov. Greg Abbott to take the stage at a busy intersection of the 2,000-year-old Catholic intellectual tradition of faith and reason at Fort Worth’s Nolan Catholic High School.
He received a warm embrace from Nolan students, parents, and visitors during his visit, which he used to make an impassioned plea to help him get his pet project — school-choice bills — across the finish line this Legislative session.
“Our purpose is to ensure that every child in the state of Texas will be given the best education provided by the state of Texas,” the governor exclaimed forcefully. “If mom and dad are in charge that child will automatically have a better chance in school, a better chance in life, and a better chance at succeeding.”
He didn’t make mention of what happens if mom and dad are not in charge, but that’s for another day, perhaps.
Abbott is pushing for bills in the Legislature that would create education savings accounts that would allow families up to $8,000 a year to be spent on the private or parochial school of their choice.
In addition to the Republican governor, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is in support. Similar bills in the past have enjoyed support in the Texas Senate but have failed to get out of the House.
This time around, Abbott has tried to change the conversation from one of “school choice” to “parental rights.”
Critics have claimed over the years that school choice measures could only be implemented at the expense of public schools, but the governor said that the legacy of the father of Texas education, Mirabeau B. Lamar, is safe. The governor told his audience that the issue isn’t one of choosing private school, or, as it’s called more often today, independent school, over public school. He said that both should be viable options.
As an aside: Fewer, it seems, are raising any concern about the possible unintended consequences of allowing the state government within an arm's length of private and parochial schools. That is, keeping the czar "far away from us."
Abbott said he would sign a bill to fully fund the public schools at the highest level ever in Texas history that would include pay raises for teachers.
“All public schools in the state of Texas will be fully funded even with the passage of school choice in Texas,” Abbott said.
Rather than choice, Abbott called requiring a child to attend a failing public school, or one that is not suitable for a particular child, a “government mandate.”
“That is wrong,” he said. “I am fighting to right that wrong and give every child in this state the ability to go to the school where they can succeed.”
Abbott implored his audience to speak more loudly than lobbyists against the bills working over legislators “as we speak.”
The governor has the support of Bishop Michael Olson, as well as Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops.
As he has in the past, Olson quoted Pope Paul VI in arguing as a citizen for passage: Parents, who have the primary and inalienable right and duty to educate their children, must enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools.
“There are too many who do not enjoy an informed choice to meet their children’s unique needs because of poverty or financial duress,” the bishop said in prepared remarks Wednesday.
Education, he continued, has been reduced to our contemporary mind-set as a commodity to be sold in the marketplace to those with financial means or to be imposed collectively by the state upon individuals who do not have adequate financial means.
