The Louie Minor Show
Texas politics from Killeen to Belton to Austin and beyond. Join the conservation with Bell County Commissioner Pct 4 Louie Minor as we dive deep into local government. Interviews with community leaders and the public.
The Louie Minor Show
Defending Public Education with Jennifer Lee
Jennifer Lee, a passionate advocate for public education, joins us to share her inspiring journey from high school teacher to elementary education trailblazer. As a single parent and dedicated educator, Jennifer discusses her commitment to making a difference in public schools. She reveals her motivations for running again in the 2026 election, driven by her resolve to counteract legislation like HB 3, the controversial voucher bill threatening public education. Her personal story, paired with her professional experiences, underscores the urgent need to defend public educational institutions and ensure that they remain a viable choice for all families.
Our conversation navigates through the contentious political landscape of government funding for private education, spotlighting the influence wielded by the governor in shaping election results. We dissect the distinctions between the Senate and House versions of the HB3 bill, shedding light on significant concerns regarding accountability and transparency in private school funding. The episode tackles the skepticism surrounding private education's purported academic superiority, emphasizing the necessity for concrete accountability in educational outcomes and questioning the legitimacy of current assessment methodologies.
Addressing the private school voucher program's complex impacts, we explore the financial burdens it imposes on families and the lack of rural provisions that may primarily benefit urban and affluent communities. We delve into the historical roots of school vouchers as a tool for racial segregation and reflect on their current implications during Black History Month. Examining the experiences of states like Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina, we consider the long-term feasibility of reversing these policies. This episode seeks to unravel the intricate dynamics of public education advocacy, inviting listeners to contemplate the broader implications for the future of education in America.
Welcome. You're listening to the Louie Minor Show. I'm your host, bell County Commissioner, louie Minor. Today is February 23rd 2025. We have a special guest that I did a recording with, jennifer Lee. She was a candidate for House District 55 last election cycle. She is going to be running for election, running again for that seat. So she's a former educator, strong advocate of public education, and I wanted to talk to her about HB 3, that's the new voucher scam bill that was written by chairman Buckley, that it represents Killeen and Salado, and so enjoy the conversation on this there. There's no commissioner's court on coming up this Monday and there's no commissioner's court coming up on the following Monday, which should have been a meeting, but I know I'll be at the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Washington DC. I leave Friday for that. I know the county judge will be there and then I think one of the other commissioners has another thing to go to. So, anyways, there's not going to be a commissioner's court meeting that day and so the next meeting will be the third Wednesday or third Monday of the month in March. So we will. We still have a lot to talk about. Enjoy the conversation with Jennifer Lee and we'll talk to you next week.
Louie Minor:Welcome, I have a special guest for for you today. Miss Jennifer Lee ran for house district 55,. Jennifer Lee ran for House District 55 the last election cycle. She will be our hero again and running again in the 2026 election cycle. So, jennifer, thank you for agreeing to being on the show today.
Louie Minor:We'll let everyone in on the little secret. We actually recorded this once before, but the recording was not very good because we were trying to be fancy and do it on site, on location, but that's my bad. So thank you for agreeing to do this again, because it's important. It's important for our community, it's important for our state and I think it's important for people to know that there are other options out there. There's candidates out there that really care about public schools and want to bring the right information and the right solutions for our, our state. So thank you for agreeing to do this again with me.
Louie Minor:And and what I'm referencing is hb3, our uh house district member in 54 representative brad buckley. Chairman buckley, he was the chairman of the Public Education Committee last year, our last legislative session, where the voucher scam failed, and now he's at it again. So I wanted to bring you on, but first, since I did not have you on the show. I was not able to nail you down and get you on the show last last election cycle. If you can, I want the audience to know About you. Tell us a little bit about your, your history and then why you decided to run and why you're going to run again in 2026.
Jennifer Lee:All right. So thank you so much. I am a single parent to a fantastic eight-year-old and I have, you know, done what so many parents tend to do. I have been his coach for numerous sports and I've coached so many children in our community. I've been a teacher for 13 years. I taught 11 years at Harker Heights High School, encouraging students to go into education, encouraging and teaching those, mentoring those future educators, because we need more folks going into the field.
Jennifer Lee:And then I decided I wanted a challenge and I switched to elementary and taught fourth and fifth grade math intervention and I absolutely got the challenge that I wanted. But it was so much fun just getting a different aspect and, you know, teaching in a Title I duolingual campus and just kind of seeing some of the differences there. But yeah, basically that's it the reason why I decided to run for office. It's something that I knew eventually I would want to do. I thought I would do it when my son was much older and it would be a little bit easier with him being older. That's exactly what happened in.
Jennifer Lee:I believe it was December of 23, when I had a conversation with Dawn Richardson and she kind of challenged me and asked why not just run now? Why keep on saying that, oh, someday I'll do that, someday I'll do that? And something we all need to remember is that someday isn't promised and for some people someday doesn't happen. And so she challenged me and then she kind of left it alone. But then I heard from Louis himself and that conversation definitely made me think. It challenged me in a slightly different way, and I was reminded that you know, again, we can keep putting things off, but sometimes the need just kind of finds you.
Jennifer Lee:And so after that conversation I got a few more phone calls and I really started thinking. I finally decided you know what? I know we're super close to the deadline and this was not in my plans initially, but the need is there. Somebody has to stand up for public education. We can't just lay down, and people deserve to have a choice on the ballot, a choice they can feel good about. I've been one of those people who, if there wasn't a candidate I liked on the ballot, I would undervote and just kind of continue down the ballot and move on and just kind of continue down the ballot and move on, because if I don't feel good about somebody I'm not going to vote for them.
Jennifer Lee:But in this instance, with the legislation that was coming down the pipeline, and knowing where we were headed and knowing that there was going to be a massive battle for kind of the soul of public education, I said you know what People deserve? An option. People deserve to be able to vote for somebody that they know, who has a proven track record of caring about our public schools, who's been involved with our public schools, not just as a teacher but as an advocate. I've been to the Capitol, I've testified at hearings, I've spoken at school board meetings. I have been fighting for students and teachers for years. They deserve to have somebody that they can feel good about voting for on the ballot. It can't just be this one person and then they have no other options.
Jennifer Lee:That's not how democracy works, and so that's why I decided to run and it was an incredibly wild ride and I learned so much. Incredibly wild ride and I learned so much. But and I saw how many people really rose up and they care so much about the safety and wellbeing of our students sitting in classrooms. They care about those public schools. They want to save those Friday night lights. They want public schools. We want to support public education as a whole. That's what I found out.
Jennifer Lee:I know there's a lot of information saying oh no, everyone wants school choice. No, everyone wants public schools to be the choice. They want public schools to be well-funded, well-maintained and well-led. That's what people actually want when you actually get out and talk to a wide variety of people. And so that's why I'm going to run again, because we still deserve a choice that we can feel good about. People are starting to see and have some kind of buyer's remorse, I think, after this past election cycle, when they realized, oh, that's what we voted for, oh, that's not what we meant, and so people deserve a choice, and they deserve a choice in 26. Now that we're seeing what, what we have, it's time to say you know what our kids deserve better.
Louie Minor:Right, and and I, you know, I, I think that, if you, you know, just last last year, last budget year, there there was already schools talking about cutting budgets, cutting staff, and you know, that's to me, that was just a precursor of and now the talk is about cutting librarians on the cusp of.
Jennifer Lee:You know, for years we've been talking about book banning and, you know, the far right side keeps saying no one's banning books, no one's banning books, as books keep disappearing off of shelves. No one's banning books. But yet entire book cases are, you know, swiped clean in classrooms and in libraries. And then you see this entire foolishness that comes out saying that, oh, the book banning thing that Joe Biden said that was all a hoax, it was a big old hoax, even though we know that's not true. And we've heard numerous candidates, including the person who was elected to 55. We've heard them all say you know, well, these books just shouldn't be available. Well, if it's not available, that means that you're banning it, you're keeping it from other people.
Louie Minor:You're making decisions for parents. If we want parent empowerment, parents should be able to make the decisions themselves. So tell us a little bit about you, where you grew up.
Jennifer Lee:where did all this passion and advocacy, where did all this come from? So I grew up in the deep piney woods in Northeast Texas and graduated from Kilgore High School, and you know, my father worked in the oil field for about 40 years or so. And you know, something that few people realize about me is that one my parents were married for 49 years and they did stay together until my father passed away in 2017. He had diabetes, had several complications, eventually went blind. He also suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's and numerous complications associated with lack of access to really great health care. And so watching my mom be his sole caretaker for a very long time, after both of them had actually been the caretaker for my grandfather, who had a similar fate, and just seeing that struggle, that ongoing battle, and seeing how important it is to have access to really good health care, no matter where you are, even if you're way out in the country or if you're in a big city, that's one of those things that sticks with you.
Jennifer Lee:And it's so incredibly frustrating when I see people vote for folks who vote against their best interest. You will adamantly defend somebody who is literally destroying everything that is important to you and somebody who tells you to your face that they don't care about you, but you still vote for them because of whatever values you think they have. But you know, watching my parents struggle through the healthcare system definitely made me feel like we need somebody who's going to fight for the little people who don't always have time or the ability to fight for themselves, but also seeing the importance of having an access to really great education and having it be an equitable education, meaning just because I live in the country, just it doesn't. It shouldn't matter where I live and what my zip code is. A really great education should be available to every child and it should not come at a financial you know, downfall for parents, but that's because we have to invest in those public schools, those neighborhood schools.
Louie Minor:Totally, totally agree with that. So you know, back when you first ran, initially you were running against the incumbent of uh, hugh shine, who had uh been there for quite some, some years. And you know I I think that was, if I remember our conversations correctly that was a little bit of your hesitation. But uh, to running against it. You know an incumbent like that and and at some point in time it might've been at the very beginning, when we, when we first spoke, I think, I told you like, hey, a lot of things could happen between now and the election. You never know what's going to happen.
Louie Minor:And something happened in that race that we didn't expect. You know, vouchers failed. They tried to push it in the last legislative session and then the governor turned around and went after all the Republicans that voted against the voucher bill. And that's how we got Hillary Hicklin, who was on the November ballot with you, because the governor weighed in on this race and a handful of other races throughout the state and was able to knock off a lot of the Republicans, a lot of the incumbents. Interesting though you know, he wasn't attacking those incumbents for not supporting their voucher bill. He was in attacking Republicans for not being tough on the border.
Louie Minor:you know that mysteriously, all of a sudden, yeah, and these are all the same republicans that voted for everything he wanted for the border. So, uh, you know it was definitely a lot of lies in that primary. But then when you, when you had a run against now an open seat, how did that play into your thought process, because obviously this person was pro-voucher going to vote for it?
Jennifer Lee:That is her sole purpose.
Louie Minor:Yeah, that's. Her mission is to go down there and rubber stamp whatever the governor wants, and to me it just seems like even now, that she's just a parrot or a puppet, you know whichever P word you want to use for for the governor.
Jennifer Lee:So I totally agree with that. I saw you know when you know after the primary, when I saw who I was going to run against, I wasn't necessarily surprised, only because you know. When the governor sinks over $400,000 into a race, you would expect that to make a difference. When he's using his powers to circumvent what might actually be the will of the people in the district, you kind of have to expect sort of the unexpected. And so the after the primary it just made me more determined because I saw where I saw what was going to happen. I saw how determined they were to push this thing through again, possibly against the will of the actual people. To me that's not how government is supposed to run. The governor should not be acting in a way that completely negates the voice of the people. And we're seeing that now because you've heard too many Republicans before.
Jennifer Lee:You know when the Senate was hearing. You know SB2, the first rendition of the education savings account, or a voucher scam, however you want to phrase it, because apparently use of the word voucher is triggering to them. But you know they started out saying we already have the votes. And the same thing has happened now that HB3 has been rolled out. You know, burroughs has been quoted and saying we already have the votes and so they're approaching this in a way of that. It's kind of like the parent who, when you're walking up to the store and you tell your kid, you know, don't ask for anything, don't touch anything, don't climb on anything, just basically tell them just mind your business, because you're not going to get what you want, and that's the exact same vibe that we get from this.
Jennifer Lee:We already have the votes statement that we keep hearing before these hearings, and so it's deeply concerning that now it's no longer about hey, the people are concerned, the people don't want this, because you're seeing people on both sides of the aisle come out of the woodworks to say that, hey, we don't want this, this is a scam. We don't want public education to suffer. We don't want whatever it is. What snake oil you're offering?
Jennifer Lee:We don't want, whatever it is, what snake oil you're offering? And yet there's a smugness among those far right Republicans we already have the votes and that kind of undertow of. We really don't have to listen to you, but we're just being nice.
Louie Minor:Right, so what I wanted to talk to you about is HB3. It was put out on Thursday I think that was February 20th by Chairman Buckley. Buckley is actually going to do two town halls in Bell County next week. One's going to be at a private school in Killeen on Monday and then the other one is going to be at Salado ISD their school district admin building on Friday, so there's going to be opportunities for us to go and ask him questions.
Louie Minor:But he's the author of this new bill and I wanted to go over it with you. I'm sure by now we've all had a chance to read it and go through it. And to me, what is the biggest takeaway from this $1 billion program? That last legislative session there was only 500 million, but you know, just in the year and a half it's ballooned to $1 billion. What is the biggest thing that sticks out to you on this current rendition?
Jennifer Lee:So I want to point out the difference between the Senate bill and the House bill, because in the Senate bill it was very much so unbridled. We do not care about any kind of accountability, we do not care about any kind of transparency. It was these people are going to be able to do whatever they want with this money. But the House bill did put in a little bit of a kind of some training will, so to speak. The House bill does say that there has to be accountability as far as what students are learning, but it's only to parents. Of course. There will be no public ratings for the private schools as there are for public schools. And one thing that really kind of stood out to me was when we talk about how the students are going to be tested, because something that I don't think anybody has actually been hearing is when people are saying you know, we want parents to be able to choose the best possible school for their child. No one's bragging about the academics of the private schools. When they're saying that All you hear is about the negative of public schools and how what public schools aren't doing and how poorly. You know, our kids can't read, they can't do math, they can't do this, but no one's actually saying well in the private schools. Here's what the data says. Here's where the academic progress is. Here's how they data says here's where the academic progress is. Here's how they're doing. I didn't hear any of that during the campaign. I haven't heard about private school students outperforming, so it's not like they're saying this is a significantly better option because they're doing so well academically. And I'm wondering is that because they haven't been held accountable and there's not really any testing information available, because there's also no transparency. But when it? The new thing that I'm seeing now is that, yes, they will have to have a yearly and annual test of some sort, but it will be a norm reference test and the difference between norm reference and what the star test does is norm reference means that they're being compared to other students within their age range, in their grade, so they're nationwide, kind of where is the average third grader, where is the average fourth grader? How are you doing when you're comparing fourth graders? That's norm reference and that's what they're saying they want from private schools. That's norm reference and that's what they're saying they want from private schools.
Jennifer Lee:The star test. However, historically I mean, it doesn't take too much Googling to find out. The star test has always been a thorn in the side of educators because we understand that it's not developmentally appropriate. The grade level for which the average star test is written does not actually reflect the grade level that takes the star test. So a third grade star test, reading test, may really secretly be at a fifth, even sixth grade level. There are times, even as educators, we're going through looking at sample tests that have been released or past tests that have been released, and we're looking and saying even we are struggling to understand this. There was an infamous interview done by an author who had written something, one of the stories, one of the reading passages for the star test, and they went back and read the questions about their story, the story they wrote. They went back and read those questions and they said even I would struggle to get those wrong or get those right.
Louie Minor:Right.
Jennifer Lee:Even I can't fully understand what this is asking about. The story I wrote, and so that's how we know the STAR test is really setting our students up to look like failures. It's setting our public schools up to look like they're failing, setting our public schools up to look like they're failing, not to mention the fact that the target keeps moving Every year. There's always a big ordeal when it comes to results coming out and you know, oh, this school, you know, did horribly, but the target moved. When you give us a target to work towards, something to keep in mind, saying, hey, you know, just make sure that you're covering the following things and then later on you change that target, or you decide you look at the results and then say, you know retroactively, you know what? Let's move it a little bit further. So where somebody might have been making 100 out of 100, now it's 100 out of 150 because you moved the bar. And that's what's been happening regularly to public schools in an attempt to make them look like they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing.
Louie Minor:So one thing that from the last legislative session they were going to do $10,000 allotment per child going to these private schools and in this new HB three it doesn't really put a dollar amount I don't see a specified dollar amount in it but it did say that they're going to kind of tie it to public school funding. So it are they going to match? It's to me it was still a little unclear. Do you know, are they going to match whatever allotment is for public education into this voucher program or is it still going to be the ten thousand dollars?
Jennifer Lee:the senate bill said ten thousand dollars plus $1,500 if a student had special needs, and then $2,000 for homeschooling parents and an extra $500 for a student with special needs, and one thing to note is that that automatically starts out.
Jennifer Lee:Even if it was $10,000, that automatically starts out with more funding for a private education than a public education Because as it stands and has been since 2019, I believe the basic allotment or the basic level of funding for a student in public schools it's not in special education, they aren't bilingual, they aren't career and technical. A career and technical student nothing extra, just kind of regular program student is $6160, $6,160. That is their basic allotment and has not changed since 2019. Right now the conversation is moving that up to somewhere over 7,000, which it should have been going up with inflation all this time, and so now there's a little bit of catch-up that's happening, but because we waited so long with so much inflation, it's not really catching us up. It's not really doing as much as they thought, but that's still not the 10,000 number. The fact that we started out immediately saying you get more money to go to a private school is very, very unacceptable, because we've never seen a fully funded public school in Texas.
Louie Minor:Correct. And just to remind the listeners, what is Texas ranked in public education? It's like close to the bottom right 40-something.
Jennifer Lee:Well, it might be. It's a little bit higher than that. I'll give us some credit. We're, I think, 30th.
Louie Minor:Okay.
Jennifer Lee:We're not great. We are not great.
Louie Minor:Yeah, so they want to pull this money out. You know they said the money's going to follow the kid. How does that look? What, what. What does that mean to to the school? What does that mean to the parent? What does it mean to the taxpayer? What does it mean that the money is going to follow the kid?
Jennifer Lee:in theory, what's supposed to happen is that there's a account that is going to exist. That's why they're trying to call it an education savings account as opposed to a voucher, because too many people were equating voucher to coupon, even though that's actually how it's going to function. There's supposed to be an account education savings account where, once you've applied and been accepted to the program, you will have money that you are going to be able to spend on approved educational expenses. And the approved part makes this look like a vendor bill, meaning they've already made some deals and had some conversations with some vendors educational service vendors who they've already kind of made that agreement that you're going to be getting this money, you're going to be benefiting financially. So of course, the lobbying from those vendors has been pretty serious. They're looking to get money. Their business is looking to get money. They're finally going to be able to tap into money that could have been used for public education and normally may not have been available to them, because now there's an opportunity. They see the opportunity to get money from homeschoolers. They see the opportunity to get government money from private schools, and so we're looking at those approved vendor lists and saying, okay, that's where this money can be spent only in those places.
Jennifer Lee:The one part that was kind of confusing about HB3 was, it said, the semester after your application is approved. So my question slash possible understanding is if I applied in the summer, let's say, for example, or I applied in August, does that mean that in order to actually have a choice meaning I want my child to go to this private school do I have to wait a semester in order for them to enroll, or do I need to? Is it kind of a go ahead and enroll in this private school, foot the bill up front and then later you'll get some money to possibly either reimburse or pay for a second semester?
Louie Minor:Yeah.
Jennifer Lee:In which case that destroys the whole idea of you've given me school choice because I can't foot the bill for $ 13,000 in the fall.
Louie Minor:Yeah, there's. There's a lot of questions that need to be asked. It's obviously not the right thing to do for for kids. You know you got to take into account transportation needs. You know, to me that's a big one. The the qualifications to get into the private school voucher program. Nowhere else in government is $160,000, $150,000 considered low income for the purposes of qualification for this program. So to me that was a big red flag. And in last legislative session with their voucher program they were trying to do a carve out for rural school districts. You know 254 counties in the state of Texas. Majority of those counties are probably not going to have any type of private school but their funding is going to be affected because if they don't fully fund or they only nominally increase the student allotment they're still not making up for that inflation. So did the now forgive me because I didn't look at the Senate bill at all Do they have any rural carve-outs in the Senate?
Jennifer Lee:bill? Absolutely not.
Louie Minor:Okay. So yeah, this is something that's definitely geared for the bigger cities, the urban areas of the state, and I would imagine most of those are going to be in the Texas triangle. That will be benefiting the wealthy families that are going to be benefiting from that. I'm going to be curious how many people are actually and is that are going to take their kids out of private or public education, go to private, versus how many are going to be in there already and just start accessing those funds.
Jennifer Lee:And my concern with that is one, if you think about it in terms of private schools have not been asked to change anything.
Jennifer Lee:They really haven't been asked to change anything about their admission process. There was one small caveat in the Senate bill and I can't remember if it was in the House bill as well that they couldn't raise their tuition for a student who is in the program. So once you become a voucher student at that private school, your tuition can't be raised. But they're still able to screen. They're still able to get an application, do an interview with the family and screen who they take. They can very easily deny a student or a family based on literally anything they want to. There's been no call to make private schools be transparent financially to the public, because once you start taking public dollars, I'm under the belief that you should have public accountability, meaning I deserve to know how is you know Trinity, holy Trinity Catholic School doing compared to the nearest elementary school, public elementary school? I should be able to see the ratings of those schools as compared to the public school. But you also can't have that comparison because they're not going to be taking the same test.
Louie Minor:So that prevents a direct comparison, is it safe to say that most of these private schools are religious private schools? Okay, and can you remind the audience of the history of private schools and vouchers and kind of how all this started?
Jennifer Lee:I would love to. So you know we are in Black History Month and vouchers have actually been a topic among many black history circles. You know we're talking about teaching our children their history. And shortly after Brown versus Board of Education, when the decision was handed down by the Supreme Court that schools had to start integrating, desegregation became the law of the land. Everybody has to integrate.
Jennifer Lee:There were a lot of non-Black and brown people who were opposed to being forced to have their child in the same classroom with a Black or brown student or potentially even a Black or brown teacher. And so the voucher program became a means of. And all of a sudden, private schools popped up where there weren't really any before. Suddenly, we had private schools popping up all over the state as a place for white students to go. White families could take their students there to get them away from black and brown students and get them away from integration. So vouchers acted similar to the way they are now in a means of. Here we're going to give you money, a coupon, and you're going to be able to take your child out of that school and send them to a school where we can screen who comes in and, because it's private. We have complete say over who gets to be in those classrooms and who gets to be the teacher, and so that's how vouchers got that started, rooted in racism.
Louie Minor:No doubt, no doubt. You know, in all the testimony and everything that I hear the pro-voucher side say, I just hear them say that all these other states have it. Why don't we have it? I don't really hear them talk about success stories in these other states have it. Why, why don't we have it? I, I don't really hear them talk about success stories in these other states. Like you know, what state have they pointed to that? Hey, this state is getting it right. So let's you know, let Texas, we want to be like this state. I haven't heard that.
Jennifer Lee:I haven't heard that either. I know we were trying to copy Arizona, but then Arizona, well, that whole budget for vouchers exploded to the point where they can barely afford water, they can barely afford roads, they can't afford much of anything else other than trying to patch the hemorrhaging voucher budget that they have going on. I will point out what I found very interesting, as I waited 10 hours to testify to the Senate is that they brought in two people from out of state one was from Florida and one was from North Carolina to talk, to testify. You know, they were students who received vouchers in those states and they, you know, gave very touching stories and speeches about how, if they hadn't had a voucher, they would have had to go to that failing public school. And to me it was odd that they had people come in from other states to talk about how vouchers were great, other states to talk about how vouchers were great. And the one from Florida well, actually, both Florida and North Carolina, I believe, ranked below Texas in their K-12 public education system.
Jennifer Lee:And so for me it says you didn't fund those schools there and give people a real choice. But you don't the people that. If you look at the invited testimonies for the Senate and for the House because there is a list of the invited testimony for the House bill they're all pro-voucher, pro-public or private school entities. They're all people who would benefit financially from vouchers being put into place. You don't have TSTA, you don't have AFT, you don't have any of the public school teacher organizations as an invited testimony.
Louie Minor:There was a big push from school districts last legislative session to go against the voucher program. It seemed like they're kind of silent now.
Jennifer Lee:Why is that? You think? Oh, when you start labeling things as electioneering and there's a specific house bill that are not, yeah, a specific piece of legislation that has been crafted by none other than 55's Hillary Hicklin that specifically wants to sanction and go against any school district that attempts to lobby, people start to get real quiet. When you start threatening jobs and continuing to threaten funding that hasn't even come, people start to get quiet. So think about how the position that public schools are being put in, that they can no longer advocate for the needs of 5.5 million Texas children who go to public schools. Roughly 90% of kiddos in Texas go to a public school. Think about what that means that those schools can no longer advocate for the vast majority of the kiddos in the state. What kind of people want to silence folks who are fighting for most of the children in the state? You can't say you're pro-children but you want to silence anyone who stands up for them.
Louie Minor:Yeah, no, it's definitely a slippery slope that we're going down and, you know, if we let this genie out of the bottle, can we ever put it back in.
Jennifer Lee:I don't think we can, only because you know something that's happened before is I'm concerned that this would become an unfunded mandate, because right now, abbott and his cronies are moving heaven and earth to have this money readily available for the voucher scheme, and that's, you know, driven in large part by, you know, the West Texas billionaires and some other private interests throughout the nation, because this is a push from not only, you know, at the state level, but also up top, because Trump is also very much so pro privatizing education. And so, you know, I don't think we're going to be able to walk this back easily. So say, for example, we flip the house, you know, in 26. That's a lot of having to go through and retract and figure out. How do we?
Jennifer Lee:We've started families down this path and now we're trying to take money away from people, and that's incredibly difficult to do, especially when you look at, you know, if private schools have really become, because the legislation saying that there can be no lobbying is only against public schools. So private schools will be free to lobby as much as they want to have more money, public schools. We would have to go ahead and repeal any legislation that basically places a gag order for them. I don't think that we can undo the damage that will be done to public schools in one legislative session.
Louie Minor:Right. Well, I think if vouchers get out of the genie bottle, an easy fix without repealing everything. It's just to add so many requirements and reporting and strings and testing that you know they wouldn't want that oversight.
Jennifer Lee:So I think we should have a lot of oversight, and where kids are involved and public dollars are involved and education is involved, I will say I'm very proud of the fact that I've always been a huge supporter of homeschooling because I do believe parents can be excellent teachers for their own children. And homeschoolers by and large have been opposed to having the voucher because they don't want that privacy of you know. They pull their child out of public education. They pull their child out of a private school for a reason they don't want government insight. They don't want the government in their home telling them what they can teach their child in their home. So I appreciate the homeschool co-ops and everybody who stood up and said no, we don't want this. This is ridiculous.
Louie Minor:Well, let's start wrapping it up. It's already been almost 40 minutes, over 40 minutes now. Is there anything else that you feel compelled to say about HB3?
Jennifer Lee:I think more people have got to start really calling their representative, even if you know that they're not. They are, they've been bought and paid for and will vote for the vouchers every single time, no matter how much it's going to hurt their community and Texas children. You still have to make your voice heard. You still have to speak up, because they're counting on us eventually getting tired. They're counting on us eventually just being quiet and saying there's no point throwing up our hands and sitting down. And we can't do that. We can't give up on public education. We can't give up on all of our kiddos here in Texas who deserve to have a well-funded public school to go to. That should be the choice that we all have. So we cannot give up and we also have to make sure we get out and vote.
Louie Minor:I agree, and if someone wants to find out more about Jennifer Lee for HD55, where can they go to get more information on you?
Jennifer Lee:HD55. Where can they go to get more information on you? They can go to my campaign Facebook page, which is Jennifer Lee for HD55. They can also visit my Instagram Jennifer in the number four, texas. They can go to my website, jennifer in the number four, texascom website Jennifer, the number for texascom. Those are all fantastic ways to reach out, connect, I know. On the Facebook page it has a little bit more contact information as well, like an email and, I believe, even a phone number and, yes, the phone, that number actually goes to me. So you know, reach out. Please follow me on social media because I'm trying to keep everybody up to date. Visit the website and you can absolutely donate, because there's still a donate button on the website and also on the Facebook page.
Louie Minor:All right, I like that Ask. I like that Ask. So, uh, Jennifer, thank you for for being here. I I love that you're an educator because it definitely showed through your, you know, want to give us the information you want to educate us on what's going on. So thank you for that and we will talk to you. See you next week. Thank you again. Thank you, We'll be right back, yeah.
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