Texans dig in to keep rural schools open in face of conservative school choice movement

J. David Goodman wrote in the New York Times today about a topic that's been on my mind for a while: the threat that the school choice movement presents to rural schools and how that's playing out in so-called red states.  The dateline is New Home, Texas, population 334, in the state's panhandle.

Some key excerpts from the story follow: 

The school voucher movement, which seeks to direct public money to private or religious schools, has rapidly gained steam in conservative states as parents battle public schools over books in the libraries, the teaching of race and racism and transgender issues. More than a dozen states have adopted some form of school vouchers. This year several, including Florida, Iowa and Utah, voted to create expansive new programs open to all students, an approach pioneered in Arizona.

But Texas has been an outlier so far, in large part because of the longstanding support for public schools in deep red communities like New Home. In far-flung districts around the state, parents and educators have defended their schools, which are often the biggest local employer and the center of community life.

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Amid a growing national movement to give parents public money to spend on private schools, it is in places like New Home — where the football coach is a local fixture and students learn both how to read and how to judge the quality of a cut of meat — that the conservative campaign has run up against the realpolitik of rural Texas.

* * * 

The governor’s aides point to polls showing support for school choice even among rural Republicans, though opponents argue that such numbers are dependent on how the question is framed.

“There’s no groundswell for this in my district,” said State Representative Travis Clardy, a Republican who represents rural counties in East Texas. He voted against vouchers last week.

In New Home, nearly 400 miles northwest of Austin, parents said they were not yet seeing the issue as a threat.

“Let’s say they did this,” said Kayla Ferguson, a Republican who owns The Spot, a recently renovated small restaurant by the school, where her three daughters are students. “It wouldn’t be something where they wouldn’t have public schools, right?”

Martina Torres, a parent who works at the restaurant, chimed in from behind the counter. “To me, the big scare would be if so many parents chose to go with that decision, and it would cut the money for the public school,” she said.

“I don’t like the idea,” Ms. Ferguson said. “I would never send my kids to a private school.”

Unlike many rural districts, where the public schools are the only nearby options, New Home is close enough to the city of Lubbock that parents could choose to send their children to nearby private schools at their own expense.

Instead, the opposite has been taking place: Many parents unhappy with the public schools in Lubbock have been moving to New Home, instead of enrolling their children in private schools. Others remain in Lubbock but drive their children 25 miles each way to school. Enrollment is soaring.

Many say they are transferring from more politically and culturally diverse Lubbock in search of smaller classes and a place where the values more closely align with their own.

I've marveled that commitment to rural schools and communities hasn't brought more attention to this issue in Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, which have also gotten swept up in strong school-choice movements.