DENTON — The evening started with a prayer: for protection, for strength and for more students to join Denton Calvary Academy.
The small Christian school just up the road from Texas Woman’s University educates roughly 260 students. It’s where a Biblical worldview is infused into academics and where parents must sign a statement of faith before their children enroll.
And on a recent Monday, it was where Gov. Greg Abbott’s team promoted a plan to send public dollars to private schools. On stage in the Denton Calvary gymnasium, Abbott preached his message to a crowd of enthusiastic families.
“Education freedom,” Abbott told the group, “that’s what we’re here about.”
The third-term Republican is crisscrossing the state, encouraging families to get behind a bill to create education savings accounts. The school voucher-like program would provide families $8,000 to use for private school tuition or other educational expenses.
While Abbott stumps for school choice, he’s making the pitch only at Christian campuses — a hint at who the program may benefit most.
The schools’ leaders say they are eager to use the funds to help grow their student bodies and campuses but are wary of participating if the money means government meddling in their classrooms. Most of the schools Abbott visited are small and emphasize Biblical teachings.
Critics, however, see the venue choices as exemplary of all the problems with an education savings account, or ESA, program.
The schools are selective in their admissions, with some allowing children only from Christian families. Their price tags vary, but a few charge tuition that’s roughly double what the state could offer to parents, meaning families would have to come up with thousands more dollars to send their children.
Abbott’s office did not respond to questions about how venues are chosen. Neither did the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin that has also organized and promoted the Parent Empowerment Tour.
In making the appeal at Christian schools, Abbott is speaking to Evangelicals who make up a key piece of the Republican voter base, said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. Political watchers also say these crowds are receptive to the message Abbott is hammering: that parents need a way out of public schools that are indoctrinating children with a “woke” agenda.
A critical vote on the legislation is expected Thursday. If the Senate signs off, the plan heads to the historically hesitant House.
School leaders — private and public — will be watching closely.
Andrea Chevalier, head of school at the Denton academy, said Abbott’s push for education savings accounts could empower parents to make the decisions they believe are best for their children.
Her school would still look to admit only families that its leaders believe would be a good fit. That means, in part, being “like-minded in following Christ, and that they’re involved in their local church,” Chevalier said.
“What we say all the time,” she said, “is we want the families here that God wants here.”
No strings attached
The bulk of accredited private schools in Texas are religiously affiliated, meaning they would likely benefit most from an education savings account program.
Private Christian schools like the ones Abbott is visiting aren’t the only ones clamoring for the program. Parents and leaders at secular schools as well as Jewish- and Catholic-affiliated institutions have similarly voiced their support at public hearings and rallies.
Such campuses “see this as an opportunity for more families to take advantage of the education at their schools,” said Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association.
Ninety-seven percent of the schools Colangelo’s organization surveyed would be interested in an ESA program, she said.
“There is great interest among all types of schools,” she said. “Now, the devil is in the details.”
At First Odessa Christian Academy, the education savings accounts would be a blessing, if they’re done the right way, said interim head of schools Byron McWilliams.
The funding could help the four-year-old school grow enrollment and speed up plans to build a new campus with sports facilities, he said. The roughly 200-student academy, which Abbott visited in March, has room for at least 150 more with a tuition that ranges from $6,940 in kindergarten up to $9,210 in high school.
But the academy is not interested if it means government interference in its Christian-based curriculum.
The school teaches “core family values” — it’s unacceptable for Christians to teach hatred toward anyone, human life begins at conception, extramarital sexual intimacy is wrong and “marriage is an exclusively heterosexual institution involving one man and one woman.” While non-Christians can attend, they cannot skip out on religious instruction, such as Bible class.
“We’re going to stand firm on Biblical teaching and on Biblical principles the way we understand them to be explained and defined,” McWilliams said.
Church-state separation
Other school leaders echoed the sentiment. Some of their applications require evidence of a family’s Christianity or a reference from a spiritual leader.
The legislation up for debate in the Senate promises a light regulatory touch and bars any rules that would limit a school’s ability to exercise its religious or institutional values. But it remains to be seen what ends up in a final product, and nothing is stopping future lawmakers from changing the approach.
For the most part, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed voucher-like programs in states and cities. Last summer, the high court held that Maine couldn’t exclude religious schools from a tuition assistance program for private education.
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton recently issued a legal opinion clearing the way for education savings accounts to be spent at sectarian schools, so long as the initiative doesn’t use money from state accounts dedicated to public schools.
Some critics see the push for education savings accounts as a way to tear down the separation between church and state.
“That’s actually what I see as the most dangerous aspect of this,” said David Brockman, a non-resident scholar in religion and public policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “We taxpayers are paying for the proselytization of children in religious beliefs.”
At a recent public hearing, one Colleyville woman raised the prospect that if taxpayer dollars can go to a Catholic school, what’s stopping them from funding a Wiccan school.
“I don’t want my taxpayer dollars going to Wiccan school,” said Mary Lowe. “I see Pandora’s Box.”
Political pressure
Abbott’s chosen venues serve another purpose: political pressure.
The schools where he’s stumping are often in the backyards of rural Republicans who’ve viewed voucher-like efforts with skepticism. The events have the energy of a campaign speech, where Abbott gets the crowd riled up then asks them to lobby their representatives.
In the Denton Calvary gym, where families filled the bleachers, the governor slammed schools for promoting “woke-ism.”
He accused some of sexualizing kids and teaching a radical ideology. “Our schools are for education, not indoctrination,” he said, triggering a standing ovation.
Conservative proponents, like Abbott, are wrapping the school choice push into a culture war package that’s popular with Republicans.
The rhetoric aligns with a broader Republican push in Texas to pull books off public library shelves that center LGBTQ perspectives and to restrict how public school teachers can talk about race.
Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, sees Abbott as blending political campaigning with policy town halls.
“He’s not traveling the state to garner support from people who haven’t exercised some form of choice,” said Bernal, who previously served on the House public education committee.
“These are people who have already made the decision to send their children to private school, and they would whether you could get vouchers or not,” he said. What Abbott is offering them, he said, is essentially a discount.
‘What you want to hear’
The tensions over a school choice fight were on display at the Denton rally.
Among the protesters outside the event was Jenna Napier, who hoisted a poster reading, “DCA grad against vouchers.”
Napier said she had an overall quality experience at the school.
“People want the best for their kids. That’s their intent. But you have to consider impact, not just intent,” she said. “It’s in our collective best interest to fund our local public schools.”
Texas public schools are funded based on how many students attend. If children leave their neighborhood schools for private schools, state money generally leaves with them.
Other critics see Abbott’s push as promoting a different form of indoctrination.
“They literally want to give people money to go to schools that will instill their version of what is moral and right,” said Lesly Molina Poer, a Denton County Democratic Party leader and mother of two young children.
Jacob Garrett passed the protesters when he went to attend the rally with his family. They have one daughter enrolled in the campus after her local public school didn’t meet her needs with dyslexia instruction, he said.
Their two younger kids are home-schooled but would join their sister at the academy if the cost wasn’t prohibitive.
The message Abbott is trumpeting across the state appeals to Garrett.
“As a parent, it’s what you want to hear,” he said. “You want every opportunity available for your kid.”
But he also took notice of the crowd of people against vouchers that rallied outside. His wife is a former public school teacher, and the family wouldn’t want this plan to hurt those institutions.
“I’d like to hear the other side of it, without name-calling,” he said.
At Denton Calvary, tuition for little ones is around $7,000 and goes above $9,000 for high school. Parents must also commit to being a co-instructor at home.
Chevalier said she often hears from families like the Garretts, who want to enroll additional kids in the school but can’t afford to do so.
“It is a sacrifice to send your kids to private school,” she said. “For us, educational savings accounts would allow those families to be whole and be complete here at our school if that’s what they want.”
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
