The education masks come off at the Lege

We knew this was going to happen anyway, but it still doesn't make it easier to see Danny Goeb unveil his priority bills for the Texas Senate.

The so-called "parental rights" bill has all sorts of problems. First and foremost, on the mask-lowering issue, is that it's a direct assault on public schools, even as, nationally, study after study have shown that the huge lion's share of money goes to rich parents ALREADY sending their kids to exclusive private schools.

The Trib notes this has failed before due to opposition by the rurales. Danny Boy is offering a short term head fake.

Patrick's efforts have been rebuffed before. Rural Republican lawmakers have historically opposed similar legislation, arguing that it siphons off money from public schools, often an anchor of their smaller communities. But this year’s bill carves out smaller districts, leaving school districts with fewer than 20,000 students fully funded for the first two years.

Will it work? Will rural legiscritters accept that and face the likely end of that carve-out in the next Lege? As Texas becomes ever more urbanized, will rural legiscritters even have that much say and sway?

Then, there's its further meddling in the transsexual and transgender issues, of concern to a non-twosider on that issue like me as well as the one side of twosiders. Related to that is that Danny Boy and henchmen are encouraging further balkanization of instruction even within the public school system, eroding the social development idea of public school along with education itself.

Third, there's the issue of funds going to religious schools. Catholics are pushing the drive to overturn interpretations of the state constitution that have prohibited much of this.

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It's not just K-12, though. Beyond cutting off diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at state universities, Goeb is now on bill-filing record supporting eliminating tenure. This, too, is a bill filed by Brandon Creighton, emerging as a new water-carrier for Goeb; he also filed a bill to end DEI work. (There's actually a leftist argument to be made against the capitalist problems with DEI, but you won't find either duopoly party making that under the Pink Dome.)

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And, the Observer weighs in with how the Lege is more and more returning to zero-tolerance policies. In the wake of COVID, they'd already accelerated at the individual school and school district level. And, most of that, it notes, was for violating school district codes of conduct, not violence, fighting or drugs. Expulsion percentage rates are high in big, middle and smaller school districts — but topped by one of the state's biggest charter school programs, "International Leadership." In other words, school for socialization IS believed in, but only on narrow terms.