More options for students, training for tomorrow. A level playing field. Fair pay and benefits for teachers.
Education is where it all starts. Nothing else will work, democracy won’t work, if young people aren’t given the opportunities they deserve:
Trade-Track Education Options. While no student should ever be denied the opportunity to take liberal arts education as far as she or he wishes to go, for some HVAC holds more interest than Kerouac. Beginning in high school, students should be given the option to explore and begin training in earnest for trades—trades that may promise a more exciting future for some young people than traditional education tracks.
Fair Pay and Benefits for Teachers. It’s shameful how we’ve treated teachers in this state historically, and while recent bipartisan efforts have begun to remedy this problem, we’ve got a long way to go, and much more to be done. Through new revenue streams and the Texas Trust, we can do right by some of the hardest working, most important public servants in the State.
Decouple School Funding from Property Taxes. So long as schools are dependent on local property taxes for their lifeblood, there will be gross inequality in education and sky-high property taxes. Funding schools centrally–even in part–will help to raise the standards of education across all districts.
Free State School Tuition. Schools like Yale and Princeton offer full tuition loan forgiveness to students who go into public service for a period of time. But schools like Yale and Princeton are very, very rich…right? They are, but guess what: our schools are richer. The state should encourage the massive Permanent University Fund to implement a similar system for graduates of Texas schools who go into service for Texas, whether directly for the state, or for nonprofits who support the public interest.