MISSION, Texas - The topic of education savings accounts, otherwise known as school vouchers, was discussed during a 2025 RGV Legislative Tour panel discussion about higher and public education.
The four participating panelists were UT-Rio Grande Valley President Guy Bailey, Texas State Technical College System Regent Lizzy De La Garza Putegnat, Edinburg CISD Trustee Letty Garcia, and South Texas ISD Superintendent Marco Antonio ‘Tony’ Lara.
The panel’s moderator, UTRGV Senior Vice President Veronica Gonzales, began the discussion on vouchers.
“It’s no secret that education saving accounts, which are commonly referred to as vouchers will be debated again,” Gonzales said, asking the panelists what they would want to be included in the legislation if the bill were to pass this session.
Garcia agreed with Gonzales about vouchers being an important topic in 89th Legislature.
“I would like to take this issue and discuss that the concerns of the vouchers, these monies are being taken away from public funding,” Garcia said. “The vouchers, as we all know, are always coming from taxpayer dollars.”
Garcia said a big concern is that private schools who receive the vouchers will not be held to as a high a standard as public schools are held to be the Texas Education Association.
“TEA regulates public schools to take state exams, submit budgets, and hire qualified teachers,” Garcia added.
Lara said he has concerns as well about school vouchers.
“There are three particular areas that I’m concerned about and much like Ms. Garcia just mentioned,” Lara said. “The first one is funding. I want to ensure that any funding that’s allocated for these vouchers isn’t taken away from public schools.”
Lara emphasized that some public schools are operating on deficit budgets and are having to go into their fund balance to budget out the year.
“We have increasing costs,” he added. “That’s no surprise to anybody here but (we need to) ensure that funding stays whole for public schools before we start looking to spreading the money around.”
Accountability is the second area Lara was concerned about. He hopes this is something that is also asked of private schools that receive vouchers.
“We have academic accountability that we’re responsible for to both the state and federal levels,” he said. “We have accountability for our finances so every year we have independent audits that are performed, and we also have to report to the state, and we’re rated by the state on our financial conditions.”
The last concern Lara had was accessibility.
“You know our schools take everybody that comes through our doors,” Lara said. “I hope that the services that they would have available for our special populations, our special needs children, our bilingual children, and even those children (that) are interested in pursuing CTE and establishing careers and certifications, I hope that they have that equal opportunity so those are my three concerns.”
The 2025 Legislative Tour was hosted by the Rio Grande Valley Partnership and was held at Wonderful Citrus in Mission, Texas. The title of the panel discussion was “Educating our Workforce in the RGV.”
