Snake Oil

This is the second in a short series of posts checking in with legislators who’ll be setting new public school policy in 2013 and beyond. Read the first: “Jimmie Don Aycock Wants to Think Positive and Fix These Schools.” 

From outside the House Public Education Committee, San Antonio state Rep. Mike Villarreal has become one of the Legislature’s top experts on school finance over the last decade. He’s pushed for more funding in public education, on an appropriations subcommittee covering education—though last year’s was mostly a losing battle. Villarreal sits on the Joint Interim Committee on School Finance now too, his third select committee on funding schools.

He’s promoted more funding in the Save Texas Schools rallies, and is an advocate for state-funded early education (another major casualty of last year’s budget cuts). He also tried, controversially, to introduce a “parent trigger” law for San Antonio last session, which would let parents turn failing neighborhood public schools into charters.

Villarreal has criticized the effects of Texas’ new standardized testing program, which is becoming a deciding factor in which students graduate from high school. “We’ve seen a narrowing of the curriculum so whatever’s not tested gets sidelined,” Villarreal says.

With the retirement of Houston Democrat Scott Hochberg, the glamorous title of top education number-cruncher is Villarreal’s for the taking. Villarreal says it’s a role he’d be glad to play. “It’s something that I care about, have a passion for and I see a need, so I aspire to fill the void that Scott has created. Those are big shoes to fill,” Villarreal says.

He’s not new to this game. Without the members who’ve been leading the Legislature on public education, Villarreal is one of a handful of lawmakers planning to take on even more responsibility. “Definitely expect me to play an even bigger role in trying to shape the direction of public education,” he says. “It is the most important challenge we face.”

Republican leaders are already hoping to extend the austerity measures that cut billions from education, so putting any money back into schools is going to be tough—even though last session’s cuts were supposedly temporary. While state courts consider the school finance lawsuits against the state, the Legislature isn’t likely to overhaul the funding system. But Villarreal says there should be some ways to put money back into education.

“We are going to have more money than anticipated at the end of last session. We’re going to have an overflowing Rainy Day Fund, so I think there’s going to be an opportunity to make some improvements,” he says. “But they’re going to have to be targeted.”

The two causes he’s planning to push the hardest are early childhood education and college scholarships.
Today, Texas pays for economically disadvantaged students to attend half-day pre-kindergarten. Before last session, though, the state also offered grants for school districts to offer full-day pre-K. The Legislature cut that funding in 2011, but Villarreal hopes to put it back in next year. “It’s what all the research tells us is where we should focus our resources,” he says.

Eventually, he’d like to see Texas cover full-day pre-K for all students, but he says the half-day system is particularly hard on working parents. “The way it’s structured today is almost a disservice to parents,” he says. “You drop your kids off at 8, you gotta pick them up at 12?”

The other cause Villarreal wants to target next session is TEXAS Grants, the state’s main need-based scholarship program. Last year the Legislature cut the program by a tenth, shutting out about 30 percent of eligible students. Villarreal estimated the funding level meant 30,000 students were losing out on money they’re eligible for.

“We made commitments to our schoolchildren: if you…get into college, if the only thing keeping you back is your ability to pay, then we’ll be there for you,” he says. “Thousands of students have kept their end of the bargain. The state has failed to keep its.”

So while Republican leaders won’t be enthused about putting much money back into public education, Villarreal is hopeful that the next Legislature can mark a shift in tone, with room for small gains where the money matters most to students.

“We’re gonna have a new crop of freshmen. We’re gonna have different economic circumstances. And I think we’re gonna have more Democrats,” he says. “I think think we need to keep making more arguments that are based on data and are aimed at solving real problems.”

Photo from Rep. Mike Villarreal’s official Facebook page.

Patrick Michels

Marisa Perez at her first campaign fundraiser, after decisively winning the Democratic Party's nomination for the State Board of Education seat in San Antonio.

Getting elected to state office is sweaty, expensive, soul-sapping work—except when you’re Marisa B. Perez, who upset incumbent State Board of Education member Michael Soto with two-thirds of the vote in the May Democratic primary, without spending a dime or breaking a sweat.

Ask her how she did it, but don’t expect an easy answer. Two weeks after the primary, the unknown candidate had given zero interviews about why she ran or what she’ll do on the SBOE. But she’s almost certain to win in November because her district, which runs from San Antonio to the border in Hidalgo County, is so heavily Democratic.

The mysterious Perez has filed one finance report with the state, listing no money in or out of her campaign. Her campaign’s Facebook page had four posts as of mid-June, with no word on what she’d do if she was elected. (The only clue was this: “Allow me to be the proper vehicle for your voice and bring a new era of communication and representation.”) Reporters across the state are wondering, as the San Antonio Current put it, “Who the hell is Marisa B. Perez?”

After leaving messages with every listed number I could find for Perez and her campaign treasurer, and unable to take a hint, this reporter drove from Austin to San Antonio in search of the elusive candidate. This is what I had to go on: Perez, 27, is a graduate of San Antonio’s Edison High School and the University of Texas at Austin. She’s a social worker with Texas Child Protective Services, which could offer a little insight into what she’d bring to the board.

There was another brief clue from a videotaped campaign forum in May (like so many elusive characters, you’ll find proof that she exists on YouTube), Perez described her intentions thusly: “I am new to politics. I am not new to humanities. I’m not new to social service,” she said. She said she’d like to provide mental health training to teachers and counselors—a fine idea, though not something that falls under the scope of the SBOE.

I pulled up in the parking lot of the hulking brown three-story complex on San Antonio’s southeast side where Perez works, and casually glanced around. Naturally, there are security precautions in place at the Department of Family and Protective Services. After finding all the back entrances locked, I found the guards at the front door pleasantly disinterested when I walked right past them. But I was joined on the elevator by a helpful but skeptical employee who promptly marched me back to the metal detector. (She hadn’t heard of Perez either.)

At the front desk, I requested an audience with the presumptive board of education member, and the receptionist managed to get her on the line right away. After a thrilling moment—I was watching someone talk to her—I was told Perez was just stepping into a meeting. “She can call you right back,” the receptionist told me. I held my breath.

She never called back. Dejected, I drove back to Austin.

Back at the office I phoned Michael Soto, who lost to Perez, and was still trying to make sense of his primary loss.
“I have to chalk it up to the vagaries of a downballot race in a colossal district,” says Soto, a Trinity University English professor. The vote left him “surprised,” he said. Elected to the board in 2010, Soto was widely endorsed by parents’ and teachers’ groups. Soto’s race was mostly ignored while more exciting SBOE races, pitting religious conservatives against moderates, dominated the news coverage.

“It appears to be more of a sociological phenomenon than anything that would be explained by issues,” Soto says. Research shows that in education races, Latina women fare better than men in Hispanic districts. The number of voters who knew anything about Perez or Soto was dwarfed by the number who voted overwhelmingly with their gut, for Perez. “It’s impossible to know because she really didn’t campaign. But perhaps my opponent will end up being a phenomenal member of the board,” Soto says.

“We honestly don’t know much about her,” says Dan Quinn, spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network, which follows the SBOE closely. “We would love to meet her.”

That’s a common sentiment. “What’s your platform?” one woman asks on Perez’s Facebook wall. Edgewood ISD board president Joseph Guerra added a post too, asking to meet with Perez. There’s no reply to either on Facebook, and Guerra says he hasn’t heard back from Perez either.

Then late last week, Perez announced she’d be holding her first campaign fundraiser outside an auto parts store next to her old high school. I decided to make a second foray into San Antonio to find Perez. When I arrived around noon, the candidate was introducing herself to a pair of teachers, shaking hands enthusiastically and planning to keep in touch. Under a pair of tents behind her, friends and family members sat talking, and selling hot dogs and drinks for a $5 donation. (Later that afternoon, state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte would also drop by to speak with the candidate.)

Perez apologized for not returning my calls,  saying the campaign has kept her too busy to answer all the calls she’s been getting. Even on election night, she said, she was out of town working, ferrying kids across the state. “I was on the phone every 20 minutes keeping up with the stats,” she said.

Perez said her main focus now is making herself accessible, to be “a recognizable face in the community.” It would seem she has a long way to go. But Perez did say she made a campaign stop in the Rio Grande Valley before the primary, and guesses she must have left an impression with those teachers and parents. Otherwise, she’s not too interested in talking about specifics—either about her out-of-nowhere primary win, or about the work she’ll face on the SBOE. Judging by how hard she was to track down, though, I felt lucky to come away with this much. Our brief Q&A is below:

Were you surprised by the election results? Because they were so overwhelming…

I’m just very excited and very blessed, and very thankful for the support I got. I went out there, I met a lot of people, I took a trip down to the Valley and spoke to some teachers there, and was able to garner a lot of support from the local teachers, just people out in the community and was able to let them know that I want to be a face that people recognize, I want to be there as an advocate. it was well received apparently, and i’m just very happy about that.

Presuming you win in November, what are your plans for what you want to do on the board?

The U.S. right now is changing, the U.S. is a melting pot and my goal right now is representation. It is imperative that I go out and meet people, that I’m a recognizable face in the community, that people know I’m going to listen to them and in Austin, vote in their best interests. Because ultimately we’re all working for the same goal: better education in Texas. Especially since Texas is the largest state continentally here in the U.S., it’s important for us to establish that precedent in spreading a strong, solid foundation for education, and that’s my goal.

In that candidate forum, you said you wanted to create a better public-private partnerships. What did you mean by that?

It’s very important for me to get the business community involved in education as well, and there’s so many ideas that we can work together with. If we can establish a mentorship program, I can work in collaboration with school districts and superintendents and serve as that bridge of communication, and hope that we can establish sponsorships and other initiatives.

Have you been surprised by all the attention from the media since you’ve won?

It’s been a whirlwind, but it’s not my focus right now. My focus is campaigning towards November and hoping that we can solidify that win. So I know things will be said, but it’s the nature of politics and it’s not anything that I’m going to take personally. For me the most important thing is getting out there, and having people who know who I am and recognize me when I’m out there.

“At this point, the Texas Virtual Academy shouldn’t exist”—that’s how the Observer’s Abby Rapoport put it last October, but just look at them now.

Not only is the online school still around, after whitewashing its record of underperformance with a cool administrative switcheroo, they’ve been approved by the Texas Education Agency to take up to 6,000 students for next school year. That’s up from 2,400 students two years ago.

Texas Virtual Academy is an online-only charter school, so on paper it’s run by a Texas-based nonprofit, though its curriculum, teachers and even its website are run by the for-profit online education giant K12 Inc. The Texas Virtual Academy is K12’s biggest toehold in this fair state, but the company has been the subject of some serious criticism in places where it has a bigger presence, for everything from its top executives’ multimillion-dollar salaries to its practice, since discontinued, of outsourcing test grading to India.

As Abby noted last fall (“The Pearson Graduate,” September 2011), the Texas Virtual Academy is in a privileged position, despite multiple failing grades from the TEA, because it’s part of a program from the Legislature to increase access to online education. It’s one of three full-time online schools in the Texas Virtual Schools Network, and it’s the only charter school among them. The other two virtual schools are run by public school districts in Houston (which contracts with the for-profit Connections Academy) and Texarkana (with a curriculum from the nonprofit Calvert School).

Houston-based charter Southwest Schools had been the local charter-holder managing the Texas Virtual Academy, but after two years of getting “academically unacceptable” ratings from TEA, the district dropped the online school in 2011. Since last year, the virtual academy has been “managed” by the Lewisville-based Responsive Education Solutions, one of the Texas’ largest charter operators, a chain with a good track record under the state’s rating system. That’s a nice-looking wrapper for a chronically underperforming school.

Conservative groups love the prospects for publicly funded online schools. As the group Progress Texas pointed out last month, growing the online K-12 market has been big priority of the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which promote private-sector opportunities in the public education world.

Texas law limits the number of charters TEA can award, but once a charter-holder gets into the system, it can add extra campuses or bump its enrollment cap with a simple administrative OK from TEA. No elected officials had to vote on the decision to more than doubling the Texas Virtual Academy’s enrollment.

The Texas Virtual Academy may be the same K12 Inc. program that failed to meet state standards two out of the last three years, but in the hands of the right charter-holder it’s a cash cow with virtually unlimited growth.

This is the first in a short series of posts checking in with legislators who’ll be setting new public school policy in 2013 and beyond.

Thanks to last week’s Republican primary, the already Hochberg-less Texas House got itself a swift Eissler-ectomy to match. The Capitol will be one full of newbies next year, and a few of them will be public education types who campaigned on issues like fairness in school funding and testing reform.

That leaves Killeen Republican Jimmie Don Aycock in a choice position, not only for a shot at chairing the House Public Education Committee, but also to be the guy who newer members turn to for help turning their ideas on schools into bills that stand a chance. In three terms in the House, Aycock has positioned himself as a leader on school funding and accountability, two of the hottest subjects in public ed.

Aycock faces an election challenge in November from former Killeen City Council member Claudia Brown, a Democrat who spent decades as a principal in Baltimore. His district leans pretty well Republican, so assuming he’s back in 2013, Aycock is well-positioned to take over for Rep. Rob Eissler at the helm of the public ed committee. Eissler has chaired it since Aycock’s freshman session in 2007.

I asked the former Killeen ISD board member if it’s a job he’d want, and he laughed it off. “I think that would be awfully presumptuous of me. I’m wanting to serve wherever the speaker needs me to serve,” he said.

What he’d like to do, he said, is help new legislators with school policy backgrounds turn their ideas into viable statewide policy. “Presuming I’m there, I think my role will probably to be to answer an awful lot of questions for junior members. Just trying to be helpful to the freshman or sophomore members that’ll have to step up to education issues.”

They’ve got their work cut out for them. More than half the school districts in Texas have sued the state over its school finance system, calling it unbalanced or inadequate, or both. The Legislature cut $5.4 billion from public schools last year, and they haven’t embraced opportunities to put some of that money back in.

Aycock co-chairs the joint interim committee covering school finance, which is studying how to restructure the way Texas pays for its public schools, to make it more fair, and better reflect the real cost of education. Whatever they come up with, that almost won’t mean more money overall, though—not next session, anyway. Any leadership position in the House will have to deal with the spectre of further cuts to the budget. It will probably take a Supreme Court ruling on the lawsuits to bring legislators together to put much more money into public schools, something that likely won’t happen before the 83rd Legislature wraps up in June.

We’re also in the midst of a popular revolt against the state’s testing system, led by the hundred-plus school districts that have passed resolutions opposing it. Last month Aycock began writing at RethinkTexas.org, a blog he hopes will jumpstart a more upbeat conversation about how to improve the way Texas measures schools. “It’s real easy to get people to say what they’re unhappy with, but it’s a much more tedious process to get some ideas for how to make it better,” he says.

So far, he’s gotten mostly complaints. The site’s drawn just under 60 comments, some of them book-length, about what’s wrong with Texas’ testing and school rating systems. But  a few comments have tapped into ideas with broad support, like technical certifications for high school kids who don’t pass their end-of-course exams.

“I think our whole one-test-fits-all kinda deal is a little problematic,” Aycock says. “To say we’re basing our entire strategy for education policy on just a single element is just narrow.” Aycock led off his blog by suggesting three separate ratings for student performance, financial management, and some other measure of overall quality encompassing college credits, career readiness and extracurricular involvement.

He’d like to see a major shift in the way Texas measures schools, but doesn’t expect it to come quickly. Even without the folks who’ve led the Legislature for so long on things like schools, budgets and prisons, Aycock says there’s no way a bunch of new leaders are going to step in and dramatically change how things are done.

“I compare the Legislature to being a great big blob of protoplasm. You get enough people pushing in one direction, it sort of squeezes over a little bit,” he says. “It matters where on that great body of stuff people line up and begin pushing.”

Photos courtesy Amanda Boyd, USFWS/SpaceX

Cameron County could be headed for a showdown between the SpaceX Falcon and the threatened peregrine falcon.

It took a little longer than promised, but sure enough the California-based private space outfit SpaceX is soaking up good press since its successful robo-mission last month to restock the space station and splash back to Earth.

While the company was gearing up for that mission, the news broke that it’s seriously considering building its own launch site in South Texas, on a 50-acre stretch of private property on the beach at the end of State Highway 4 in Cameron County. It’s one of three possible sites where the company could launch its Falcon rocket, along with Florida and Puerto Rico. Those are all southern U.S. sites where rockets could launch east over water.

The announcement about Cameron County didn’t come from SpaceX—one of the biggest players in the private space movement—but from the Federal Aviation Administration, which announced it would study how a launch site would affect the surrounding environment. They’d begin, they said, by asking for input from locals.

Last Tuesday, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department offered up their thoughts, with a 12-page letter from the agency’s Deputy Executive Director Ross Melinchuk. He lists 34 rare and protected species that could be affected by the SpaceX project, “if suitable habitat is present,” (his italics) including sea turtles, snakes and, appropriately, three falcon species.

While the SpaceX project would be on a strip of privately owned land, it’s surrounded by Boca Chica State Park, at the end of the Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Corridor. According to Melinchuk, the launch site would be 300 feet from park property. Noise, heat and vibration, from the launches could all cause trouble for animals living so close, he writes—but that’s not all. Fences around the SpaceX site could get in the way of ocelot migration. Bright lights around the launchpad could lure sea turtles onto the roads. Or a fuel spill, a launch mishap or a tourist’s stray cigarette butt could burn the whole place down.

Luke Metzger at Environment Texas first heard about the SpaceX plans from Parks and Wildlife last week, and promptly sounded the alarm. On Friday, they began a letter-writing campaign to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. “Don’t build spaceport inside a wildlife refuge,” is the suggested subject line.

“There’s so few places we’ve set aside,” Metzger said over the phone today. “It’s just inappropriate to have an industrial development in the middle of a wildlife refuge.”

SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham has argued that Cape Canaveral, for instance, is also right near a wildlife refuge—but Metzger says that doesn’t make it safe. “There’s a billion-dollar environmental cleanup effort going on at the NASA facilities in South Florida, and how that’s impacted the environment is something we still don’t know yet.”

Though they’ve already launched their petition drive, Metzger says he’s still learning just what kind of trouble the launch site could cause, especially relative to other heavy industrial sites. “It’s kinda hard to compare to something else, because it’s pretty unique. We don’t have a lot of rocket launch pads in Texas.”

That’s something the Texas Space Alliance is hoping to change—its leaders say Texas just isn’t doing enough to attract space business, and that SpaceX is a golden opportunity. The Brownsville Economic Development Council has been trying hard to show SpaceX what a welcome neighbor they’d be. In April, their vice president Gilbert Salinas told me the SpaceX project “is what we call a game-changer. It could totally change the face of our community.”

Metzger warns that betting on the space business is going to mean betting against the nature tourism industry that’s already developed in the Rio Grande Valley. He cites a Texas A&M study that said birdwatchers, hikers and campers generate $300 million a year for the entire Valley.

And the resistance to SpaceX isn’t isolated to one Austin-based environmental group. At the blog Save Boca Chica Beach, Bobby Wightman-Cervantes is rallying the local resistance to the space boosters. “We are not a bunch of loud locals and we are not opposing SpaceX for publicity,” he writes in one post. “We care for Boca Chica and do not want it destroyed by SpaceX and those easily impressed with shiny objects.”

A Texas Parks and Wildlife diagram shows the proposed SpaceX locations in Cameron County (in purple), along with 1.5-mile (red) and 5-mile (blue) buffers.