DESCRIPTION:
March 21, 2017

Members of the committee, my name is Jaime Puente and I am a product of both Texas public and private schools. We are here again on a Tuesday to discuss another racist and anti-American piece of legislation. ESA’s, or vouchers by another name, have historically been the method by which white supremacy and school segregation was articulated as a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. You may use ideology to justify supporting a bill which, as Senator Taylor admits, will serve only a tiny fraction of Texans. You cannot, however, choose an alternate historical reality rather than the racism behind the very idea of vouchers.

The transfer of money from the American, and yes Jeffersonian, public school system to private, individualized “school markets” is by far one of the most dangerous threats to our democracy. Our founding fathers understood the importance of a state funded and maintained school system to the preservation of our Union because, as John Adams said, it provided a “general knowledge among the people”. The a-la-cart fantasy being peddled here today is the opposite of what our founding fathers recognized as a necessary tool for the preservation of democracy, and that is most evident at my own alma mater.

I am a product of the oldest Catholic boys school in Texas, and I know first hand the anti-American ideology a school like St. Thomas can produce. Some of you might be friends with the anti-LGBTQ bigot Steven Hotze, an STH alumni whose name is shamelessly emblazoned on the school’s football stadium. His equally bigoted nephew Bruce Hotze was my classmate. I could not imagine being a young LGBTQ man at St. Thomas today and having to come to terms with the hateful person lauded by the institution that proclaims “Goodness, Discipline and Knowledege”. But, I know very well the racism I dealt with for four years by my “legacy” peers like the Hotze’s. There is nothing good, disciplined, or knowledgeable about the hate Hotze peddles and St. Thomas condones, and as Senator Bettencourt affirmed, it’s what is done with education after graduation that matters. By this measure, the Hotze’s, and Nazi sympathizing Richard Spencer’s, of Texas do not deserve to be subsidized by the tax paying citizens of Texas. Reject this bill.