Vouchers and School Takeovers Take Center Stage in the Texas Governor's Race as Early Voting Ends Friday

Texas voters go to the polls November 3 with the state's public schools near the middle of a governor's race that has tightened in its final week, according to the Gatesville Brief's account of the closing campaigns, built on Texas Tribune reporting. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is asking voters for a fourth term; his Democratic opponent, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, has built her closing argument around opposition to state takeovers of local school districts and to the school voucher program that began paying out this year. Early voting runs through Friday, October 30.

"Saving public schools" is the theme Hinojosa has carried through the fall, the report says. At a Houston press conference last month she pointed to Fort Worth and Beaumont as examples of districts the state has taken over. "This is a model that threatens our public school kids across this state," she said, and she has pledged to fire Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, whose agency oversees the takeovers, on her first day in office.

Since 2023, the Texas Education Agency has replaced the elected board and superintendent in seven districts where campuses repeatedly fell short on STAAR measures, with Houston ISD, the state's largest district, placed under Superintendent Mike Miles, per the report. Abbott's campaign counters that state law requires five consecutive years of failing accountability ratings before a takeover can occur, and credits the Houston intervention with doubling the number of A- and B-rated schools and cutting D- and F-rated schools by 90 percent. Dismantling takeovers would require support from a Republican-controlled Legislature.

Abbott, on the campaign trail, has emphasized property tax reductions, border enforcement and public safety rather than the education fights of the 2025 session. "Our students are doing better in schools than ever before, and we've provided record funding for high-skilled job training," he told CBS Texas, in the report's account. He has also proposed tightening rules on teacher misconduct, limiting student use of devices during class and trimming administrative spending, and his office this week announced $40 million for teacher recruitment — money that was already part of last year's school finance bill.

The voucher program is the other half of the debate: a $1 billion program opened this year to help families pay private school tuition, two years after Abbott endorsed primary challengers to Republican House members who had blocked his proposal. Researchers quoted in the report — Matthew Wilson of Southern Methodist University and Leslie Finger of the University of North Texas — said the primary fights left resentment separating urban and suburban Republicans from rural ones, and that the issue may matter most in legislative races, because the next Legislature will decide whether the program grows. A University of Texas poll this month found the cost of living, the economy and corruption drawing more voter interest than schools, with respondents split evenly on which candidate would handle public education better.