Governor Perry Signs HB 4294

Donna Garner

It sounds like another one of those typical political compromises to me, and I am terribly disappointed in Gov. Perry.

Besides the issue of the authority of the elected State Board of Education, what about the fact that laptops/digitized textbooks have not been proven to increase students’ academic achievement?

What about the many other objections that I pointed out in my public testimony before the Senate Education Committee? Gov. Perry’s support of HB 4294 does nothing to satisfy those objections.

What about the ongoing cost of providing, updating, and maintaining the technology? Taxpayers are still going to bear the brunt of HB 4294, and teachers will be the ones left to try to clean up the discipline problems, etc, that will occur in their classes. Perry was just trying to satisfy the tech vendors, but our public school taxes should not be spent to employ more tech vendors. The Permanent School Fund will be drained in a few years because of this bad decision by Gov. Perry and the Legislature while the public’s school taxes will increase.

Texas schools cannot possibly employ enough technology specialists to keep all of this technology running for immature students who care nothing about being personally responsible about taking care of their “tech toys.” The breakdowns in computer systems, hardware/software problems, and computer glitches will make it impossible for teachers to hold students responsible for doing their homework and finishing their assignments on time.

Meanwhile, Gov. Perry and the Legislators will go merrily on their way while parents will find their children falling prey to the dangers of the Internet and educators will be left to manage all of the inherent technology problems that occur.

The executive order that Gov. Perry attached to the bill does preserve at least a vestige of authority over the digitized textbooks by the elected SBOE members. The problem with an executive order is that it can be rescinded by the next governor. Also, so long as we have Commissioner Robert Scott in place, we can trust him to work closely with the SBOE; but should a new commissioner be appointed by a new governor or should Commissioner Scott ever resign, HB 4294 could take a completely different turn.