The only Democratic State Representative from Collin County, Mahela Plisa,
recently became the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
Before Democrats selected Plisa to fill that role, we spoke
with her about her top priority, public schools.
Public education is going to be our biggest fight going
into the next legislative session.
We know that education savings accounts or vouchers are going
to be a top priority for the governor.
And so as a recapture district, it is going to
be crucial for districts like mine to make sure that
we are keeping our money in our districts.
And so I have set um our first legislative priorities
to be about tax parancy, transparency around taxation, making sure
that the monies that we are sending back to Austin
stay in public education.
But that initially, most of the money that we pay
in our poverty taxes, if they are public education dollars,
that they stay in our district.
You brought up school choice, Governor Abbott has said he's
got the votes for it.
And so how do you and other Democrats try to
block it?
Look, you know, we don't know what the votes are
until the bill is up.
We don't even know what this bill is gonna look
like.
There's been a couple of bills proposed, but you know,
I have some of my colleagues that are saying that
the bills that were proposed last session were irresponsible financially,
and they were bad bills.
These are bad voucher bills, right?
So thank God the bipartisan coalition stood together and defeated
this voucher scam.
We need to make sure that what these bills look
like are universal, making sure that the constitutional requirements that
the state of Texas has to educate five million children
is implemented, and that's what I'm looking for.
And so we have to be really careful when we're
talking about these vouchers, these ESAs, schools' choice, right?
We have to look at what other states have implemented
and what it's done to their budgets.
We're getting reports every day of how it's blown these
states' budgets.
And we cannot risk the Texas miracle.
The governor and supporters of school choice have said that
the funding is not going to come directly from schools,
it's going to come from the general fund, not the
found the school foundation program.
So you're you're shaking your head, you don't buy it.
No, I I don't.
I don't.
You look, we know how public schools are funded, we
know how schools are funded in this state.
We are talking about taking money from taxpayers and sending
it to private schools.
That's what ESAs are.
That's what vouchers are.
And so we need to make sure that we create
accountabilities for Texas taxpayers and for their money.
We're talking about five million children here.
We're talking about the future workforce of America.
These are very serious decisions that we're making.
Teacher pay raises.
Yes.
Um, I know everybody says they support this.
Um, do you think that the legislature should set aside
money specifically for these school districts for teacher
pay raises?
In other words, saying we're giving you X amount of
dollars.
This has to be spent on raising teacher salaries.
I think that we've had this conversation last session as
well.
And my for me, my answer is yes.
It's very, very important that our teachers feel respected within
the profession, that they can stay and afford to be
in the profession.
I had multiple teachers coming into my office last session
who had second or third jobs, and that's just really
unacceptable for for t teachers in Texas, right?
And so I think that there' should be something that
were doing to make sure that we are letting teachers
know we're hearing you and we're, you know, we're making
this a priority.