What happens to public schools?

They keep opening every morning, run by the same Texans who run them now. Texas already governs its own public schools almost entirely. Independence changes the small federal slice, not the schoolhouse.

Texas already runs its own schools

This is the fact that settles most of the worry. Public education in Texas is a Texas operation today. The Texas Education Agency sets the standards, the State Board of Education and the Legislature set policy, and about 1,200 independent school districts, each with its own locally elected board, run the schools day to day. Teachers are hired locally. Curriculum is set in Texas. Buildings are built and maintained with Texas and local money. Washington does not run a single Texas classroom, and it would not be running one the day after independence either.

The federal government pays a small share, and only for narrow things

Look at where the money comes from. The federal government supplies only about 10 to 14 percent of K-12 funding, and the rest, the overwhelming majority, comes from Texas and local sources, mostly property taxes and the state budget. And the federal slice is not general support for every school. It is targeted money: Title I for schools with concentrations of low-income students, IDEA for special education, school nutrition, and a few smaller programs. Independence does not touch the 86 to 90 percent that is already Texan. It only raises the question of how to handle the targeted federal slice, and the answer to that is straightforward.

The money to replace the federal share already leaves Texas

This is the heart of it. The federal dollars that flow into Texas schools are Texans' own money, sent to Washington first and routed back with conditions attached. Texans pay about $453 billion a year to the two governments that tax them, and governing Texas, every program folded in, costs about $295 billion. The K-12 funding that currently arrives through Washington does not vanish at independence. It simply stops leaving in the first place. The same Texans who fund their schools now fund them directly, without the detour and without the strings.

Texas already covers most of the bill the federal government leaves behind

The current arrangement already shortchanges Texas schools, which is worth understanding before anyone frets about losing it. On special education, Congress promised to fund 40 percent of the added cost and delivers closer to an eighth, leaving Texas to find more than a billion and a half dollars a year on its own. Texas is already paying the difference. Independence does not open that gap. The gap is already here, written into the federal promise, and a Texas that keeps its own money is better positioned to close it, not worse.

Local control gets stronger, not weaker

Texans value local control of schools, and independence deepens it. Today the federal slice comes with federal conditions, rules written in Washington and applied to Texas whether Texas agrees or not. Remove the layer that imposes those conditions and the decisions move closer to home: to the Legislature, the Texas Education Agency, and the local school boards Texans already elect. Who teaches, what gets funded, and how schools are run becomes a fully Texan decision, answerable to Texan voters. What stays the same is the schoolhouse. What changes is that nobody outside Texas gets a vote in it.

The bottom line

Public schools in Texas are already run by Texans, funded mostly by Texans, and answerable to local boards Texans elect. Independence keeps all of that, replaces the small federal share with money Texans already send up to Washington, and puts every remaining decision in Texan hands.