A San Antonio state lawmaker says Texas Democrats intend to unravel the state’s new school voucher program following Tuesday’s election results, which reshaped the political landscape in Texas and across the country.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation in May 2025 creating a $1 billion school choice program allowing roughly 110,000 of Texas’ more than 5 million schoolchildren to use taxpayer dollars for private education. At the time, Abbott said the law meant “families are no longer limited to only the school assigned by government” and that parents could now “chose the school that is best for their child.”
State Rep. Diego Bernal, a San Antonio Democrat who serves as vice chair of the House education committee, told ProPublica in a report published Saturday that he expects the program to be dramatically scaled back or eliminated entirely.
“I guarantee that program is not going to be untouched, and it will be probably unrecognizable, if not extinct, by the time we’re done with it.”
Bernal told the outlet that some Republican colleagues had privately voiced reservations about the voucher program but felt constrained by pressure from party leaders who have since been ousted.
According to ProPublica, governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat who won her race Tuesday, has said she plans to reverse Abbott’s education agenda, including removing Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath and eliminating the voucher program. Morath had been overseeing what ProPublica described as the state’s largest takeover of public schools in recent history.
The push against the voucher law comes alongside other education fights in Texas, including a Texas State Board of Education curriculum change, backed by Abbott, that required teaching Bible stories in schools and shifted social studies instruction away from world history toward a focus on Texas and U.S. history.
A National Trend Toward School Choice
The dispute in Texas unfolds against a backdrop of growing national support for school choice. A poll from early 2025 found voters dissatisfied with the existing education system and supportive of empowering parents with more options, according to earlier Breitbart News reporting.
The Heritage Foundation has reported that the number of K-12 students nationwide benefiting from private school choice programs more than doubled between 2020 and 2025, rising from fewer than 600,000 to 1.2 million. The organization has said significant work remains to expand access further.
Support for school choice grew substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many parents became more aware of gaps in the public education system, alongside concerns about curricula addressing race and gender. Declining national test scores and rising education spending have further fueled the movement.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2025 supporting school choice initiatives and expanding parental control over children’s education.
Whether Texas’ voucher program survives the incoming political shift remains to be seen, but Bernal’s comments signal that Democrats, newly empowered after Tuesday’s results, intend to make it a central target.
