A Note from Texas AFT Leaders on This Election

Voters have spoken; though, 7 million registered voters in Texas sat out this election. As leaders of your union, we are deeply concerned with the direction our state will now take, specifically as it relates to public education, but we respect the will of the people who showed up and the peaceful transfer of power.

This election was always going to end with half the country celebrating and the other half in a state of uncertainty. Politically, we are a divided nation. One that has allowed itself to become divided by fear and anger at a time when working people should be unified by our common struggle to make ends meet.

The real, understandable desperation of the many was exploited by a wealthy few; billionaires eager to point the blame for the struggles of working families at anyone else but themselves. Those same billionaires who have worked tirelessly to spread school privatization poured their resources this year into electing those who will implement Project 2025.

But there is more that unites than divides us. Members of our union will have voted on all sides of this election. Our ranks include Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

Yet each of us demands high-quality public schools, colleges, and universities. We want full funding for those schools, resources for our students, and living wages for ourselves.

In Texas, schools and campuses are starved of resources, support staff struggle to make ends meet, faculty worry over whether they can teach the truth, and retirees eke out a living on a meager pension.

Our shared priorities live in our union's legislative agenda for 2025, an Educator's Bill of Rights. It's an agenda drafted by our members. It's an agenda that will have bipartisan support.

But instead of unifying Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has already begun crowing that the gains in the Texas House give him the majority he has craved to pass a private school voucher. His hand-picked candidates, whose campaigns centered more on immigration fears than education policy, will enter the Legislature in January as if they have a mandate to privatize our public schools.

We know they don't. Not in Texas, and not in the rest of the country. In Kentucky, Colorado, and Nebraska, voters on Tuesday rejected voucher schemes.

What Abbott and his rich donors, who have bought our democracy, want is for us to give up, to grow so weary with the state of things that we retreat altogether.

Our union will not do that. Our members will not do that. Because our communities cannot afford that.

While we fight back, we should also remember this: What we are fighting for is what most Texans and most Americans want, as we saw nationally in those voucher votes and locally in a much needed, voter approved pay raise win for Education Austin members.

We are disappointed by much of what happened in this election, but we're not deterred. A more hopeful future is possible; we see it every day in our students - in their curiosity, their resilience, and their empathy. We're prepared to defend our classrooms from underfunding, privatization, or the craven politicization of our schools.

In solidarity and with great care,

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