Texas has got a problem with politicized schools. K–12 student walkouts for purposes of political protest or legislative lobbying have become surprisingly common. Sometimes students cut classes to protest in favor of abortion rights, against President Trump’s immigration policy, in sympathy with Gaza/Hamas, or for a smorgasbord of other such causes, all in defiance of school attendance requirements. At other times, protesting students are granted excused absences for their walkouts, effectively turning educators into political collaborators. In some cases, teachers and administrators throw political neutrality entirely out the window and openly recruit students to help them lobby the Texas legislature — evading student attendance requirements by calling it all a “field trip.”
Texas Representative Steve Toth aims to put an end to these practices with HB 4561. The bill is inspired by model legislation that I published last year (co-sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the National Association of Scholars). Toth, however, has turbo-charged the concept by adding real teeth.
Toth’s HB 4561 does three things: 1) It prohibits school districts from issuing excused absences for purposes of political protest or lobbying; 2) it prohibits academic standards, curriculum, or teacher professional development from promoting political student walkouts (often taught under euphemistic headings like “civic engagement” or “action civics”); and 3) it penalizes teachers, administrators, and school districts that permit, excuse, or orchestrate political student walkouts, with consequences that grow in severity for repeat offenders.
Toth has a long-standing interest in keeping political indoctrination out of Texas public schools. In 2021, Toth successfully sponsored HB 3979, which not only barred the promotion of critical race theory in K–12 but also prevented schools from requiring students to protest or lobby as a condition of completing their civics courses. In other words, Toth’s earlier bill barred a key form of “action civics.” Unfortunately, HB 3979 does not prevent students from simply walking out of their schools in order to protest or lobby. Nor does it bar educators from either excusing those absences or in other ways facilitating student walkouts. Knowing this, Toth has proposed HB 4561.
Let’s have a look at an incident from just a few weeks ago that may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back in moving Toth to offer HB 4561 — Texas PTA Rally Day.
On Monday, February 24, the Texas PTA brought hundreds of public-school students to Austin to lobby the legislature, along with parents and teachers, against Governor Abbott’s push for school choice. Those students were skipping classes in order to lobby — many after being promised excused absences by schools with an interest in blocking school choice.
In Texas, the PTA is very much an advocacy organization. This is especially so because for the past few legislative sessions, Texas has been torn by a deeply polarizing battle over school choice. The Texas PTA is one of the leading groups in the anti-choice camp. While Republicans and Democrats generally oppose each other on this issue, a few Texas Republicans remain school choice skeptics. Yet if this debate isn’t strictly split along party lines, it has nonetheless opened up a yawning ideological gulf. Students who rally with the PTA are perforce drafted onto one side of a nasty political battle.
Since 1976, the Texas PTA has organized a membership trip to the state capital to lobby for the group’s legislative priorities. In 2011, the event took the name “PTA Rally Day.” And for some time now (it’s not clear exactly how long), students who would otherwise be in school have been part of Rally Day. Local PTAs bring entire marching bands and cheerleading squads to lead the big anti-school choice rally on the steps of the state capitol. The bands and cheerleaders are accompanied by many other students, all of whom break off to join with the adults at the end of the day to visit hometown legislators and ask them to oppose school choice.
By offering students excused absences, or by classifying the event as a “field trip,” schools are effectively allowing students to cut classes in order to be part of an ideologically partisan lobbying expedition. With teachers as well as parents in the lobbying mix, the event is de facto school-supervised as well.
Different districts adopt diverse policies on student absences for PTA Rally Day, and those policies are not always public. One district, however, publicly stated that all students who attend Rally Day are to be granted an excused absence. Another district tentatively promised students attending Rally Day “excused field trip absences.”
The Texas Education Code gives teachers, principals, and superintendents considerable flexibility in granting excused absences. Yet school officials are abusing that discretion when they permit students to miss classes for ideologically partisan lobbying expeditions.
The Supreme Court, in Tinker v. Des Moines, held that schools must take a content-neutral stance toward the regulation of student political expression. If students are excused from school to lobby against school choice, do they also get excused absences — and an equivalent amount of teacher encouragement and supervision — for other causes, including conservative causes? If not, schools could be subject to lawsuits.
Politically neutral management seems doubtful when you consider that on PTA Rally Day, Texas students are effectively being sent to Austin to lobby for their school’s own preferred legislative goals. Leander school district in suburban Austin, for example, brags on its website about sending its students to Rally Day, then includes a link to its own anti-voucher “legislative priorities” below the story. This is about as far from a policy of instructional neutrality as you can get. While school officials may be permitted to advocate for their preferred state education policy, they ought not to be drafting students into their fight.
What if a school really did start handing out, in content-neutral fashion, excused absences for student lobbying? That could lead to an awful lot of missed classes for a whole raft of causes — likely without students ever being exposed to both sides of whatever debate was in play.
Just look what happened at the most recent PTA Rally Day. The approximately 500 students from across the state who attended got something closer to an indoctrination than an education. The big rally by the Texas state capitol was addressed by two very liberal anti-school choice Democrats, Representative Gina Hinojosa and Representative James Talarico. Hinojosa slammed multinational corporations and dismissed school choice as a tax break for the wealthy. Talarico repeated the “tax break for the rich” point, while slamming pro-school choice billionaires and warning against creeping theocracy.
It was powerful rhetoric passionately delivered — and perfectly appropriate for a political rally. What was missing was the other side of the issue, which a proper school-sponsored field trip would have made a point of delivering. One account of the rally quoted elementary school students gushing, and essentially repeating the talking points they’d gotten from the liberal legislators. Ironically, Talarico slammed conservatives for trying to discredit public schools as sites of political indoctrination. Well, what was Talarico doing at that very moment if not indoctrinating a one-sided, Texas-sized, public-school “field trip”?
Before they broke off to lobby their hometown legislators, the adults and students split into two caucuses. The youngsters heard a panel of student activists touch on several points, including ways to reach legislators via social media and the ills of school choice. Meanwhile, the parents and teachers were addressed by a collection of anti-school choice legislators — with one exception. Republican Representative Brad Buckley, chairman of the Texas House Public Education Committee, had some good things to say about school choice. Whereas speakers at the capitol rally had repeatedly dismissed school choice as a tax break for the rich, Buckley gave the example of a less well-off family benefiting from school choice. It was an example the students never got a chance to hear. And the response of the parent-teacher caucus gives a sense of just how ideologically partisan PTA Rally Day was.
Buckley was booed repeatedly and ultimately chased off the stage for defending school choice. Texas PTA President Jennifer Easley, no doubt concerned about alienating the Chairman of the House Education Committee, called for calm and respect as the attacks on Buckley heated up. Yet the audience swiftly rejected Easley’s plea, and Buckley was effectively harried off the stage soon thereafter.
After the incident, Texas PTA posted a formal apology to Representative Buckley on its Facebook page, committing to civility and respect in the future. This “sincere apology” apparently drew so many angry comments that the post had to be taken down. Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, at PTA Rally Day, nonpartisanship, civility, and respect were barely to be found. (You can watch the Texas PTA’s confrontation with Representative Buckley here, and read about it here.)
Whether you want to say that Rally Day imparted to students a rich set of values, or mere ideological indoctrination, this was a one-sided affair. That is all well and good if the values in question come from parents after school hours. But one-sided politicking is not a proper use of the school day.
Students, however, make powerful political props, and that may be the real point. What legislator wants to get caught contradicting a passel of cute school kids? Surely the Texas PTA understands the leverage these students provide when lobbying politicians at the capitol. A representative can’t say no to schoolkids without looking like a heartless grinch. It’s a clever trick, but it smacks of exploitation. These kids are pawns in an adult political game.
Texas PTA Rally Day may have broken the camel’s back, but it’s far from the only problem addressed by HB 4561. Since about 2017, Texas, like many other parts of the country, has seen multiple student political walkouts. Sometimes those walkouts entail legislative lobbying. More often, however, they are simply political protests. Some walkouts are rewarded with excused absences. Others are not. Sometimes teachers or administrators guide, or collaborate with, the protestors. Sometimes they don’t. Yet all of these cases are troubling and ought to be stopped. I’ll have more to say about them in a follow-up piece.
Here’s the bottom line. Student political walkouts for purposes of protest or lobbying ought to be discouraged. They destroy institutional neutrality, require content-neutral management that is virtually impossible to provide, promote a culture of lawlessness, and exploit manipulable children for political purposes. I’ll follow up shortly with a piece on the sad story of high school walkouts in Texas (the problems are all touched on here).
The solution is Texas Representative Steve Toth’s HB 4561. Let’s hope it passes and becomes a model for other states.