‘This bill is a skunk’: Former Lufkin ISD superintendent speaks against school vouchers at committee hearing

AUSTIN, Texas (KTRE) - Former Lufkin ISD Superintendent Roy Knight spoke in front of a Texas House committee Wednesday, opposing the school voucher bill.

The House Committee on Public Education heard testimony on House Bill 3 starting Tuesday morning and into Wednesday.

"I’m too old and too tired to waste many words here," Knight said. “This bill is a skunk that we’re trying to pass off as a kitty cat.”

Knight said the bill was being wrongly justified on two fallacies, the first being that private schools are needed to create competition between public schools.

“We’ve been competitive with our neighbors for years. Shoemaker High School has been competitive with Killeen Ellison, who’s been competitive with Killeen High. Lufkin has been competitive with Hudson and every other school in our county,” Knight said. “I’ll tell you, it pisses teachers off when they hear that, because that implies they hadn’t been working hard until suddenly the private schools came into the into the picture.”

Knight said the bill’s second cause for concern involves opening the door to “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“The thing that baffles me the most is you, as a body, have created a hole in the financial roof of public schools, and now we want to go out and buy a 60-inch flat screen TV,” Kight said. “I don’t get it. We do not want our schools to do anything but be accountable to you as a public.”

A senate version of the bill, Senate Bill 2, has already been approved by the Senate.