With their efforts to derail school choice ramping up, at least one Democrat in the Texas Legislature is resorting to false attacks on a parental rights advocate.
The Twitter exchange started when the Texas House Democrats shared an article spotlighting their efforts to fight back against Gov. Greg Abbott’s emergency priorities for the legislative session, including school choice.
“Vouchers drain money from Texas’ already underfunded schools,” State Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D–Austin) was quoted as saying in the article. “We should be focused on investing more into our schools to ensure they’re [the] best in the nation—not taking funding away.”
That’s when school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, jumped in, saying “the money doesn’t belong to the government schools.”
Hinojosa fired back, saying that she knew DeAngelis didn’t live in Texas and telling him to mind his California schools.
The problem? DeAngelis lives in San Antonio.
In fact, DeAngelis has two degrees from the University of Texas at San Antonio, has attended Texas public schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, and has lived most of life in the Lone Star State.
When confronted with the facts, Hinojosa deflected, claiming DeAngelis just moved to San Antonio in December.
Rather than delete the false tweet, Hinojosa left it up; it was later slapped with a “Community Note” fact check by Twitter.
During the interaction, Hinojosa did not debate the merits of school choice proposals with DeAngelis.
The confrontation comes as Texas Democrats have firmly staked their opposition to any kind of school choice program, including the Education Savings Accounts proposed by Gov. Abbott. During his State of the State address last week, Abbott said passing the program was an emergency priority for the legislative session.
No ads. No paywalls. No government grants. No corporate masters.
Just real news for real Texans.
Support Texas Scorecard to keep it that way!
