Former State Board of Education (SBOE) member and freshman state Rep. Aicha Davis (D–DeSoto) appeared this week on WFAA-TV's Inside Texas Politics to talk about her transition from the SBOE to the Texas House, public education policy, and what she hopes to accomplish as a newly minted member of the Texas Legislature. In the interview, Davis said she is excited to work on a broader range of issues in the Texas House, beginning with increasing teacher pay and giving new teachers the support they need to obtain certification. 

“We definitely need to figure out how to support the teacher pipeline,” Davis said. “Hire more teachers, prepare more folks to be teachers, make folks excited about the teaching profession.” 

Davis, who holds a master’s degree in education and is pursuing a doctoral degree, vowed she is ready to fight against private school vouchers that would draw funding away from local public schools in order to subsidize private school tuition.  

Davis argued that opposition to vouchers will continue to increase as the consequences of school voucher programs, particularly in other states where voucher programs have sapped taxpayer dollars without delivering on the promise of providing choice to working families, become more widely known. 

“We need to focus more on funding our public schools than we do sending money anywhere else,” Davis said. “If there is going to be a true choice, we’ve got to have strong public schools as a choice.”  

Davis also pointed out that students with disabilities would not be entitled to support or acceptance by private schools, which can refuse to admit students with special needs or from differing socioeconomic backgrounds. 

Davis is one of 31 freshman legislators in the Texas House as the 89th Legislature gets underway. With 150 representatives in the Texas House, roughly one in every five is serving their first term.