When my oldest daughter was old enough to start school, we lived in a suburb of Dallas. I did not want my kids to go to public school in the big city, so we made a choice. Yes, we made a choice. We chose a private school. Thankfully we had a great church with great teachers and that is where our daughter got her first year of education. It was our choice. But there were no vouchers to pay for it, we paid for it, because it was our choice to put her there.

The next year, we moved to Northeast Texas. Avery to be exact. We moved to Avery, and I chose to give up a high paying job, for one simple reason. The teachers at Avery. Teachers like Marsha Deaton and Lisa Lennon and a leader like Gene Weaver. We chose to put our kids in public school in Avery because the teachers there cared about their students. My kids still know their teachers from elementary school. They prayed with them, the Ten Commandments were real there, and they were safe. Like everywhere else, life happens, and there were bumps in the road, but the choice was the right one.

I have spent the last several weeks doing what I do best…research. A lot of my recent time has been spent reading whatever I could about one particular topic that seems to be galvanizing our District 1 race for State Representative. The topic is school choice, or what most of the free world knows it by, school vouchers.

Vouchers have become a dividing line in the Texas republican party all across the state and it is no different right here in our corner of Texas. Our governor has made no bones about his vehement desire to see vouchers become a part of our landscape in Texas. It may be the one thing that I disagree with him on strongly, and that seems to be the case in rural Texas.

And that is where the rub occurs. Vouchers very well could be a good thing in urban areas like Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and Austin, but for us folks that live our lives in the country, that is not the case. I have talked to and listened to school superintendents from our local school districts and the resounding thought seems to be that vouchers would destroy a way of life that I have come to love. The reasons that I moved my family here all the way back in 1996 are still alive and well today.

Our schools here are the epicenters of our communities. Our teachers are our friends. We go to church with them, we sit out at ballfields with them, we buy our groceries at the same stores as they do, and we rely on them heavily to teach our children. When I say teach, it means far more than multiplication tables and the alphabet.

Perhaps the best example of what I am trying to say about our teachers comes from the life of Jessica Burgin. Coach Burgin was a teacher whose lessons far and away reached way beyond the bounds of a classroom or a playing field. Her lessons for students all across Northeast Texas were life lessons. Deeply spiritual lessons. Lessons that moved not only students, but fellow teachers, to look at the way they were living, and make changes. And here is the big thing to note…there are teachers like Jessica Burgin in every school I know here where we call home.

Schools, like most things in life, require money. I know for a fact that our rural schools in Northeast Texas get by with far less than they need. Our teachers make way less than they deserve. If you add vouchers to the mix, that becomes even worse. The funding for school vouchers has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere will be either funds that were once dedicated for public education, or new taxes. We can afford neither of those options.

Now, as I have said before, Representative incumbent Gary VanDeaver is a friend of mine. His challenger, Chris Spencer is as well. Mr. Huls, I do not know. But I can say with some assurance that all three are good men. So, voting seems rather simple to me, and I like things simple. If you are against school vouchers, vote for VanDeaver. If you think vouchers are a good thing, vote for Spencer or Huls.

When it comes to school choice, everyone has a choice. Make the choice that is right for you and your family.