"Letters to Use as Guides"

 

The recent deluge of Executive Orders issued from President Trump proves his lies about knowing nothing about Project 2025. You may or may not be invested in the goals and beliefs of this document, but you must know that many of the policies within it are currently guiding this Administration. This communication is to remind you of your duties to your constituents. We are only as strong as a nation for the care we give to the weakest—our children, people with a disability, and elderly. No matter what your personal gains and agenda within this current administration, you will be judged by your voters for how well you serve this community.
 
I do not believe that you want to forsake the important role of the Senate that you’ve served faithfully for so many years to participate with an administration whose purpose is to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy the government on a Federal level.
 
I ask that you work together with other Republicans and Democrats to make certain programs currently funded continue. If the school that’s behind my house, currently with 100% of the children on free breakfasts and lunches, suffers from the cruelty of the current policies being pushed into place, you will have failed your job. History has a way of revealing the cowards of each generation. Do you want to be labeled one?

 

Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

Copyright 2025 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Nightmare Smash-up”

            Last night, I found myself trapped on I10 in a van driven by the principal from Abbot Elementary. The quirky faculty sitting all around me, we protested in unison against the cars that ensnared the vehicle and prevented forward movement. Frustration fomented and fumed because there was nowhere to go, no exit ahead. My brain dragged out my personal experience of Hurricane Rita’s 2005 nightmare where we spent more than twenty-four hours in stopped traffic watching our gas gauges dipping lower with our anxiety shooting higher.

            Slapping the alarm clock to silence this morning, I woke up puzzled by this peculiar dream. Then I remembered the real nightmare created in Texas by our malicious Governor Abbott as he viciously ties public school spending into his pet private school voucher program. Texas public school districts face millions of dollars in deficits even when the State has the largest surplus of funds in state history. Abbott insists that school districts caused their own problems with mismanagement of funds.

            Before I went to sleep last night, I read the struggles of Judson ISD board members as they face a $32 million dollar deficit, and no way to continue with pay incentives they implemented in the 2023-2024 budget without bleeding more red. Districts also have to fulfill House Bill 3, Texas’s response to the Uvalde slaughter, to force districts to implement new guards and security standards with inadequate funding from the State.

            Internalizing the no win scenarios from the most recent news facing Texas public schools put me back onto I10 blocked into the far left lane. Now that I’m awake, I recall the panic I felt when I got out of my car to chat with my brother and son trapped in traffic directly behind me. My mother, already overdue for her medications, went into a Huntington’s disease tirade as we discussed our options. With nothing to lose, I knocked on the windows of the cars immediately in front and behind us in the next lane, begging for help from the drivers to squeeze their vehicles forward, or back, just enough for us to maneuver into the lane. Once our two car caravan settled into the middle lane, I repeated my plea with the next set of drivers, who edged just enough for us to move over and ahead again. We snaked ourselves to an exit in this way—one car at a time cooperating—until we steered of the stalled interstate and onto an access road.

            This solution to forward movement may be the only choice for Texas public schools. One person at a time: one parent, one faculty, one district needs to pressure by voting against a governor that implements slash-and-burn policies.

      Vote.

      VOTE.

      VOTE!

  

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman