Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The Texas Senate emerged Thursday evening from a daylong session behind closed doors as deadlocked over public education as it was when it started the day.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst insisted he had the two-thirds vote necessary to begin debating Senate Bill 2, which overhauls state spending on schools. But he worried that the Senate, taking a cue from House colleagues, might implode the special session by adding a "poison pill" amendment to the measure that would raise teacher salaries, pay to distribute new textbooks and do little else.

Dewhurst, a Republican, never allowed the bill to come to the floor, avoiding the fate of Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, who two days earlier saw the House repudiate the Republican leadership's attempts to pass public education and tax measures.

Instead Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said she will file a new version of the school legislation today.

That measure won't provide more than the $2.8 billion in new money in SB 2, but she said it would give superintendents more discretion in how they spend the money.

To the public, it must have appeared that nothing was happening Thursday.

Onlookers in attendance or tuning in on television or the Internet saw empty House and Senate chambers most of the afternoon as officials from the offices of the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker tried to salvage the special session, which still has three weeks left but virtually no momentum.

At one point, senators called the governor's office to inquire whether he would call them back for a third special session this summer if the Legislature quit over the impasse.

They were assured Gov. Rick Perry would not let the issue die.

The senators had their own concerns about how to proceed.
If they passed SB 2, opponents worried that an even more unpalatable measure would rebound from the House and a conference committee.

Upon its return to the Senate, opponents could no longer stop the measure because the two-thirds vote required to bring it up does not apply to a measure once it has cleared the Senate the first time.

A bloc of senators, most of them Democrats who are in the minority, asked Dewhurst if he would impose the two-thirds rule in this rare case or, at least, agree not to accept a conference committee report unless all five Senate negotiators would vote for it.

"I was not in favor of a rule change," Dewhurst said.
Other senators wanted to pass SB 2 to show that the Senate, unlike the House, could pass a major school measure.

In the end, Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said, "It's a hung jury."

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, was prepared to offer an amendment to SB 2 that would increase teacher salaries, pay for textbooks and strip out most of the rest of the measure, on which there has been no consensus.

That amendment had the support of a majority of senators.

As for Dewhurst trying to find the votes for his position in a series of closed-door meetings, Ellis quipped, "The Kool-Aid's in there, but they're not drinking."

A hearing on Shapiro's new measure will be scheduled for Monday.

Without a hint of irony, Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, emerged from the closed-door sessions to say, "It's real important we have an open process. . . . And teachers can review what we are doing."