Real Change Is Up to Voters

I read your article about the state’s school finance system [“Going for Broke,” August 2023]. Fort Davis Independent School District superintendent Graydon Hicks’s frustration with state funding for his public schools is principally tied to decisions made by politicians who hold statewide offices. 

Hicks’s neighbors in Jeff Davis County, where Fort Davis is located, routinely vote for Republicans by large margins. In light of this, Hicks might have made more progress if he’d directed his ire at his neighbors and their voting choices instead of at state leaders who have failed his district.

Hicks describes himself as a conservative, and if he was among those who have voted for decades to keep Texas’s statewide government in Republican hands, then perhaps some self-reflection is also warranted. Stated another way: if Jeff Davis County residents want their politicians to “give a s— about West Texas,” to quote Hicks, then perhaps they should finally, at long last, vote for politicians who will.
Todd Piccus, Austin 

Bravo to Forrest Wilder for his article about the state’s school finance system and the struggling Fort Davis ISD. The lack of support from our state leaders for rural schools degrades those schools’ resources to educate children.      

In the last election, nearly two thirds of voters in Jeff Davis County voted for our current governor. Not only are our governor and his Republican colleagues starving schools of resources, but Abbott’s refusal to expand Medicaid is starving rural hospitals, causing them to close. When schools and hospitals close, towns die. 

One has to wonder why rural voters throughout Texas are voting so overwhelmingly against their apparent self-interest. 
David Hoyer, Houston 

Time to Wave Goodbye

What a disappointment to read “Donald Trump” in the first sentence of your article “Wacowabunga!” [August 2023], followed by several more sentences filled with political garbage that had nothing to do with Waco Surf. It left me irritated. What does Trump have to do with Waco Surf? Nothing! And to bring up the Branch Davidians in relation to a water park? What are the motives here?

Can you publish an interesting article and not involve politics? Please realize that we do not want to read about Donald Trump anymore. What a shame for Waco Surf. And for the rest of us. 
Sarah Geyer, Georgetown

Way to Rapp Up a Story

Texas Monthly executive editor Kathy Blackwell’s story on Anne Rapp [“Revisiting Her Script,” August 2023] was evocative, perceptive, respectful, and elegiac. And the conclusion was perfect. This is where Texas Monthly shines. 
Peter Heckmann, Tyler

Editors’ note: An article in the September 2023 issue, “Remembering McMurtry,” incorrectly stated that Larry McMurtry died at his home in Archer City. McMurtry died in Tucson, Arizona.    

This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Texas Monthly. Subscribe today.