The ALA has faced criticism for its opposition to restrictions on inappropriate materials in children’s libraries.   view article

The name change from the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America" began rolling out across the U.S. on Monday, just a month after President Donald Trump announced his intention to Americanize the name. view article

Legislators are expected to take up a $360 million proposal that would change the landscape of financial aid in the state.   view article

Lawmakers here and in Washington have long debated ending the practice of changing the clocks twice a year.   view article

Creighton, with help from other Republicans, attempted to correct the record on taxpayer-funded lobbying, per-pupil funding, and other topics related to school choice. view article

The president offers strong praise for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Texas Senate.   view article

They urge lawmakers to move the funding toward public school needs, suggesting school facility needs in Helene-affected counties and tutoring. view article

It was another busy week in Austin, and it was a pleasure to welcome more constituents from House District 9 to your Texas State Capitol. Among those who made the long drive from Deep East Texas were folks from Angelina, Polk, San Augustine and Trinity counties representing the Texas Wildlife Association, the Independent Bankers Association of Texas, the Lumberman’s Association of Texas and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. view article

State Sen. Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville) met with local superintendents from Angelina County last week to discuss education issues ahead of the 89th Legislature. He released a statement on his opposition of Senate Bill 2 Wednesday night.   view article

In a 19-12 vote, Texas senators passed their first bill of the 89th legislative session, Senate Bill 2, Feb. 5. The proposal by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, now heads to the Texas House. SB 2 proposes spending $1 billion annually for education savings accounts, which families could use to help cover the costs of private education. About 100,000 students would qualify for the program, Creighton said. “Across Texas public schools, despite the hard work of our teachers that we value and respect so much and the billions of dollars we spend in our state budget, many students are feeling left behind,” Creighton said on the Senate floor. “That is unacceptable.” view article

State leaders on Thursday praised the Texas Senate for its swift passage of a school voucher bill that breezed through the upper chamber a day earlier after hours of debate over the legislation, which proposes to give up to $11,500 in public money to students who attend private schools. view article

Texas Senate Passes School Choice Legislation, Sending it to the House .     view article

The governor said the state resources are available to the federal government and requested that the U.S. reimburse Texas for the border hardening measures under Operation Lone Star.   view article

Texas families could use tax dollars to fund their children’s private school tuition under a Republican-backed bill that sailed through the Senate late Wednesday.  Under Senate Bill 2, families could receive $10,000 a year per student in public taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s tuition at an accredited private school and other expenses like textbooks, transportation and therapy. The legislation would provide $11,500 per student for children with disabilities. It also would provide at least $2,000 a year per student for home-schooling families who participate in the program. Home-schooling students with disabilities could receive $2,500 a year for therapy, a provision lawmakers added into the bill Wednesday. Families would receive the money through state-managed education savings accounts. view article

Gov. Greg Abbott is ready to allow online sports betting in Texas. view article

At a heated and highly politicized higher education hearing in November, just two months before the new Texas legislative session got started, one interim charge seemed to garner rare resounding agreement: K-12 student pathways to higher education must be improved. view article

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott insisted Monday that he would accept nothing less than a robust, universal school choice voucher program, and he resisted calls to join the plan with blanket increases in public school funding. view article

ouse Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) apparently participated in a longstanding Democratic tradition Friday, threatening violence to achieve a political aim. view article

This past week, it was a pleasure to welcome a number of constituents from House District 9 in your Texas State Capitol. Among those who made the long drive from Deep East Texas were elected officials from Tyler County and several residents from Angelina and Polk counties. It always brings such joy to my heart to see folks from back home, and these visits constantly remind me of why I am here in Austin.

The state House Public Education Committee on Tuesday considered more than 30 bills aimed at making Texas public schools safer, including measures that would put more armed personnel on campuses and give districts money for sweeping security changes. The Legislature has made improving school safety a priority this session after 10 people, mostly students, were shot and killed at Santa Fe High School 10 months ago. The shooting spurred roundtable discussions and studies among policymakers, lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott in the immediate aftermath. “Out of that loss, we have an opportunity to devote ourselves and commit ourselves to seeing that their loss was not in vain and that future students, future teachers, future families in this state will, if at all possible, not have to experience what these individuals experienced,” said Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, during Tuesday’s hearing. view article

Property tax reform has been a top priority for Texas lawmakers from the start of the 86th legislative session. The early filing of identical, wide-reaching bills in the House and Senate in January—Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 2—sparked debate on the topic and earned pushback from many local entities that could be affected by the proposals. The twin bills propose to lower the cap for local entities’ annual tax revenue growth from 8 percent to 2.5 percent and to improve efficiency and transparency in the tax system. The proposals were fast-tracked for debate in both chambers after Gov. Greg Abbott declared property tax an emergency item in February, and dozens of related bills have been filed in their wake. view article

Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller are back on the lesson plan after a vote by the Texas State Board of Education. The committee voted 12-2, with one abstention, on Tuesday to continue teaching students about Clinton in high school history classes, according to State Board of Education Director Debbie Ratcliffe. The board also voted to keep Keller on the curriculum. The vote reverses a September preliminary decision to cut the women, along with 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and several other historical figures, from the required curriculum. The board said then that the change was intended to streamline the curriculum for its 5.4 million students at the recommendation of volunteer work groups. view article

School finance was the big-ticket item this legislative session, said Emett Alvarez, Victoria Democrats Club president. "Education should be important to everyone," Alvarez said. "We are all taxpayers and are affected by it one way or the other." The Victoria County Democratic Party will host its club meeting Tuesday at VeraCruz Restaurant, 3110 N. Navarro St. Guest speakers will be Dwight Harris, former president of the Victoria chapter of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, and Ray Thomas, who is running for chief justice of the 13th Court of Appeals. view article

Will there ever come a day when our state leaders and lawmakers want to make Texas as good a place for children as it is for business? The 85th legislative session didn't seem often inclined in that direction, particularly in matters related to educating the state's schoolchildren. A massive funding failure for prekindergarten students. The state Senate's defeatist response to a solid House attempt at school finance reform. Out-of-proportion talk about vouchers for those attending private schools. But let's not overlook a couple of bright spots. Thanks to skillful work by three North Texas lawmakers, the state's youngest learners should eventually get the gift of better-prepared teachers. view article

Back in March, James Dickey, then the chairman of the Travis County Republican Party, showed up at the state Capitol to testify in support of House Bill 1911 — a proposal known as constitutional carry, or the ability to carry firearms without a license. It was a top legislative priority for the state GOP, and Dickey brought a message tailored for the Republicans on the House panel considering it: Don't forget the platform. "The plank which said we should have constitutional carry scored a 95 percent approval rate, outscoring over 80 percent of the other planks in the option," Dickey said, referring to the party platform — a 26-page document outlining the party's positions that is approved by delegates to its biennial conventions. Constitutional carry, Dickey added, "is something very clearly wanted by the most active members of the Republican Party in Texas." view article

Contention over where transgender people use the restroom has clouded much of the 2017 legislative session and has expanded to cover other issues such as property tax policy and school finance as lawmakers push to complete their work by Monday. After Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick served notice that the scaled-back version of the so-called bathroom bill recently approved by the Texas House was a non-starter in the Senate, the upper chamber in the predawn hours Wednesday made an end-run effort to save the stronger measure that fell victim to legislative deadlines. But by the time the sun rose over the Capitol, it was clear that the House would kill the measure again. view article

An effort to overhaul the state’s beleaguered school finance system has been declared dead after the Texas Senate Education Committee’s chairman said Wednesday that he would not appoint conferees to negotiate with the House. “That deal is dead,” Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, said. Taylor’s remarks come after his counterpart in the House, Dan Huberty, R-Houston, gave a passionate speech in which he said he would not accept the Senate’s changes to House Bill 21 and would seek a conference committee with the Senate. view article

The Texas House has voted to allow concealed carry permit holders to have guns in their locked cars parked outside schools. Tentative approval came late Tuesday night as an amendment to an otherwise unrelated bill on school boards. Final House approval should come Wednesday. The state Senate already approved a full, bipartisan bill seeking to do virtually the same thing. A similar, full bill had died in the House without reaching a floor vote but now lives on as an amendment. view article

A standoff between the Texas House and Senate over vouchers killed a major school finance fix Wednesday. The House tried to pump $1.6 billion dollars more into public schools. The Senate didn't want that much and countered by tacking on their own priority. The author of the House Bill 21 rejected the changes made to it in the Senate, saying they don't go far enough. Last year, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the system was barely constitutional. So the House approved pumping $1.6 billion additional dollars into it but that plan came out of the Senate reduced to $530 million. view article

Texas lawmakers have given final approval to a measure cracking down on inappropriate relationships between teachers and students. The bill requires principals and superintendents to report inappropriate teacher-student relationships or face jail time and fines up to $10,000. The teacher's family could also lose access to the teacher's pension. view article

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declared a key school funding bill dead Wednesday, saying he was "appalled" the House would refuse to go along with the Senate's plan to create a school voucher program for students with disabilities.  "Although Texas House leaders have been obstinate and closed-minded on this issue throughout this session, I was hopeful when we put this package together last week that we had found an opening that would break the logjam," Patrick said in a statement. "I simply did not believe they would vote against both disabled children and a substantial funding increase for public schools." view article

 A state lawmaker is looking for donations to pay off debt Texas students rack up in school cafeterias. Partnered with Feeding Texas, Representative Helen Giddings, D-DeSoto, launched a statewide crowdfunding campaign Tuesday, in an effort to prevent what she calls “lunch shaming.” At some Texas schools, students with lunch debt or empty accounts are denied a hot lunch and given a cheese sandwich instead. “The cruelty and lack of compassion for children who suffer the humiliation, the labeling and not to mention the hunger pains of so-called lunch shaming, it is inconceivable,” Giddings said. view article

Texas lawmakers wrap up a very busy week at the Capitol today, and last night had a little bit of everything that you’ll find at the end of a legislative session. Bills as amendments With just over two weeks left in the legislative session, lawmakers are scrambling to get their bills to the governor’s desk. That scramble often has lawmakers looking for ways to add their bills to other legislation. That’s exactly what Sen. Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood) did Thursday morning when he added a provision to create a school voucher system onto a school finance bill.  “It establishes the educational savings account program administered by the comptroller, which provides parents with funds to pay for education needs of their child,” Taylor said as he added the amendment to the House bill in the Senate Education committee. But even this addition isn’t everything the Senate Education chair wanted. The addition only provides money for private school tuition or tutoring for children with disabilities. view article

Over the last two years, I’ve been working with students, teachers, parents and taxpayers to improve the way that we’re providing education to Texas students. During the current legislative session, some of those efforts are beginning to show results. The Texas House of Representatives where I serve, has passed three bills to improve the “Robin Hood” program, A-F rating system, and standardized testing. In overhauling the entire funding of our public education system, House Bill 21 will address a problem that has long plagued our West Texas districts. The “Robin Hood” scheme has been a detriment to school districts in our region, and under this bill we will be reducing the burden on our local school districts bear by allowing them to keep more of their hard-earned money.  view article

The state Senate Education Committee tweaked the House's school finance bill -- HB 21 -- to add funding for educational savings accounts for students with disabilities. Lubbock Sen. Charles Perry said he will approve it because small, rural schools in his district need other funding the House measure offers. "You could say it's brilliant strategy -- and it is," Perry said. "It's politics at its best or its worst, depending on what side of the equation [you're on]." Perry said the ESAs would open up school choice opportunity for a limited number of families, but that's not the main appeal for the House measure to him; Perry says the $1.6 billion the measure would provide to schools would protect districts affected by the end of the 2006 Additional State Aid for Tax Reduction program in September. view article