The number of uninsured young children in Texas has risen in recent years, according to a new report from Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families.  Georgetown CCF, a prominent nonpartisan health policy research organization, used data from the 2024 American Community Survey — the most recent data that is currently available from the U.S. Census Bureau.  "The reason we look at young children is because their coverage is really important during a critical time of their development," said Georgetown CCF research fellow Elisabeth Burak. "When they don't have access to the care that they need in those early years, they're at higher risk of falling behind developmentally."  Researchers found that 10.8% of Texas children under 6 were uninsured in 2024, up from 7.9% in 2022. That comes out to more than 73,000 additional uninsured kids. Texas has the highest uninsured rate of any U.S. state for that age bracket, far exceeding the national rate of 5.3%. view article

Millions of Americans are starting to see their monthly health-insurance bills rise, a new pressure point for a nation still frustrated with the high cost of living.   Many of those facing the most substantial dollar increases are middle-income Americans who buy health insurance through the marketplaces set up by the government’s Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. view article

Three students are hospitalized after a band tower collapsed in Frisco on Thursday evening, officials said. According to Frisco ISD, the band tower at Centennial High School, which was approximately 30 feet tall, collapsed, injuring several students who were climbing on it. The injured students were transported to local hospitals for treatment, Frisco ISD officials said. view article

Alvin Independent School District announced Wednesday that Wilder and Marek Elementary Schools will be closed for the remainder of the school year due to significant water damage as rounds of heavy rain and storms continue moving through the Houston area. Initially, district officials said they expected both schools to reopen on Thursday, but that changed in a Wednesday afternoon update. view article

Classes have been canceled at two different Alvin ISD schools in Pearland for the rest of the school year due to storm damage, the district announced Wednesday. We first told you on KHOU 11 Morning News that Wilder Elementary School was damaged by the storm system that moved through overnight. The district later confirmed that Marek Elementary would also be closed. view article

Bexar County officials demonstrated on Tuesday a new railroad-style flood gate system designed to automatically block drivers from entering flooded roadways — part of a broader $21 million “NextGen” flood warning network that officials hope will prevent future flood deaths across the region.  The new flood gates use upstream water sensors, flashing warning lights and lowered gate arms to close roads when rising creek levels make roadway conditions dangerous.  The county’s older High-Water Alert Lifesaving Technology, or HALT, flood warning system primarily relies on flashing warning beacons activated by rising water near crossings. This new system features towers that add another layer of prevention when drivers approach a flooded road. view article

Waco Tornado – An Oral History by Bill Little  [The logo for StormWatch 2013 includes the red Dr Pepper Museum logo with a gray rooster weathervane.] As we move into our final weeks of StomWatch 2013, we’d like to share another story of that day. During the exhibit’s opening weeks, Bill Little happened to be in a tour group coming through the Museum. During his tour, he realized he had a unique story to tell about his personal experiences of that day. You see, he was working in our building – the Dr Pepper Bottling Plant – that day and lived to tell his story. Since then he has gone to finish his degree from Baylor, get several others, and then teach at Southwestern Baptist University, and somewhere along the way married another fine Baylor graduate – Mary Barnett.  Here is Bill Little’s story in his own words: view article

Final approval of the curtailment plan is expected at a future City Council meeting. Experts predict that, without significant rainfall, a water emergency could arrive by September. view article

One of Houston's fastest-growing suburbs is on shaky ground.  Katy—located west of Houston and long-ranked among the state's fastest-expanding communities—is sinking faster than any other suburb in the Houston area, according to a recent report from the Houston-Galveston Subsidence District. view article

Texas wants all school buses to have 3-point seat belts by 2029-30. But the price tag is high for local districts also facing budget challenges. view article

The leaders of the Texas Legislature support lifting a new state requirement for youth camps to install “end-to-end fiber optic facilities” in order to allow them to operate this summer, following a lawsuit from 19 camps calling the measure too challenging.  Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows released a statement Tuesday supporting the removal of the requirement for fiber-optic internet infrastructure at all Texas camps, citing the difficulty of meeting this requirement  “We also recognize that there may be means other than fiber to provide reliable, redundant internet access, which would satisfy the purpose and spirit of the law,” Patrick and Burrows said in the statement. view article

Ponder Independent School District is asking the community for prayers after their track coach was injured during a regional track meet on Saturday in Tyler. Described as a "freak accident," according to his wife on a public Facebook post, Ponder ISD track coach Blake Crutsinger underwent surgery Monday morning to address swelling in his brain after getting hit by a shot put Saturday afternoon. view article

A suspect is dead after leading several agencies in the Big Bend Region on a pursuit of a stolen Valentine ISD vehicle on Monday morning. According to a Presidio County Sheriff's Office Facebook post, deputies and the sheriff responded to assist with a vehicle pursuit that began in Jeff Davis, went into Presidio County, and then back into Jeff Davis County. view article

Camp Mystic on Thursday said it has withdrawn its application for an operating license, a decision that means it will not reopen to campers this summer.  The decision follows a grueling hearing earlier this week when Texas lawmakers pushed the family that runs the camp to consider if they were truly ready to reopen after 25 campers and two counselors died there during last year’s July 4 flood, along with the camp’s executive director Dick Eastland. Family members of the girls who died also spoke passionately to the camp directors in that hearing about their loss.  “  No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July’s tragedy,” the camp said in its statement.  Camp Mystic had planned to welcome back more than 800 girls to a portion of its property that was away from the hardest-hit areas where people died. The camp said girls would be safe there and it wanted to continue its mission. view article

A short window for tax-free shopping is prompting Texans to prioritize emergency readiness across the state. The sales tax holiday extends through midnight on Monday and covers select emergency supplies.At Academy Sports + Outdoors, softlines manager Martina Rodriguez assisted Abilene shoppers with their weekend purchases. view article

A push to restrict local governments’ power is having downstream effects in tiny towns and big cities like Dallas. view article

A former FBI counterterrorism agent is warning that Texas is already in a “pre‑kinetic” phase of jihad, with an expanding network of mosques, Islamic schools, and Muslim Brotherhood‑linked organizations he says are working to subvert American law and replace it with Sharia.  In an interview with Texas GOP Chairman Abraham George, former FBI agent John Guandolo shed crucial light on Sharia law in Texas and the Islamic agenda. view article

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday warned Dallas that he would pull $32.1 million in state funds if the city does not repeal police department rules around collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.   In a letter to Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, Andrew Friedrichs, the executive director of Abbott’s Public Safety Office, said the Dallas Police Department’s internal rules regarding immigration may violate the city’s agreement with the state for the funding.  The threat to Dallas is part of a broader push by the Republican governor to force major cities into closer alignment with federal immigration enforcement. Abbott issued similar warnings this week to Houston and Austin for their respective immigration-related policies.  A spokesperson for Johnson’s office did not respond Thursday afternoon to requests seeking comment. City and police spokespeople did not answer a list of questions about Abbott’s letter or the rules at issue, issuing a joint statement saying the city would respond by the April 23 deadline in the letter. view article

The teacher previously sued a different school district over a different assault claim.  More than 100 police officers responded to a panic alarm allegedly activated by a teacher at about 8:45 a.m. on Thursday at Splendora High School.  The school was already on lockdown when officers arrived, and school officials later sent out a notice to parents that police were investigating a "physical altercation" between a student and a staff member. view article

The ShinyHunters extortion group has leaked data from 13.5 million McGraw Hill user accounts, stolen after breaching the company's Salesforce environment earlier this month. Founded in 1909, McGraw Hill is a leading global educational publisher with annual revenue of $2.2 billion, which provides education content and solutions for PreK–12, higher education, and professional learning. view article

The director of the Texas summer camp where 27 campers and counselors were killed by a devastating flood in 2025 said he did not see early federal and state warnings sent the day before the storm hit and that staff had no meetings about the pending danger view article

HISD has quietly closed its Harper Disciplinary Alternative Education Program this school year, moving all its high school students and some staff from the Garden Oaks campus to another disciplinary program near Houston’s Fifth Ward.  The school offered students in ninth through 12th grade a structured, temporary setting after they were removed from their regular campus for disciplinary reasons.  The consolidation marks HISD's 14th campus closure decision this school year alone. HISD also closed the Las Américas Newcomer School for immigrant and refugee students, and 12 more schools will close or consolidate next school year due to low enrollment. view article

A female school administrator was injured after a Northside Independent School District Police K-9 bit her on Tuesday, according to a district spokesperson. The incident occurred around 11:45 a.m. in the office area at Taft High School. view article

The ongoing partial government shutdown has led to long security lines at airports across the country, but no airport has felt the effects as acutely as George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.  On Thursday, wait times at Bush, one of the nation’s busiest airports, reached four hours or more, with lines extending outside its terminals. Passenger volume at Bush is expected to get worse this weekend, driven by major events in Houston, including the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament.  The lines are a result of many Transportation Security Administration officers — who aren’t getting paid during the shutdown — not coming to work.   As airline passengers waited in long lines and congressional negotiators appeared far from a deal to fund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, President Donald Trump late Thursday said on social media that he will sign an emergency order for the department, which oversees TSA, to immediately pay TSA officers. He did not elaborate where the money for the agency, unfunded by Congress for more than a month, would come from. view article

The permit will last for three years or until the governor’s proclamation ends, whichever is shorter. 
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A fifth grade Lumberton Independent School District student reported "vulgar" language in the STAAR reading test last month, according to information from LISD.  view article

Vidor ISD superintendent Jay Killgo estimates the district has $12-13 million in damages from Harvey. Both Oak Forest Elementary and Vidor Middle School are unusable right now. Those students are going elsewhere, which is overcrowding some schools. view article

Burnet school district officials were probably expecting to get more than two years from the synthetic turf installed at Bulldog Field in 2015, but that didn’t happen and it’s now set the district back $150,000. Burnet Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Keith McBurnett, however, said the district is looking to get $105,000 back from one manufacturer. Last year, officials noticed some turf fibers sticking up higher than others, so they took a closer look, McBurnett said. “To most people, it probably wasn’t noticeable,” he said. “We had all the experts look at the field, and they looked at the backside. It needed to be replaced.” view article

North American Solutions (NAS), a leading provider of insurance and risk management services for public entities, is excited to announce that Michelle Faust, currently Director, Safety & Risk Management at Round Rock ISD, will be joining the NAS team in January. view article

A teen who was severely bruised in a "brutal and excessive" nightstick attack by a Pasadena ISD school resource officer has settled his federal lawsuit for $60,000. Cesar Suquet Jr. was 16 in May 2014 when he went to the principal's office at South Houston High School to retrieve his cell phone, which had been confiscated earlier that day. His request was declined and he was told to leave. view article

Garland ISD was one of just 10 districts statewide recently honored by The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). The district’s Risk Management Department earned a 2015 TASB Risk Management Fund Innovation Award for its creative safety video campaign. view article

Abilene ISD board approved the bid on Monday evening at its agenda review meeting. Construction coordinator for the district, Joe Humphrey, says Martinez Elementary took the brunt of the storm. view article

Three students from Stehlik Intermediate School in the Aldine Independent School District were taken to an area hospital Tuesday morning after a minor collision with a cement mixer. The wreck happened about 8 a.m. on West Road at Deer Trail Drive as the bus was transporting students to the school at 400 West Road, a school district spokeswoman said. The school is just west of Interstate 45. view article