Lupe Mendez learned about an integral piece of Houston’s past from a seventh-grader’s history fair project. The subject was the “huelga” schools of the 1970s, when Mexican Americans fed up with Houston ISD’s desegregation plan opted to homeschool their children instead of busing them across the city to Black schools, where they would legally be considered “white.” Mendez was not alone. Precious little has been written about the huelga schools. “Brown, Not White,” by University of Houston professor Guadalupe San Miguel, was published in 2001 A dozen years later, a grade school project by a Pin Oak Middle School student Jacob Tate shares some of the history of the “strike schools.” view article

This week the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) Board of Trustees convened for its quarterly meeting to discuss the status of the 13th check for retired teachers, the agency’s transition to a new office, the opening of the first TRS regional office in El Paso, and the financial health of the TRS Pension fund. view article

Early voting for four Houston ISD board seats and local council races ended Tuesday with 21,732 ballots cast, according to unofficial county totals. The final day of voting saw its largest turnout for in-person balloting, with 2,851 voters hitting the polls, about 1,200 more than the next highest one-day total.  Election day will be Saturday for the HISD seats, individual city council races for Bellaire and Missouri City, and a trustee race in the Houston Community College System that were forced into runoffs after none of the candidates in the contests secured at least half the vote during the Nov. 2 election.    (9) view article

Next spring, young students across Texas can once again virtually visit farms and ranches right from their classrooms through Texas Farm Bureau’s (TFB) Farm From School program.  “This program is unique because the students get to learn from a real farmer. It is personal in that classrooms can ask questions and see the real happenings of what is taking place on the farm at that time,” said Jordan Bartels, TFB associate director of Organization Division, Educational Outreach. “Students get to see just how diverse Texas agriculture is through the live visits to farms and ranches all across the state.”  The program is popular in Texas schools. The September visit, as part of the Fall 2021 program, had over 9,500 students participate, and teachers in higher grade levels showed interest in the program.    (12) view article

   Talia Natterson is a sophomore at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, a private school in Los Angeles, California. She writes for her school publication, Crossfire.