Preventive Law: The Texas Administrative Procedures Act

Austin ISD’s bid to avoid state takeover rejected by Texas Education Agency

TEA officials on Thursday denied the district’s request to approve a partnership to run its three chronically failing schools that would have put a pause on the campuses' accountability rating.  Austin ISD’s effort to stave off a possible state takeover suffered a major setback Thursday after the Texas Education Agency rejected the district’s plan to hand three struggling middle schools to an external nonprofit operator.  In a letter sent Thursday to Superintendent Matias Segura, TEA officials said Texas Council for International Studies failed to demonstrate a record of turning around campuses with repeated failing accountability ratings and, in some cases, partnerships with the nonprofit had produced worse academic outcomes.  District leaders applied for the partnership in March under the SB 1882 program, which can shield campuses from certain state sanctions when districts turn over operations to outside organizations. 

Federal Judge Blocks Key Border Enforcement Law Provisions

The ruling blocks Texas DPS from enforcing a state law making illegal reentry a crime and allowing the state to issue “removal” orders against illegal aliens.  A federal judge has once again blocked major portions of Texas’ border enforcement law Senate Bill 4, stopping the state from enforcing its new “reentry” crime and deportation process against noncitizens with prior removal histories—just as those provisions were set to take effect.

Long lines linger at Houston’s biggest airport as TSA agents miss work during partial government shutdown

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.

Northside ISD has nearly $200 million in 2022 bond project ‘on hold’

Nine school improvement projects totaling nearly $200 million from Northside Independent School District's 2022 bond issue are "on hold" with no indication of when the projects will be built. Just four years after its nearly $1 billion bond election, San Antonio's largest school district intends to seek voter approval in November on a bond package for security upgrades and other improvements.  Northside's Building Committee got an update Wednesday on the $198.47 million in projects that were approved nearly four years ago but have not since been executed. Superintendent John Craft told a panel of trustees he wants to "be careful in not putting millions and millions of dollars into these facilities and then having to come back in a very short amount of time (and saying), 'Well, we really need more science labs.'

147 measles cases reported in Texas so far this year, most of them in federal detention centers

Local officials report that 108 of the cases originated in a contracted detention facility in Hudspeth County.  The largest outbreak is in a single contracted federal detention facility in Hudspeth County, as of March 18, according to DSHS. Hudspeth County Judge Joanna MacKenzie told The Texas Tribune that the 108 cases are all at the West Texas Detention Facility, which is managed by LaSalle Corrections, a private company. The facility has previously housed immigrant detainees, though it’s not clear if it still does. It does not appear on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s list of detention facilities.  “Not having jurisdiction, my office is not involved in response,” MacKenzie added in a statement, “however I remain in communication with DSHS and LaSalle, as I regularly do.”