Publish Date: June 15, 2025 3:09 pm Author: Texas AFT
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Friday, June 13, 2025
Looking Back(from left to right): Brownsville Educators Stand Together members presenting a resolution to the school board, Spring AFT members unboxing books for a Reading Opens the World event, and Texas AFT United members meeting with legislative staff.
The Work of Our Union
Next week, there will be no Hotline newsletter. Texas AFT will be in Dallas for our 32nd biennial convention. This is an important time and a welcome celebration of our members and their union’s work over the past two years.
We have a formidable lineup of speakers and panels planned for next Friday and Saturday, and you can watch some of the action via livestream on our Facebook or YouTube pages.
From school board advocacy to book giveaways to legislative organizing, the past two years have been busy, sometimes frustrating, and often inspiring. All of it has been done by the hard-working, deeply caring teachers, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, librarians, counselors, nurses, custodians, food service workers, faculty, and other essential staff who make up this union.
May you be proud of the work you have done to protect Texas public schools and move this state forward. We’ll see you in here in two weeks, ready toput in the work for the next two years.
In this week’s Hotline:
Unpacking what the Legislature did on your right to fair wages
Saturday, June 7 was Election Day for May local election runoffs, and it was a great day for San Antonio labor. Alongside San Antonio Central Labor Council peers, Northside AFT and San Antonio Alliance members have knocked doors, made calls, and organized their communities in support of candidates who will put workers first. Come Election Day, their hard work paid off.
We congratulate Gina Ortiz Jones, the next mayor of San Antonio, and new councilmembers Ric Galvan and Ivalis Meza Gonzalez!
The Educators Bill of Rights recognizes that fair compensation is non-negotiable. It diagnoses the underpayment of teachers, paraprofessionals, and adjunct professors as a root cause of staffing shortages, and it proposes clear, actionable solutions: increase the basic allotment to trigger automatic pay raises; set a living wage for support staff; invest meaningfully in higher-ed faculty; and ensure unemployment benefits for drivers and cafeteria workers during layoffs.
When the 89th Legislature convened, Texas AFT championed five bills to turn these proposals into law:
HB 237 (Rep. John Bucy) offered a $10,000 annual salary increase for all full-time state employees—including higher education staff—with prorated raises for part-timers.
HB 419 (Rep. Terry Meza) would have established a $15/hour minimum for school bus drivers (or the federal minimum wage, whichever is higher), covering districts of 4,500+ students, charters, and their contractors.
HB 1257 (Rep. John Bryant) aimed to raise the basic allotment—moving from attendance-based to enrollment-based funding—and lock in dedicated mental-health funds, translating directly into raises for K-12 educators and staff.
HB 337 (Rep. Mihaela Plesa)proposed dedicating any surplus in the Foundation School Fund to boost the basic allotment, with those increases automatically triggering pre-K–12 employee raises.
HB 351 (Rep. Vikki Goodwin)sought an annual inflation adjustment to the basic allotment, guaranteeing year-over-year pay raises for all pre-K–12 school employees.
This Flag Day, we’re rallying across the country for No Kings Day — a National Day of Action to stand against authoritarianism, defend our democratic freedoms, and remind our leaders that power belongs to the people, not a king. Find an event near you and check out ourdigital toolkit to take action online.
The State Board of Education will convene in Austin Tuesday, June 24, at 9 a.m. CT through Friday, June 27. A critical item on the agenda is the Generation 30 (2025) charter applicants that move forward to the SBOE for a final vote on Jun 27, 2025.
The Commissioner of Education approved six of the seven new charter school applicants. These six charters schools project a total enrollment of over 3,500 students per year. Most plan to open in school districts that are already saturated with charter schools and lose 25% or more of their students to charter schools.
There is little evidence of need for new charter schools in Texas. Inefficient charter schools drain vital resources from neighborhood public schools, and claim to have waitlists while falling significantly short of enrollment projections. This is why you see so much wasted tax dollars on charter school advertising.
On June 4, just two days after the Texas Legislature came to a close, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the State of Texas over the 2001 law allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. This came after House Bill 232 and Senate Bill 1798, two bills limiting pathways for undocumented students to payin-state tuition, died in the legislative session. Attorney General Ken Paxton was swift to concede to the DOJ’s case and urged the courts to side with the federal government and declare the law unconstitutional.
This decision does not come without an equally swift response from advocates and experts. Representative Donna Howard, who serves as the Vice-Chair for the House Committee on Higher Education, released a joint letter with other Democratic House representatives calling on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) to protect undocumented students’ access to in-state tuition. This letter asks Dr. Wynn Rosser, the Commissioner of the THECB, to create a provisional classification to grandfather in currently enrolled or admitted undocumented students and allow them to pay the tuition rate they expected before the court ruling.
🔗Take Action: Support the demands listed in Rep. Donna Howard’s letter here.
Recommended Reading
Education news from around the state and nation that’s worth your time.
📖 In Texas, University Presidents May Soon Control Faculty Senates. A bill awaiting Gov. Abbott’s signature would require college administrators to set procedures for faculty governing bodies and appoint their leaders, part of an effort to address “liberal faculty control over universities.” (Inside Higher Ed, June 9)
📖 The Lege’s ‘Big Government Intrusion’ into University Academics. Expanding on last session’s anti-DEI campus crackdown, some Republicans in the Legislature are now going after gender and ethnic studies programs and faculty independence. (Texas Observer, April 24)
🎧 The Shocking Billionaire Plot to Dismantle Public Education. Texas is on the verge of passing a law that could defund public education. Vouchers send public taxpayer dollars to private schools. It could cost taxpayers $10 billion by 2030. And it could destroy Friday Night Lights. (More Perfect Union, April 22)
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