Publish Date: October 3, 2025 1:56 pm Author: Texas AFT
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Friday, October 3, 2025
What the shutdown means for Texas
The federal government has shut down, and that is bad news for Texas. As the Texas AFL-CIO notes, our state is home to the third-most federal workers in the country and the highest number of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) members.
This shutdown will lock out hundreds of thousands of federal employees from doing their jobs while forcing hundreds of thousands more—like TSA officers or VA caregivers—to work without pay.
Let’s be clear: We do not want this shutdown. Our members, our families, and our communities deserve stability. But we also cannot support a deal that slashes Medicaid and ends Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits.
This shutdown comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s big, ugly bill that cut Medicaid coverage for millions. If Congress does not extend the ACA tax credits, an estimated 4.2 million Americans will lose their health insurance coverage and another 20 million will face significant premium increases.
Ending those credits will drive up costs for everyoneand force some healthcare facilities to close their doors. Some rural hospitals already are closing.
Texas higher ed is lurching through a turbulent stretch: a court-ordered reinstatement of a fired professor at Texas State, new classroom speech limits across the Texas Tech System, and the University of Texas System’s abolition of faculty senates. Each development lands differently, but together they point to the same through-line: shrinking space for shared governance and academic freedom, with ripple effects for campus climate, instruction, and student well-being.
One sign at a rally in support of Dr. Tom Alter in San Marcos last week. Courtesy of the Texas AFL-CIO.
We wish we were surprised by the latest report from the Economic Policy Institute, which has tracked relative wage data for teachers and other degreed professionals for more than four decades. The results for 2024 are in: the “teacher pay penalty,” the wage gap between teachers and similarly educated professionals in other fields, hit a record high of 26.9%.
This means that all else being equal, teachers earned 26.9% less than other college graduates. Texas compares slightly better than the national average at only a 23% teacher penalty.
The controversy surrounding Senate Bill 10, the Texas law requiring every public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments, shows no sign of slowing down.
Fourteen additional school districts are now facing lawsuits over the mandate, broadening what was already one of the most closely watched education-related legal battles in the state.
To help our members continue to grow professionally, Texas AFT has adopted a union’s approach to alternative teacher certification. This summer, delegates to the Texas AFT convention in Dallas directed our union to explore the feasibility of a Texas AFT-owned accredited alternative certification program (ACP).
But a first step was visible on Sept. 27 in the Cy-Fair AFT union hall, as our local union held the first session for aspiring certified teachers as part of a partnership with iTeach.
✍Save the date and get ready for The Texas Tribune Festival, Nov. 13-15 in downtown Austin. Join bold thinkers and doers for three days of conversations and big ideas shaping the future of Texas and beyond.
Texas AFT will be on the ground for Open Congress! Visit our table for goodies and information on the future of public education in the state.
Education news from around the state and nation that’s worth your time.
📖 Texas AFT expresses concern over proposed changes to the way history is taught in schools. “We need to be very mindful as this framework is developed and as the content standards are rolled out that that perspective is maintained and that we are not doing our students a disservice by narrowing what they learn and therefore their worldview,” our policy analyst Kelsey Kling explains. (KENS5, Sept. 26)
📖 Texas again ranks as one of the worst U.S. states for workers. Poverty-fighting nonprofit Oxfam America ranked Texas 45th on its annual Best States to Work report, up a single slot from the state’s dismal finish last year at No. 46. (San Antonio Current, Sept. 24)
📖 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)
This Education Department Official Lost His Job. Here’s What He Says Is at Risk. Fewer teachers. Incomplete data. Delays in addressing problems and getting financial aid information. Those are just some of the impacts Jason Cottrell, who worked as a data collector at the Department of Education for nine and a half years before being laid off along with more than a thousand other agency employees, warns the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the department’s funding and workforce could have on the country’s education system. (Time, July 18)
This Education Department Official Lost His Job. Here’s What He Says Is at Risk. Fewer teachers. Incomplete data. Delays in addressing problems and getting financial aid information. Those are just some of the impacts Jason Cottrell, who worked as a data collector at the Department of Education for nine and a half years before being laid off along with more than a thousand other agency employees, warns the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the department’s funding and workforce could have on the country’s education system. (Time, July 18)
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