Legislative Hotline

Featured News

Texas AFT president fights for raises for all school employees in House hearing

Publish Date: February 13, 2019

VIDEO: Louis Malfaro testifying at House Public Education Committee hearing. The House Public Education Committee met yesterday to hear testimony on recommendations from the Texas Commission on School Finance. In his testimony, Texas AFT President Louis Malfaro urged committee members to include a much needed, broad-based pay raise in a school finance bill. The School Finance Commission had recommended putting significant resources into a merit pay plan that likely would attempt to determine teacher effectiveness based in large part on student standardized test scores. Malfaro said Texas AFT can support differentiated pay—for example, to place and retain teachers in struggling and hard-to-staff campuses—but only if pay for all school employees is raised first. "If you’ve studied differentiated pay you know that it has to come...

Read More

Senate budget discussion highlights need for more public education funding

Publish Date: February 11, 2019

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee heard from the Legislative Budget Board and the Texas Education Agency about the Senate’s proposed budget. Unlike the House budget proposal, the Senate provides less new funding for schools, and the funding it does provide is contingent on a classroom teacher salary increase ($3.7 billion)...

Read More