Legislative Hotline

Featured News

More notes from the election–an outlook for the next legislative session

Publish Date: November 8, 2018

Alliance-AFT members in Dallas hear from John Turner, elected as state rep in HD 114 (North Dallas) Yesterday's Hotline outlined how public education was a winner on Election Day, with significant gains made in electing candidates to Congress and the Texas Legislature who will support our schools. Here's a bit more detail on some of the big wins for the state Legislature, and a few of the defeats. First, let's take a look at the good news in the state House. Democrat allies picked up 12 seats in the House, which means they reduced the Republican advantage in members from 95-55 to 83-67. (And we didn't lose any supportive Republican incumbents.) Since the House has been considerably more favorable toward funding public education and resisting...

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SBOE approves ‘streamlined’ curriculum standards

Publish Date: November 17, 2018

Today, the SBOE unanimously approved “streamlined” Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). These are the standards teachers must use for lesson planning and test preparation, and could eventually result in instructional materials changes. This streamlining effort was initiated to address the common compliant that there are too many TEKS standards...

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Election season isn’t over yet for many Texans

Publish Date: November 13, 2018

Gov. Greg Abbott Friday set a special election for December 11 to fill the seat of state Sen. Sylvia Garcia, the Houston Democrat who resigned and was elected to Congress last week. The filing deadline for candidates to run for the seat is Nov. 16, and early voting starts Nov....

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TEA announces next round of charter “partnership” applications

Publish Date: October 29, 2018

The Texas Education Agency Friday announced the next round of applications for what it calls the “Texas Partnerships” program, but what really is in many cases an incentivized method of getting districts to turn over campuses to charter school operators. The program is a result of SB 1882, a bill...

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