Topic: SBOE

Your Weekly Briefing

Publish Date: June 24, 2019

SBOE Uses Veto to Stop Controversial Royal “Public” Schools Charter Applicant The founder of controversial Harmony Public Schools, which is one of the largest charter school chains in Texas, recently applied to open several new charter schools in Austin and the Alief area of Houston by August 2020 under the name of Royal Public Schools. The Commissioner of Education approved...

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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 and not enough time for teachers to provide the necessary...

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School Finance Commission hears state of education funding, expenditure recommendations

Publish Date: November 17, 2018

The Texas Commission on Public School Finance's Revenues Working Group met Tuesday to hear the current state of public education funding in Texas and review recommendations from the Commission's Expenditures Working Group--a group of commission members tasked with recommendations for changes on how public education money is spent. On the funding front, Education Commissioner Mike Morath outlined that education spending...

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State board keeps CTE certification standards in place

Publish Date: October 8, 2018

Last month, the Texas State Board Of Education Subcommittee on School Initiatives unanimously rejected a rule approved by the State Board for Educator Certification that would have significantly reduced the number of pre-service training hours from 180 to 110 for those seeking to teach Career and Technical Education in the areas of Trade and Industrial Workforce, Marketing, or Health Sciences....

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School funding highlighted in finance commission meetings, controversy over transfers to permanent school fund​

Publish Date: September 27, 2018

  The Texas School Finance Commission met Tuesday to continue its work developing recommendations for public education funding. Although a final report is due from the commission, discussion Tuesday noted that there will be several more meetings of the body and its working groups through November and December. So, it's likely that we won't see final recommendations in all areas until just...

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‘Mexican American’ gets initial nod for course, but without the hyphen.

Publish Date: June 13, 2018

The State Board of Education took a preliminary vote today to change the name of the new Mexican-American history course to “Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies.” SBOE had initially assigned the name “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent,” after one board member, David Bradley, said he found “hyphenated Americanism to be divisive." Mexican-American activists across the state...

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Tell the State Board of Education our schools are not for sale!

Publish Date: June 8, 2018

In the June 5 Hotline we covered Commissioner of Education Mike Morath's approval of three new charters and outlined how destructive these new charter chains would be for school districts and individual campuses. Now is your chance to fight back against this assault on our public schools by out-of-state charter chains funded by the Walton Foundation and other billionaires intent on privatizing...

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New charter-school applicants to be evaluated

Publish Date: April 13, 2018

The Texas Education Agency’s timeline for screening applicants to establish new charter school systems was announced at the close of today’s State Board of Education meeting. TEA staff will interview six applicants on May 21-22; SBOE members also may participate in the questioning. The commissioner of education then is expected to make his approval recommendations by May 31, subject to...

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