[Danielle Weston]

I wanted to start a thread where we can share this sessions legislative testimony of interest for those who are interested. Every legislative session I watch as much testimony as I can but I know I miss things. I will offer what I have watched and made note of and share it here and hope my colleagues will do the same here. Sharing this information here does not denote my agreement or disagreement with anything a legislator or testifier says.

Since we are not supposed to post links here on the message board, I will give information that will be helpful in folks finding the testimony I mention on the Texas House of Representatives or Texas Senate websites.

On 25 Feb 2021 TEA Commissioner, Mike Morath, presented and answered questions to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Article III. His testimony begins at the 31:42 mark and ends at the 2:20:00 mark. There was a great exchange of information in this testimony.

On 2 Mar 2021 Commissioner Morath presented and answered questions to the House committee on Public Education. His testimony begins at the 11:25 mark and ends at the 1:59:20 mark. There was a ton of information discussed in his testimony and I can’t capture all of it here so I encourage everyone to watch. These are some minute marks I will draw your attention to:

55:53 Discussion on fund balance in Texas ISD’s
1:02:00 Discussion on special education and funding for dyslexia services
1:22:55 Discussion about STAAR exams
1:28:00 Discussion that child abuse cases have reached a number not seen before with school staff not having access to all students for the last year
1:42:10 Discussion on addressing the significant learning loss students have experienced in the last 12 mos
1:54:16 Chairman of the committee, Rep Harold Dutton, asks Commissioner Morath, “Are schools safe?” Morath answers, “The data is very clear, yes, students should be in school buildings.”
1:56:30 Discussion on the effect on high school juniors and seniors after a year of virtual learning. Morath states that 10,000 juniors and seniors (statewide) have dropped out
1:57:40 Morath states, “For kids who are coming from abusive homes, those kids have had a very, very bad last 12 months. Very bad.”

[Anonymous]

Thank you, trustee Weston for sharing these highlights from those long sessions!

[Danielle Weston]

On 9 March 2021 The Texas House of Representatives Public Education Committee met and heard public testimony on several proposed bills. These are the minute marks and bill numbers that were discussed in this hearing for those who are interested in learning more about each.

2:34
HB 690 – Relating to training requirements for a member of the board of trustees of an independent school district.
*Of note*
The discussion here was about adding a school safety training requirement for elected school board members in Texas. One speaker from the Texas Association of School Boards spoke “on” the bill, not “for” or “against” it. He shared that trustees are already the only elected officials in the state of Texas who are required by the Texas legislature to undergo any training requirements. He said 25 training hours are already required in the first year of a trustee’s tenure and between nine and 16 hours per year every year thereafter. That this is more than any other US state.

21:01
HB 699 (Riley’s Law)- Relating to public school attendance and promotion requirements for students diagnosed with or undergoing related treatment for severe or life-threatening illnesses.

37:35
HB 773 – Relating to indicators of achievement under the public school accountability system.

45:48
HB 434 – Relating to the curriculum requirements for public high school students.
*Of note*
This bill garnered (by far) the most discussion from the committee and public speakers who spoke both “for” and “against“ it. The bill would allow for high school students to decline taking the current requirement of one fine art credit and instead taking a Career Technical Education course instead. The exact language of this bill and all bills can be found on the House website by searching the bill number (434 in this case).

2:32:00
HB 1147 – Relating to military readiness for purposes of the college, career, or military readiness outcomes bonus under the Foundation School Program.

2:40:30
HB 547 – Relating to authorizing equal opportunity for access by home-schooled students to University Interscholastic League sponsored activities; authorizing a fee.

[Danielle Weston]

Today (16 Mar 2021) the Texas House committee on Public Education, discussed several proposed bills and heard testimony on them. They also passed three proposed bills out of the committee and sent them to the full House for consideration. Those three bills (HB’s 690, 773, 1147) were previously discussed by this committee and mentioned in other updates I posted on this thread. The hearing is on the website separately as Part I and Part II as they took a break midway through.

Part I
1:39
HB 159 – Relating to improving training and staff development for primary and secondary educators to enable them to more effectively serve all students.

19:30
HB 129 – Relating to requiring a digital citizenship curriculum.

30:10
HB 1114 – Relating to providing mental health services and mental health education to public school students at school-based health centers.

1:01:00
HB 1603 – Relating to the use of individual graduation committees and other alternative methods to satisfy certain public high school graduation requirements.

1:04:10
HB 785 – Relating to behavior improvement plans and behavioral intervention plans for certain public school students and notification and documentation requirements regarding certain behavior management techniques.

1:16:01
HB 725 – Relating to the eligibility of certain children who are or were in foster care for free prekindergarten programs in public schools.

1:21:50
HB 1080 – Relating to the eligibility for participation in University Interscholastic League activities of certain public school students who receive outpatient mental health services.

Part II

0:12
HB 445 – Relating to instruction in positive character traits in public schools.

11:07
Pending business: Previously discussed HB’s 690, 773, 1147 all passed out of the committee. These now go to full house for a vote.

16:40
HB 759 – Relating to the operation of threat assessment teams in public schools and the establishment of a student threat assessment database; creating a criminal offense.
*of note* many testifiers both for an against this bill

2:21:20
HB 353 – Relating to the consideration of certain student differentials based on sex under the public school accountability system.

[Danielle Weston]

TX Senate Education Committee met on 18 March 2021 for 4 hours and 25 minutes. It can be found on the Texas Senate website.

Some things I will point out:

First testifier was Mike Morath, TEA Commissioner.
8:24 Morath, “The data is in and on campus instruction is safe. We have campuses around the state with 95% of students on campus and there is no evidence of any kind of viral outbreak.”

12:20 Morath regarding the extensive learning loss, “It’s bad…it’s historically bad in terms of where our kids are and what we need to do to support them.”

25:50 A state senators says of the learning loss data, “These numbers are catastrophic.”

31:00 Morath, “The nature of our recovery to Covid (learning loss) is not a one or two year project. This is a four to five year project, assuming we are aggressive and successful.”

1:04:50 Morath speaks about the TIA (Teacher Incentive Allotment) that is part of HB3 (approved in the 86th legislative session).

1:11:50 A state senators says, “This (Covid/virtual learning) has hammered student development and hammered student confidence and it has set them back. We passed HB3 in the nick of time but we also have to take a serios look at these trends.”

1:16:01 A state senators says, “Now with this federal money we have an opportunity to really, significantly, dramatically change the public education system for the better.”

1:33:05 The discussion on virtual learning starts.
Morath, “While remote instruction has been a boon to some students, it is probably detrimental to most.” He went on to explain that only on-line schools approved by the Texas Virtual School Network (TVSN) were allowed by law to offer remote learning prior to August 2020. Morath said he used an emergency power to allow all ISD’s to offer remote instruction for the 2020-2021 school year. He went on to discuss with senators that action is required on their part to allow remote instruction past May 2021 for ISD’s beyond those approved by the TVSN. All 5.4M students in TX are eligible to enroll in a TVSN school at any time.
This discussion went on until the 1:46:20 mark and I encourage everyone to watch it. No decisions were proposed or made regarding changing the law to allow RRISD or any other ISD outside of the TVSN to offer virtual learning after May 2021.

2:00:49 Lots of discussion on how rigorous the STAAR test is.

2:31:40 Morath’s testimony ends

2:32:00 Several proposed senate bills were discussed

[Danielle Weston]

Yesterday (4/28/2021) and important bill passed unanimously out of the Texas House Public Education Committee. HB 3880, sponsored by Rep Dutton relates to a student’s eligibility for special education services provided by a school district. This bill would do several things. Notably it would align special education identification (including dyslexia) and needed services to the federal IDEA law and provide funding. Parents have been requesting improvements in this area in RRISD (and around the state) for years.

I just watched the entire hearing which is posted on the Texas House’s website. To watch the hearing of this bill, go to the 4.28.2021 date in the Pub Ed committee and start at the 00:06:25 mark and watch until the end at the 2:25:01 mark. The last speaker is TEA Dir of Special Populations, Justin Porter.

There is an identical bill in the Texas Senate (SB 1694), sponsored by Sen Paxton. I haven’t seen any hearings in the senate on SB 1694 yet.

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