As you end the school year and cozy up for the holidays, please enjoy the last weekly wrap-up of 2019 from the ATPE Governmental Relations team. The ATPE state office will be closed from Dec. 23 to Jan. 4, reopening on Jan. 6, 2020. Expect our next Teach the Vote weekly wrap-up blog post to be published on Jan. 10, 2020.

• ELECTION UPDATE: Endorsements, etc.
• New resource: Teach Me How to Texas
• Full recap of the December TRS meeting
• ATPE members: Don't forget to take our survey!

ELECTION UPDATE: With candidate filing seemingly complete – after a few extensions in races where there were late withdrawals – we're now getting a good picture of the match-ups that will be on the ballots for the Texas primary election on Super Tuesday, which is March 3, 2020. ATPE Lobbyist Mark Wiggins shares some of the insights plus endorsement news in his latest election roundup blog post here. Don't forget that the deadline to register to vote in one of the primaries is Feb. 3, and you can verify your voter registration status here.

In the Houston and Dallas areas, candidates will be busy trying to garner voters' support over the holidays for an upcoming runoff election on Jan. 28, 2020. The runoff is for special elections deciding three vacant House seats: Texas House District 28, 100, and 148. Early voting starts Tuesday, Jan. 21. If you live in one of those three districts and are not yet registered to vote, you have until Dec. 29, 2019, to register to vote in the runoff, even if you did not vote in the original special election in November.

We at ATPE join our partners in the Texas Educators Vote coalition in thanking educators for their involvement and helping us spread our "Get Out The Vote" (GOTV) messages around the state. We hope you'll take advantage of the many election resources available at TexasEducatorsVote.com and prepare to be an informed voter in 2020 by learning about the candidates. ATPE will be updating our Teach the Vote website in January with profiles of all candidates running for the Texas House or Senate, plus the State Board of Education. In the meantime, learn more about your incumbent state legislators, including how they voted in the 2019 legislative session on education issues, by viewing their profiles on Teach the Vote.

ATPE is helping our friends at The Texas Tribune to promote a new resource for Texans to learn about voting in the Nov. 2020 general election: Teach Me How to Texas. Learn everything you need to know about Texas elections in The Texas Tribune’s free five-week crash course. You’ll learn interesting facts about Texas’ past and culture, how different communities and regions in Texas vote, how candidates raise and spend money, how to spot a good poll from a bad one, and how to decode your November ballot. Click here to sign up!

The Teacher Retirement System (TRS) Board of Trustees met in Austin last week, and ATPE Senior Lobbyist Monty Exter attended the meetings. The board discussed space planning needs for the TRS agency, a recent actuarial valuation of the TRS Pension Trust Fund, and a funding policy that will affect future benefits, on which ATPE provided testimony. Read more details about the meeting in this week's blog post from Exter.

When you have some free time over the holiday break, ATPE encourages all of our members to take a few minutes to log into the ATPE website and answer our "Your Voice" survey on ATPE's Advocacy Central. It's a quick, three-question survey about which education issues are most important to you. Let us know which legislative issues you care about the most and want ATPE to work on in 2020 and beyond!

Click on the photo to hear a quick message from ATPE Executive Director Shannon Holmes about the survey.