The Texas House continued its fast-paced push to sine die this week as several committees met Wednesday and Thursday to handle public education-related business. As previously mentioned on Teach the Vote, House committees have until Monday, May 12, to distribute committee reports on House bills. This means that next week is really the final week House bills can be heard in committee to have a chance of making it to the House floor.  

House Public Education Committee 

The House Public Education Committee held a formal meeting Wednesday to vote out several bills it was unable to vote out during it regular meeting Tuesday. The bills voted out of committee were: 

• ATPE-supported HB 1057 by Rep. Salman Bhojani (D–Euless) would give salary step credit in the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) to career and technology teachers for up to five years of outside work experience. 
• ATPE-supported HB 1939 by Rep. Morgan Meyer (R–Dallas) would allow school districts to receive a discount if they make their recapture payments early.  
• HB 2040 by Rep. Ken King (R–Canadian) would set the number of required instructional minutes in a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) to 43,200 minutes, which is the amount required for other alternative education programs, such as adult education and dropout recovery programs.  
• ATPE-opposed HB 2354 by Rep. Matt Shaheen (R–Plano) would redefine charter schools as local government entities despite not having elected governing bodies. ATPE is concerned about the lack of voter/taxpayer transparency and accountability that could come from this move. Additionally, the bill could allow for more discriminatory admission practices in charter schools.  
• ATPE-opposed HB 2674 by Rep. David Cook (R–Mansfield) would prohibit the regulation of homeschools in Texas. ATPE’s concerns about this bill include its effect on existing regulations that include homeschools, as well as the need for rulemaking following the passage of voucher bill Senate Bill (SB) 2 that will necessarily include homeschooling because homeschoolers may receive the voucher funds. ATPE has consistently maintained that any entity receiving public funds should be subject to public regulation.  
• ATPE-supported HB 3029 by Rep. Donna Howard (D–Austin) would allow school nurses at public, private, and charter schools to administer nonprescription medication to a student as long as they have the consent of the student’s parent or guardian. Currently only prescription medication is allowed to be administered at school.  
• ATPE-supported HB 3631 by Rep. Todd Hunter (R–Corpus Christi) would provide recapture credits for districts struggling to pay for windstorm and hail insurance as insurance costs continue to rise, particularly in coastal areas.  
• ATPE-supported HB 3662 by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R–Keller) would prohibit the flying of a drone over public, private, and charter schools.  
• HB 5381 by Rep. David Lowe (R–Fort Worth) would seek to prevent school disruptions for military dependents facing frequent relocations by allowing them timely enrollment, consistent placement in programs such as gifted and talented or dual language if they were enrolled in the program at their previous school, and graduation requirements that take into account the student’s previous coursework. It would also require districts to make these rules available on their websites.  
• ATPE-supported HB 824 by Rep. Jolanda Jones (D–Houston) would include civics instruction in the required government curriculum for high school students. This bill had been previously voted out of committee but was returned to correct an error that would have subjected the bill to a point of order on the House floor. 

The committee held another formal meeting Thursday to vote out more pending legislation. The bills voted out Thursday were: 

• HB 7 by Rep. Jeff Leach (R–Plano), the so-called “Parents Bill of Rights,” makes changes to the reporting of educator misconduct; creates new procedures in the grievance process for a parent appealing to the commissioner; requires the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to maintain and publish a list of parental rights on the agency’s website; requires districts to provide more information to parents, including lists of materials their children check out from the library and a syllabus or instructional plan for each course at the beginning of a semester; and requires parental consent for any psychological and psychiatric testing or treatment of a child. ATPE provided testimony on the bill, asking for the burdensome psychological and psychiatric testing provision to be removed, as well as asking for language to be clarified in the educator misconduct section.  
• HB 178 by Rep. Christina Morales (D–Houston) would add ethnic studies as a required social studies course for graduation. Currently three credits in social studies are required for graduation, with a full year of U.S. history as well as a required semester each of government and economics. Students are currently allowed to choose between world geography and world history for the third credit.  
• HB 497 by Rep. Jared Patterson (R–Frisco) would require parental consent for behavioral or mental health treatment in schools. The bill would require opt-in through a general form provided to parents in order to provide this treatment. There was a similar requirement in the original version of HB 7 by Leach, though that bill included a substantially broader definition of “mental health” and would have required parental consent for every potential treatment or visit with a student. After ATPE asked that the language be removed from HB 6, it was. School counselors, nurses, and social workers testified Tuesday that this bill would cause an administrative burden and slow down crisis response, which needs to be done in a time-sensitive manner.  
• ATPE-supported HB 1249 by Rep. Erin Zwiener (D–Dripping Springs) would allow the use of a student writing portfolio in standardized tests.  
• ATPE-supported HB 1573 by Rep. Venton Jones (D–Dallas) would require school districts to set policies that establish benchmarks for how much square footage a custodian is required to be responsible for cleaning and maintaining. Jones pointed out in his bill layout that custodians are frequently being asked to do more with less, as well as having their duties expanded more and more into impossible workloads. When a custodian can’t reasonably complete their duties, sanitation and cleanliness suffer, leading to potential health risks for students and staff, Jones said.  
• HB 1876 by Rep. Carl Tepper (R–Lubbock) would establish a TEA career and technical education reporting grant program. 
• HB 2757 by Rep. James Frank (R–Wichita Falls) would allow the child of a foreign military member who is stationed in Texas to attend school.  
• ATPE-supported HB 3369 by Rep. AJ Louderback (R–Victoria) would allow removal of unruly spectators from school athletic or extracurricular activities. Louderback said his bill is needed because game officials have seen an increase in verbal abuse and violent behavior from spectators, leading to a shortage in officials willing to work these events.  
• HB 3460 by Rep. Harold Dutton (D–Houston) would allow TEA to grant certification exceptions for teachers in bilingual or dual language programs. Currently, many districts are missing out on extra bilingual funding due to a lack of certified bilingual teachers.  
• HB 4687 by Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins (D–San Antonio) would make charter school board members immune from liability. Currently, only some charters enjoy these protections, while there are a couple of specialized charter groups that do not have immunity. This bill would extend those protections to those groups as well.  
• HB 5515 by Chairman Brad Buckley (R–Salado) would cap the freight and shipping costs for instructional materials.  
• HB 5606 by Rep. Terry Wilson (R–Georgetown) would allow retired members’ sick days to transfer to a district’s sick leave bank to be used by current employees.  
• ATPE-opposed SB 10 by Sen. Phil King (R–Weatherford) would mandate display of the Ten Commandments in 16-by-20 inch size in every classroom. As with similar bills in recent sessions, ATPE submitted written testimony on the bill.  
• SB 24 by Sen. Donna Campbell (R–New Braunfels) would require teaching about tactics and historical events surrounding communist regimes to enhance student understanding of communism. Students would be taught about these events in grades 4-12 social studies.  
• ATPE-supported SB 920 by Sen. Kevin Sparks (R–Midland) focuses on medication administration in open-enrollment charter and private schools, ensuring safe procedures for students.  
• SB 991 by Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R–Houston) would treat chronically absent and truant students as being at risk of dropping out of school and required collection and reporting of data on those students. 
• SB 1418 by Sen. Donna Campbell (R–New Braunfels) would replace the outdated reference to "ACT-Plan" in the Texas Education Code with the current name, “PreACT.”   
• SB 2185 by Sen. Adam Hinojosa (R–Corpus Christi) is the companion bill to Dutton’s HB 3460. The bill would allows TEA to grant certification exceptions for teachers in bilingual or dual language programs. Currently, many districts are missing out on extra bilingual funding due to a lack of certified bilingual teachers.  

DOGE Committee 

The Committee on the Delivery of Government Efficiency (DOGE) met Wednesday. On its agenda was ATPE-supported HB 5571 by Rep. Ana Maria Rodriguez Ramos (D–Richardson), a bill that would give the Sunset Advisory Commission the ability to conduct regular review, audit, and oversight of the administration of open-enrollment charter schools by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Currently, while new charters have a rigorous application and approval process, they can expand across the state with little oversight once approved. This has led to unchecked expansion and use of state tax dollars on disbursements such as private jets, Super Bowl ads, and luxury suites at basketball arenas. Rodriguez Ramos pointed out that while charter schools receive public funds, they have no elected school board for voters to hold accountable, nor do they have voter approval for taxpayer-funded bonds. The bill would require full audits of the charter school system every three years and make the findings public.  

The committee also held a discussion with an invited panel of testifiers on the “path to an efficient system of public education.” The panelists included the superintendent and CFO of Hurst-Euless-Bedford (HEB) ISD and two representatives of the educational consulting group ERG Inc. Most of the discussion centered on HEB ISD’s use of an ERG rubric to evaluate the district’s efficiency based on financial productivity and student achievement. There was not a robust discussion of ways public schools could improve operations and efficiency without using this vendor. 

Subcommittee on Academic and Career-Oriented Education 

The Subcommittee on Academic and Career-Oriented Education met Thursday morning to consider three bills all aimed at career and technical education (CTE) and professional pathways.  

The bills heard by the committee were: 

• ATPE-supported HB 1079 by Rep. Pat Curry (R–Waco) would allow Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) and Leadership Officer Training Corps (LOTC) to be included as career and technology programs. Currently, these programs are classified as extracurricular or elective programs rather than CTE pathways. LOTC is offered in middle school, and offering this program would make the middle school eligible for a CTE allotment. The bill would also allow for these courses to be counted as indicators of military readiness under the public school accountability system. 
• HB 3651 by Rep. Marc LaHood (R–San Antonio) would create an elective course on basic automotive maintenance. While there are currently auto body and auto tech courses offered as CTE programs in public high schools, there is no course teaching basic auto maintenance such as fluid checks and replenishments, oil and filter changes, and tire rotation and maintenance. 
• ATPE-supported HB 4980 by Rep. Terry Wilson (R–Georgetown) would establishe a Child Care Professional Pathway Program. The program would be offered in partnership between local child care businesses, community colleges, and public schools for students to receive a child care associate’s certificate with a guaranteed job placement at a child care center. 

In addition to the Monday, May 12, deadline for House bills to be reported from committee, Thursday, May 15, is the last day for House bills to be heard on the floor.