ATPE was proud to sponsor and provide educator continuing professional education (CPE) credit for select sessions at the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in Austin. The 14th annual event featured some of the biggest and most relevant names in politics and policy making, including lawmakers, education leaders, authors, and journalists. Each session was a learning opportunity. Some challenged us to think about things in new ways while others were simply informative, maddening, or even funny. People of all ages came from all over to listen to diverse speakers with different perspectives engage in thought and respectful conversations. Although session topics ranged from elections to arts and culture, cities, civil rights, criminal justice, the economy, education, energy and the environment, foreign affairs, health care, immigration, law, media, national politics, race and demographics, religion, rural affairs, technology, and Texas politics, for the purpose of this recap, I’ll focus on education. 

The first session that kicked off #TribFest24 was a breakfast with NBC News senior investigative reporter Mike Hixenbaugh, who discussed his new book They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms. As in his podcasts Southlake and Grapevine, Hixenbaugh discussed how race and demographics in these formerly quiet Texas towns played out in school board elections and spun into national news headlines and became civil rights issues. Hixenbaugh outlined a concerted movement to take the “ugliest divisions of national politics” and “inject them in previously nonpartisan school board races.” 

Right after Hixenbaugh exposed the dirty side of school board elections and city politics in Texas, Tim Alberta, staff writer from The Atlantic, added to the discussion, highlighting how religion has been perverted by some churches into a political power grab. As Alberta discusses in his new book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, an evangelical political movement driven by the top of the ticket is impacting school boards and school culture not just here in Texas but across the U.S. In Texas, we are seeing this play out in bills proposing the Ten Commandments be hung in classrooms and in conversations surrounding House Bill (HB) 1605, where Bible verses are now part of the “high quality instructional materials (HQIM)” pushed by the Texas Education Agency. 

On Friday, former U.S. Secretaries of Education Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan were joined on a panel by Allan Golston, the U.S. program president for the Gates Foundation. Texas Tribune contributing writer Adam Harris asked the three whether K-12 and higher education are doing enough for students. It was clear that all three panelists think that more needs to be done to improve the quality of K-12 education to allow for more student success in higher ed and in pathways to meaningful jobs. ATPE was a proud sponsor of this session. 

The session “What Superintendents Think” brought together Dr. Stephanie Elizalde from Dallas ISD, Dr. LaTonya Goffney from Aldine ISD, and Dr. Bobby Ott from Temple ISD. These superintendents represented a diverse group of school districts, and it was refreshing to hear a Texas public education conversation focusing on the “boots on the ground” issues facing Texas public schools and not vouchers. In fact, the voucher issue didn’t come up until the end of the session, when moderator Eva-Maria Ayala from The Dallas Morning News finally asked the three a question about state leadership’s pet education issue. 

Texas House Reps. Gina Hinojosa (D–Austin) and Ken King (R–Canadian) were joined by House District (HD) 65 Republican nominee Mitch Little to discuss “Public Ed and the 89th Legislature,” another ATPE-sponsored session. The venue—the sanctuary of St. David’s Episcopal Church—was full, and the crowd did not hold back cheers and boos when the topic turned to school vouchers and the required hanging of the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Other topics discussed included per-student funding (enrollment-based vs. average daily attendance), teacher pay, and STAAR. 

If you attended TribFest and have not yet tracked your CPE credit, please visit atpe.org/tribfest for details on how to do so. Catch up on more from TribFest on the Tribune’s recap page.