At around 4 p.m. today, both chambers of the Texas Legislature adjourned sine die. After several hours of recognitions, resolutions, and even some last-minute legislating to ensure state judges got a pay raise, all bills of the 89th legislative session are now signed into law, headed to the governor’s desk to be passed or vetoed, or dead.

The final deadline of the 89th session, following sine die, is a rolling deadline that concludes 20 days from sine die—this year on June 22. The governor has 20 days from the date he receives any bill delivered to him after May 23 to sign it, veto it, or allow it to become law without a signature. Unless otherwise specified, bills become effective 91 days after sine die. Bills with earlier effective dates must have been passed by a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each chamber.

As with prior sessions, the ATPE Governmental Relations and Marketing & Engagement teams are preparing a comprehensive wrap-up of this session’s education bills to be released shortly. In the meantime, here’s a status check on a few pieces of major education-related legislation: 

• House Bill (HB) 2 by House Public Education Committee Chairman Brad Buckley (R–Salado), the House’s school finance bill, which contains pay raises for many educators: The bill has reached the governor’s desk. We will be on the lookout for a potential signing ceremony. Clocking in at 231 pages, HB 2 contains a lot of education policy, and we will likely be discussing the potential and actual impact of this bill for some time to come. For now, check out our previous coverage of HB 2 here on Teach the Vote. 
• HB 4 by Buckley, the House’s priority legislation on testing and accountability: After days of negotiations, the Senate refused to relent on its amendments to HB 4—primarily language from Senate Bill (SB) 1962 by Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R–Houston). Accordingly, the House declined to bring up the conference committee report for adoption, and the bill died. House members took this route in response to the thousands of messages they received over the last 48 hours of the session—more than 1,600 of which came from ATPE members— expressing the desire that the House not accept the Senate language, which amounted to an increase in STAAR testing, even if under a new name, and would have resulted in the Texas Education Agency having greater control to implement even more test-and-punish policy from the state level.
• ATPE-supported HB 6 by Rep. Jeff Leach (R–McKinney), the House’s priority school discipline bill: The bill has reached to the governor’s desk. We will be on the lookout for a potential signing ceremony.
• SB 13 by Sen. Angela Paxton (R–McKinney), the Senate’s priority legislation on parental access and consent for library materials, and SB 12 by Senate Education K-16 Committee Chairman Brandon Creighton (R–Conroe), the Senate’s priority omnibus “parental rights” bill: After protracted and often emotional debate from legislators both opposing and supporting these bills, the conference committee report for each was adopted largely along party lines. Both bills have been signed by the House. As soon as the Senate officially signs the bills, they will be sent to the governor’s desk.

For those of you who have been actively engaged during the 89th legislative session, or even just following along with us here on Teach the Vote, thank you. Although this session was not everything it could have been, your engagement made a difference in ensuring some positive outcomes for Texas public education.