Publish Date: March 23, 2025 4:37 pm Author: Texas AFT
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Friday, March 21, 2025
Heard, loud and clear
Over the past two weeks, close to 800 of our members have come to the Texas Capitol. They have testified before committees, met with lawmakers, and spoken with members of the media, all with a clear message: they need fully funded public schools to support essential solutions for educators and students in our Educator’s Bill of Rights.
They have also made it clear: We will not support a private school voucher program that will divert funds from public schools and cost taxpayers up to $10 billion over the next decade. Not now, not ever.
It has been inspiring to watch, even when the fight for thriving public schools feels exhausting. If you’re feeling that way, we’ll leave you with some words from a lawmaker who really gets it. Rep. Lauren Simmons, a former Houston Federation of Teachers organizer, is now the author of House Bill 1077, which would guarantee collective bargaining rights for public school employees. As she told some of our members gathered last night:
“Educating is holistic. It’s the teachers. It’s the clerks at the front office that greet you. It’s the bus drivers that get your babies to school safely. It’s the cafeteria workers that are providing nutritious meals. All of that works together.
These folks need to be paid well. They need to be able to retire with dignity. When we’re whittling away at those benefits, not only are we disrespecting those people that are currently in that profession, we’re saying to people who want to be educators, ‘We don’t value you.'”
In this week’s Hotline:
Recap of our second advocacy day
Student behavior takes center stage in the Texas House
A full-blown attack on faculty voice in higher ed
Trump’s Department of Education executive order
— Texas Legislature
Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy addresses Texas AFT members gathered in the Capitol’s outdoor rotunda this past Monday.
For the second Monday in a row, Texas educators spent their Spring Break fighting for their students and their schools. This week, more than 175 Texas AFT members from Houston, the Rio Grande Valley, Central Texas, and Dallas gathered at the Capitol to demand legislators pass their Educator’s Bill of Rights, increase the basic allotment in the school finance bill to match inflation, and stop playing games pushing costly and unpopular private school voucher scams.
Over the course of a busy day, educators engaged with lawmakers and spoke about the issues they see every single day at their neighborhood public schools. In the afternoon, educators gathered in the Capitol’s outdoor rotunda to celebrate our public schools and rally to action to support them, alongside Rick Levy, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, and the Rev. Megan Peglar, senior minister of the University Christian Church of Austin.
Here’s what you need to know from another busy week at the Texas Legislature. Read the full story for details.
House Bill 2(public school funding) and House Bill 3(private school vouchers) remain pending in the House Public Education Committee.
Instead, the House Public Education Committee held another marathon hearing to hear testimony on bills relating to a state cellphone ban in schools, student behavior and discipline measures, and standardized testing for kindergarteners.
Now that the deadline to file bills in this session has passed, we are proud to report that 71 bills have been filed in alignment with our Educator’s Bill of Rights!
We preview what’s coming next week in the House, so you can prepare your public comments over the weekend.
On Thursday, the Senate Education K-16 Committee heard its first higher education bills of the session, including Senate Bill 37, Sen. Brandon Creighton’s omnibus bill.
One of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s top priorities, SB 37 grants Boards of Trustees for community college districts and Boards of Regents for university systems unilateral authority over curriculum, academic policies, hiring decisions, tenure evaluations, and more.
Be ready to spring into action for the next hearing announcement with our online training sessions! We run through how to frame your testimony, as well as the steps it takes to get in front of the committee. RSVP on Mobilize.
This week, the Texas Senate passed several bills includingSenate Bill 10, which would require the posting of the Ten Commandments in all Texas classrooms, and SB 11, which would allow districts to adopt a policy for a period of prayer in schools.
On Thursday, the Trump Administration released a long-anticipated executive order, commanding newly confirmed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to take steps to pave the way for closing the Department of Education. This executive order does not eliminate the DOE outright, but it does direct the secretary of education to continue the layoffs, consolidations, and shrinking of services we have seen already, while the department provides constitutionally mandated funding and services.
📖 Will it be easier to kick Texas’ littlest kids out of school? Lawmakers may weaken ban.The smallest Texas students could be suspended more easily under a proposed rewrite of school discipline laws. A House priority bill undercuts previous reforms aimed at ensuring young children can remain in school except under the most extreme circumstances.(Dallas Morning News, March 17)
📖 Legal Challenges Lurk for Bill Requiring Ten Commandments in Classrooms. The Texas Legislature is moving full speed ahead on a bill that would introduce the Ten Commandments to the classroom despite a First Amendment legal challenge all but promised by those who oppose it. (Dallas Observer, March 14)
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