Every week, Texas AFT compiles important news, updates, and information on public education policy in Texas. The Hotline covers a wide range of topics, including statewide education news, updates from the legislative session, and our current union campaigns.
Friday, Feb. 7, 2025 2025 prices, 2019 dollars What a month this week has been, huh? We’ll get it into the details of chaos at the federal level, Gov. Abbott’s State of the State address, and the vote on vouchers in the Texas Senate later in this Hotline. But first, let’s get back to basics: Texas public schools are deeply...
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Friday, July 21, 2023 The Will to Thrive So far, no statistics have motivated our state leaders to fix the chronic underfunding of our public education system. Not the fact that Texas is 39th in the nation for per-pupil funding of its public schools. Nor the fact that we are...
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Friday, July 14, 2023 ‘Starve, shame, & shutter’ With a $33 billion surplus available, we had high hopes. High hopes that the Texas Legislature would step up and deliver for students, educators, and school employees ahead of the upcoming school year. Yet, here we are, one regular session and two...
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Friday, July 7, 2023 Our schools are back on the menu. If you’ve read even a single edition of the Hotline in the past month, you know: The Texas Legislature ended its regular session without a single new dollar in state funding for public schools and $0 for teacher and...
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This week's Hotline is brought to you by Horace Mann. Friday, June 30, 2023 Daniel Alvarez Photo The state of our union is strong. The state of our schools is on life support. This weekend, for the first time since 2019, Texas AFT members convened in person for our statewide...
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This week's Hotline is brought to you by Horace Mann. Friday, June 23, 2023 One Judson AFT member pictured at Thursday’s school board meeting. Together We Thrive It simply isn’t enough for Texas public schools to survive (which many of them are struggling to do at all, especially in rural...
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This week's Hotline is brought to you by Horace Mann. Friday, June 16, 2023 New Committees, New Laws, New Special Sessions… No New Raises Two weeks after Sine Die, Texas elected officials are still crossing t’s and dotting i’s on one of the most disappointing sessions for public education in...
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This week's Hotline is brought to you by Horace Mann. Friday, June 9, 2023 Rio Grande Valley community members, including McAllen AFT, protest outside an April stop on Gov. Abbott’s voucher roadshow. Photo by Clarissa Riojas. ‘If you don’t have a school, you don’t have a community’ Today, we start...
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Friday, June 2, 2023 You made a difference this session We are sorting through the results of this legislative session, and we’ll be recapping each key part of our Respect Agenda and how it fared in the Hotline throughout the summer. But to start things off, we wanted to take...
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Friday, May 26, 2023 Is this a joke? There are three days left in the regular session of the 88th Texas Legislature. And as of this writing, there are $0 dedicated in the proposed final state budget for public school employee raises. After more than a month of negotiations in...
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Friday, May 5, 2023 How to ‘Appreciate’ Educators Sen. Roland Gutierrez and Sen. Morgan LaMantia meet with Texas AFT members and leaders at the Capitol on Monday. Photo by Sierra Wiggers. While many of their colleagues were struggling through STAAR testing with anxious students, 30 Texas teachers and school employees...
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Friday, April 28, 2023 Crumbs Aren’t Good Enough Photo by Marianna Krueger, CCR Studios The state of Texas has a budget surplus that is itself larger than the entire budget of 24 states, and yet both active school employees and retired educators have been forced this session to come, hat...
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Friday, April 21, 2023 Picking winners and losers San Antonio Alliance member Teresa Razo and Northeast Houston AFT member Tammy Reyes meet with a representative from Rep. Greg Bonnen’s office this past Tuesday. This week, the Texas House Public Education Committee took up the very important work of debating whether...
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