This past Tuesday, the House Public Education Committee spent hours hearing from witnesses on House Bill 1481 by Rep. Caroline Fairly, which would mandate a statewide cellphone ban in schools. Parents, administrators, and teachers testified about the amount of influence that cellphones and their accompanying applications like TikTok have on students. These distractions now reach into the classroom and create significant problems with class management and student discipline.
Some teacher testifiers noted that while their campuses had cellphone bans, the enforcement of the bans fell to teachers, who sometimes have been physically harmed as a result. Our members have expressed a desire for these policies to be developed at the local level with parent and teacher input instead of coming as a state mandate.
The committee also heard HB 6, a school discipline bill filed by Rep. Jeff Leach. Leach explained that he authored the bill after seeing so many stories throughout Texas of students injuring teachers and support staff. We appreciate the representative’s efforts to address these concerns, as our members have reported increasingly unstable and sometimes violent student behavior.
HB 6 would make some significant changes to current law:
- It would repeal the mandatory removal to Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs (DAEP) for vaping created by HB 114 in 2023.
- It would allow exceptions to the pre-K-2nd grade suspension prohibition to include “disruption,” which is a vague term and could be applied subjectively.
- Texas AFT believes this expansion would make the current prohibition meaningless because young children are frequently disruptive, as is appropriate for their age and development.
- Suspending a child this young and sending them home for three days does not address the behavior or its underlying cause.
- At this age, a child with behavioral problems should be evaluated for special education needs and for other services the school could provide.
- It would also establish a virtual DAEP for students who have been expelled.
- Research shows that virtual education works for a small number of students who have on-site support.
- Students who already have behavioral issues tend to perform even worse than the general population of students.
- Full-time virtual education would not be in the best interest of students struggling with behavioral issues.
While HB 6 is well-intentioned, we cannot support a discipline bill that lacks the necessary help for students with behavioral problems. Our members have made clear that robust investments in our public schools are needed to be proactive rather than reactive to student discipline issues. Educators want stronger policies on class-size restrictions, additional mental health resources, and increased numbers of paraprofessionals to properly address the root causes of behavior issues before discipline problems arise. To his credit at the hearing, Leach indicated he had carefully listened to the concerns on the bill and would continue to improve it.
The House Public Education Committee also heard hours of testimony on HB 123, a bill intended to provide early literacy interventions for our youngest learners but, in practice, would subject students to an additional 26 high-stakes tests.
Texas parents and teachers already think that there is too much standardized testing in our schools. HB 123 would not only add more testing, but it would add them at the K-3 grade levels, when there is little evidence that results would be valid and reliable when testing students this young. Even if the test were valid and reliable, researchers discourage the use of standardized testing in the absence of documented research showing that children actually benefit from their use. The bill also includes the addition of new math academies. Texas AFT opposed this bill, which remains in committee.
To round things out, Texas AFT supported two bills heard by the committee:
- HB 213, which would include chronically absent students in the definition of students at risk of dropping out of school
- HB 222, which would allow the school safety allotment to be used to provide professional development for educators, including training in classroom behavioral management
With Deadline to File Bills Passed, Here’s Where We Stand
Last Friday, March 14, was the deadline for lawmakers to file bills for this legislative session. And, like in so many classrooms across the state, there was a flood of last-minute activity; over 1,000 bills were filed on Friday alone.
Fortunately, we have great news to share in terms of our Educator’s Bill of Rights. At final count, 71 bills were filed in direct alignment with the 10 essential rights our members outlined, ranging from repeals of harmful higher education sanctions to multiple bills that would guarantee pay raises for teachers, support staff, and higher education employees, as well as pension increases for retired educators.
Find the full list of bills supporting our agenda on our Educator’s Bill of Rights webpage. Here, though, we want to present some highlights of this session’s education legislation.
Spotlight: 5 Good Education Bills You May Not Have Noticed
HB 3558 by Rep. Alma Allen
- Requires that teachers’ employment contracts specify the number of days of service during which they are required to perform duties or responsibilities
- Further requires that contracts specify the first and last days of service of the contract term
- Mandates school districts compensate educators at their daily rate of pay for any additional days of service exceeding those specified in their contracts
HB 4704 by Rep. Lauren Simmons & SB 237 by Sen. Nathan Johnson
- Allows a school district or open-enrollment charter school to adopt a paid parental leave policy for full-time employees via an allotment in the Foundation School Program
- That policy must include eight consecutive weeks of paid leave for an employee who is the primary caregiver and four consecutive weeks for an employee who is a spouse of the primary caregiver
HB 5110 by Rep. Charles Cunningham
- Mandates a school district’s board of trustees to adopt a policy requiring each door to a classroom to remain locked at all times a student is present
SB 1893 by Sen. Tan Parker
- Closes the loophole in District of Innovation plans that allows school districts from notifying parents if their child has an uncertified teacher
- Prevents districts from hiring uncertified teachers for reading and language arts (Kindergarten – fifth grade) and math (Kindergarten – eighth grade)
HB 4831 by Rep. David Lowe
- Prohibits private schools from hiring anyone on TEA’s registry of people not eligible for employment in public schools or open-enrollment charter schools
What’s Up Next in the Texas House
The agenda for Tuesday’s House Public Education Committee hearing has been released and includes six new bills. As a reminder, you can submit public comments online in support of or against any of these bills through the end of Tuesday’s committee hearing. And we’ve got a handy flier if you want to encourage your friends, family, and colleagues to do the same!
Here’s the line-up:
HB 7 by Rep. Jeff Leach
- creates a procedure for parents to appeal to the commissioner of education for grievances related to their child’s education
- adds new requirements for the reporting of educator misconduct
- requires the Texas Education Agency to create and maintain a document that informs parents of their “rights regarding the education of the parent’s child”
- requires school districts to publish “an instructional plan or course syllabus for each class offered in the district” on their websites at the beginning of each semester
- requires written consent from parents before any human sexuality instruction can be provided to students
HB 100 by Rep. Terri Leo-Wilson
- Would prohibit the purchase, adoption, or use of any materials on a list of “rejected instructional materials” maintained by the State Board of Education
HB 121 by Rep. Ken King
- Would allow TEA to commission peace officers who have been certified as a qualified peace officer by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement
HB 124 by Rep. Greg Bonnen
- Increases the per-pupil safety allotment from $10 to $14 and the per-campus allotment from $15,000 to $37,000
HB 1458 by Rep. Will Metcalf
- Would allow reserve deputy sheriffs or retired peace officers to fulfill the armed guard requirement on school campuses established in last session’s HB 3
HB 2249 by Rep. Diego Bernal
- Requires the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to establish and administer the Texas Teacher Recruitment Scholarship Program, providing $10,000 per year to students in exchange for agreeing to teach for at least four years