House Public Education Committee votes on dozens of bills

The House Public Education Committee met twice this week in formal meetings to vote a number of bills out of committee. Typically, the bills are debated in a public hearing, then left as pending committee business until formal hearings where members vote on each bill with minimal discussion. After being voted out of committee, the House Calendars Committee then decides whether to schedule them for debate on the House floor.

At this point in the session, most of the major bills that originated in the House have already been sent to the Senate, so House bills still in the committee stage are typically more specialized bills aimed at addressing a specific issue rather than broad legislation on topics like school finance or student discipline. 

Other bills in the House Public Education Committee include Senate bills which cleared that chamber and are just beginning their journey in the House. With only a month remaining in the session, any newly-scheduled House bills hoping to make it to the governor's desk have slimmer odds, but the last few weeks of the session are often marked with a flurry of activity, so anything is possible.

Every bill on the formal meeting agendas for Wednesday and Thursday was voted out of committee, but a handful had dissenting votes. 

These bills supported by TCTA were approved by the committee:

• HB 3662 by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake) would create a criminal offense for people who operate unauthorized drones over school property. TCTA supports the bill because it protects the privacy and safety of students and staff at instructional facilities.
• HB 1249 by Rep. Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood) would allow students to submit a writing portfolio to assess writing skills instead of taking a standardized writing test for STAAR. TCTA has long supported portfolio-based assessments for students.
• HB 1573 by Rep. Venton Jones (D-Dallas) would create a framework to manage custodian workloads, preventing an insufficient number of custodians from being responsible for cleaning too much of the school per day. Jones mentioned in his layout that in some schools, only a single custodian is responsible for the entire campus. TCTA supports board policies that outline reasonable workload expectations for custodians.
• HB 3460 by Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) would increase the bilingual education allotment. TCTA supports increasing allotments for special student populations.
• SB 991 by Rep. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) would include chronically absent students as students at risk of dropping out of school. TCTA supports efforts to increase early interventions to assist students at risk of dropping out.