EduLege Top news in school communications

Some of the timely issues that have been addressed in recent editions of EduLege

That task force that Governor Abbott ordered to find solutions to the Texas teacher shortage has basically doubled its membership — after criticism that only two classroom teachers were part of the original 28-member group.

The Texas Education Agency now says that the task force will include two dozen classroom educators, so the group includes an “equal representation” of teachers and school administrators. The original appointments consisted of 26 administrators — some of whom had never taught in the classroom. Zeph Capo, the president of Texas Federation of Teachers, called the makeup of the original task force “disrespectful and degrading.”

But perhaps the most scorching public criticism came from high school English teacher Gabriela Diaz of Houston, a 16-year veteran of the classroom.

“One week, Abbott is threatening jail time and the next he wonders why teachers are leaving in droves. He need only reflect on his agenda to understand why educators have no patience for political games right now,” Ms. Diaz wrote in an Op-Ed column in the Houston Chronicle.

TEA announced that Dallas teacher Josue Torres will now serve as the chair of the task force and that the newly expanded group will be organized into several workgroups to address the different challenges contributing to the teacher shortages.

Dallas classroom educator Josue Tamarez Torres will chair the state task force that will address staffing shortages in Texas schools. Photo by Ben Torres for the Dallas Morning News.

Governor Abbott created the task force just days after Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke outlined his own education policies at a Dallas town hall meeting. Mr. O’Rourke had stressed the importance of teacher recruitment and retention.

Staff shortages have forced campuses to close for several school days throughout the pandemic and sent administrators subbing into the classrooms. School leaders have called for help for months.

In his directive to TEA, Mr. Abbott wrote that the task force “should investigate the challenges teacher vacancies are causing for school districts, explore best practices for addressing this shortage and research the possibility for flexibility of certification, placement and hiring.” The task force is scheduled to meet every other month for a year.

The first meeting took place prior to spring break — and before teachers were added to the task force — and details of what was discussed has not been shared publicly.

Governor Abbott and TEA have announced that school districts that have encountered pandemic-related declines in student attendance this year may be eligible for an adjustment that allows them to drop poorly attended days from the state funding formula.

Texas’ public school funding formula is largely based on Average Daily Attendance (ADA), or how many students show up for class each day. “Providing this adjustment to the 2021-22 school year will ensure school systems have the funding they need to retain the best and brightest teachers and provide quality education to all public school students across Texas,” Governor Abbott said in a statement.

The announcement comes after House Public Education Committee Chair Harold Dutton, D-Houston, and his committee sent a letter to Mr. Abbott and Education Commissioner Mike Morath, requesting funding relief.

In the letter, the committee noted that student attendance has remained erratic over the last year because of Covid. Students may have missed class because they fell ill or were exposed to the virus and quarantined.

In the year before the pandemic, the average attendance rate at Texas schools was more than 95 percent. But some districts have faced attendance as low as 70 percent at times during the past year, the legislators wrote. Every one percent drop-off in student attendance equates to a $600,000 drop in state funding to districts.

Chairman Dutton’s committee suggested basing attendance numbers on the average rate from 2018-2019 and enrollment on the current year’s classes.

The new finance fix will allow districts to exclude school days from their average count where schools have low percentage of attendance rates. Attendance rates will be considered low if they fall below the average of the rate from the first four six-week periods in 2019-2020 — before the pandemic — TEA spokesman Frank Ward clarified. Districts will be able to use this adjustment for the first 24 weeks of the 2020-2021school year.

This is not the first time that Texas officials have made funding adjustments during the pandemic. State leaders imposed a “hold harmless” provision during the 20192020 school year, meaning that districts were not penalized for unexpected attendance declines. Districts were funded based on attendance projections that were made before the pandemic struck.

Rather than ADA — as Texas does — many other states fund their schools based on student enrollment, which some argue establishes a more stable budget for the entirety of the school year. In states that fund schools based on how many students show up each day, crises like the pandemic can create turbulent budgeting problems for schools.

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About two decades have passed since Dawn Blubaugh Inocencio and her twin sister Christine walked through the hallways of South Grand Prairie High School.

Earlier this year — alongside family members, former classmates and teachers — Dawn returned to her alma mater to celebrate her late sister’s legacy: a new law named in Christine’s honor aimed at preventing dating violence.

In 2000, Christine, then 16, was murdered by her exboyfriend. The tragedy motivated the Blubaughs and Ronnie Morris, the police officer who responded to the incident, to advocate for greater awareness and education about how to prevent such violence.

The result of their work was the Christine Blubaugh Act, which was signed into law by Governor Abbott in September.

The law requires that middle and high school students learn how to identify dating and family violence as well as child abuse. Christine’s family and friends gathered at her former school during Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month to celebrate the new legislation.

Dawn Blubaugh, center, listens as a proclamation is read at South Grand Prairie High School, celebrating the passage of Senate Bill 9, the “Christine Blubaugh Act.” The new state law requires that public schools provide instruction and materials and adopt policies relating to the prevention of child abuse, family. and dating violence. Photo by Lawrence Jenkins for the Dallas Morning News.

“Starting today, teenagers will be armed with an education, with the tools they need to protect themselves against abuse by recognizing the warning signs of an abusive relationship and the resources to escape,” said Officer Morris, who now serves as the assistant chief of the Grand Prairie Police Department. “Christine Blubaugh is no longer remembered as the girl who was murdered. She will now be remembered as the girl who lived a life of significance and one whose death has saved the life of other kids,” he added.

The proposal received bipartisan support early in the regular legislative session in 2021 and made it all the way to Mr. Abbott’s desk — before receiving a surprise veto. In his veto statement, the Governor said the bill failed to recognize the right of parents to opt their kids out of the instruction. The Governor later signed the act — once it was amended — to allow parents the right to opt their children out of the lessons.

According to the Dallas Morning News, one in three U.S. teenagers now experience physical, sexual or emotional abuse with someone with whom they are in a relationship, and 43 percent of women in college report experiencing violent or abusive dating behaviors, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Teenagers in need of help can call the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline at 1-866-331-9474 to reach an advocate who can provide support. Other resources are also available at www.loveisrespect.org.

The Texas Federation of Teachers is thumbing its nose at Governor Abbott’s proposal to create a Parental Bill of Rights — the latest political proposal to emerge from the on-going debates over the teaching of so-called Critical Race Theory, banning library books and the pushback against Covid protections in public schools.

“When it comes to the classroom, Texas parents have every right to know what their children are being taught,” Governor Abbott told an audience of parents at a Lewisville charter school.

The Governor says that he wants to expand the access that parents have to their students’ school curriculum and educational material. And he wants to make sure that schools quickly address parents’ concerns over what is being taught or about campus policies.

His plan also includes giving parents the ability to veto a school’s decision to advance their child to the next grade level when a parent feels it is necessary. Already, the Legislature has given parents the option of students repeating a grade if they feel like their children fell behind because of disruptions in learning caused by the pandemic.

TFT President Zeph Capo called Mr. Abbott’s proposal “a

phony, politicized storyline.” He says the Texas Legislature passed a Parents Bill of Rights in 1995 — which is codified in Chapter 26 of the Texas Education Code.

Governor Abbott’s proposal comes as Republicans nationwide see battles against school districts and school boards as a winning political issue heading into the 2022 midterm elections.

Big-name Republicans around the nation — including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Congressional Leader Kevin McCarthy of California — have pushed similar plans. Governor DeSantis signed a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” into law last summer that makes it easier for parents of Florida schoolchildren to opt them out of vaccinations or object to course materials.

The Austin School District is sending more taxpayer dollars than any other school system in Texas to the state’s socalled “Share-the-Wealth” program, according to a new study.

The decades-old system, known commonly as “Robin Hood,” or “Share-the-Wealth,” is meant to balance funding among less property-wealthy school districts, with the goal of leveling out the per-student spending across all districts statewide.

Using TEA data, the Texas School Coalition study found that Austin “shared” more than $710 million of its wealth in the 2020-2021 school year with other school districts. For context, that amount is three-and-a-half times more than what the Houston School District paid. Houston — the state’s largest public school district — has a student enrollment of approximately 196,000 students, compared to Austin’s 75,000.

The total that Austin paid to the state last year is more than what was collected from the three districts below it on the list — Houston, Plano and Midland — combined.

Austin’s “Share-the-Wealth” payments have consistently dwarfed other districts’ over the last decade. During that time, Austin has experienced declining student enrollment, while property values have skyrocketed.

That placed the district at a distinct disadvantage, especially since nearly half of its students qualify as Economically Disadvantaged, the TSC study notes. The study calls on the Texas Legislature to overhaul the “Share-the-Wealth” concept in its 2013 session.

In 2019, the Legislature passed sweeping bipartisan legislation that eased some of the tax burden on school districts. But because property values have soared since then, the TSC report found that the state “recaptured” $1.4 billion more than what was projected.

That extra money was ultimately used to balance the State Budget for Fiscal Years 2022-2023.

“Those dollars should be directed straight back to public education for the benefit of all students,” the study's authors wrote. “In other words, if taxpayers are paying more than expected in school taxes, it should actually be the schools that benefit.”

Long-time TSPRA member Andy Welch, the retired Communication Director for the Austin Independent School District, compiles and writes two issues of EduLege every week during the school year, copies of which are typically distributed by the state TSPRA office to members on Mondays and Thursdays. That schedule is altered for holidays, and for winter, spring and summer breaks—and when he needs the occasional day off.

Email any questions, suggestionss or concerns to Andy at andywelch1@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @welch_andy.