EduLege Top news in school communications

EduLege Extra

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

Robust. Very robust…

The Texas economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has been so robust that legislators should have nearly $25 billion — yep, that’s a B — when they convene again in January 2023 to write the next two-year state budget.

State Comptroller Glenn Hegar reported recently that he projects a cash balance in the State Treasury of $11.99 billion and another $12.62 billion in the state’s so-called Rainy Day Fund, or savings account, available for the 2023 Texas Legislature to spend — or save — as it sees fit. “This is an expectation,” Comptroller Hegar said of his latest revenue estimate, “not a guarantee of what may be in the treasury. It’s important to always leave a little money in the bank because you never know what the economy’s going to do.”

Mr. Hegar cited uncertainties over inflation, energy prices, labor availability and global supply chain bottlenecks as grounds for circumspection.

The list of issues awaiting the 88th legislative session next year is already growing. Texas has the largest number of medically-uninsured residents in the nation; the state’s foster care system is in shambles; experts warn that the state’s fresh water supply and electrical power grid are both suspect and enrollment in community colleges has suffered a dramatic 11 percent decline since the pandemic began. Asked by the “Dallas Morning News” if he would use his megaphone as the state’s chief tax collector and fiscal officer to recommend selective increases in spending in two years, Mr. Hegar said that it would be “very prudent” to wait through 2022 to see if his revenue projections are on target. The 2023 Legislature can then “make some decisions on how they prudently want to use these dollars — if the numbers bear out.”

In the two-year budget cycle that began on Sept. 1, Texas legislators and Governor Abbott approved state programs and services that spend $123.3 billion in General Revenue Funds.

Looking beyond the next two years …

As oil and gas companies slowly become sources of cleaner energy, Texas’ public schools may pay part of the price, according to research from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Researchers found that because of the emerging energy transition, K-12 education funding — which in Texas relies heavily on taxes from oil and gas production — could begin to fall short of spending needs sometime between 2022 and 2029 — with average annual deficits of $2.5 billion to $5.8 billion. Annual shortfalls could add up to well over $100 billion over the next three decades, researchers say.

“We predict that education funding will decrease by between $13 billion and $120 billion over the next 30 years because of the shift toward renewable energy,” the authors wrote.

While those numbers seem large, they represent an average annual shortfall of about 2.8 percent of Texas’ total baseline K-12 funding over the next 30 years. (The projected funding gap was calculated by taking the difference between the State Comptroller’s 2020 forecast for K-12 education funding from oil and four possible forecasts produced by the Center for Houston’s Future, using the estimated price of a barrel of oil over the next several decades.)

The authors, however, said other taxes could fill in the projected budget hole.

They suggest expanding the sales tax, opening the state up to gambling, legalizing recreational marijuana and heavily taxing those industries. For example, the study noted, the current statewide sales tax of 6.25 percent generated about $34 billion in revenue in 2020. Increasing the sales tax rate by one percentage point would nearly offset the annual worst-case scenario of lost oil revenue by 2050.

If the state taxed marijuana sales as Colorado does, researchers said, Texas could raise billions for education as well. The authors said if the state copied Colorado’s tax scheme and had the same demand, about $2.2 billion a year could be generated. The authors stopped short of endorsing any one method to offset potential revenue losses from diminishing oil and gas production.

“We are not advocating for any single option, and we recognize that there are many other options available to fill the projected shortfalls, such as more fundamental reforms of the franchise tax or increasing excise tax rates,” the authors wrote.

Creme de la crème …

The Texas Association of School Administrators, which facilitates the Texas Teacher of the Year program, has named Texas’ top teachers for 2022.

Jennifer Han, a 4th grade teacher from McAllen, is the 2022 Texas Elementary Teacher of the Year. Ramon Benavides, a biology teacher from Ysleta, is the 2022 Texas Secondary Teacher of the Year.

Mr. Benavides was chosen to represent the state as Texas Teacher of the Year in the National Teacher of the Year competition, making his official title Texas Teacher of the Year.

The announcements were made during surprise visits to both teachers’ campuses by TASA representatives. Both state-level winners will receive a cash award and a commemorative trophy. They will be honored, along with the other 38 Texas Regional Teachers of the Year (semifinalists for the state-level award), at educators’ statewide Midwinter Conference later this month. Mr. Benavides and Ms. Han were selected from a pool of six finalists that also included Bonnie Anderson, Judson; Sanford Jeames, Austin; Miguel Mendez, Northside and Ashley Phelps, Tyler.

“I congratulate Ramon and Jennifer on this achievement. Texas Teacher of the Year is the highest honor our state bestows upon its teachers,” said Kevin Brown, executive director of TASA. “They have distinguished themselves among thousands of outstanding, dedicated teachers across our state and nation who have answered the call to serve others.”

In 2015, Texas Teacher of the Year Shanna Peeples of Amarillo ISD was the second Texas teacher to be named the National Teacher of the Year.

It’s the law …

Texas’ transgender student athletes are now restricted from playing on K-12 school sports teams that align with their gender identity.

House Bill 25, authored by State Representative Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, requires that student athletes who compete in interscholastic competition play on sports teams that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate, at or near their time of birth. HB 25 officially takes effect on Jan. 18.

The legislation goes further than current rules from the University Interscholastic League, which currently state that a student’s gender is determined by their birth certificate. But UIL also accepts legally modified birth certificates in which someone may have had their sex changed to align with their gender identity.

Representative Swanson said in a statement she was “overjoyed” at Governor Abbott’s decision to sign HB

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25 into law. She has argued that the bill will ensure fair competition in girls’ sports, and uphold Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination in education based on sex.

But advocates for transgender Texans worry that HB 25 is detrimental to transgender youth and cisgender girls and women who may not adhere strictly to societal standards.

An emerging crisis …

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy has issued a public health advisory on the mental health challenges confronting youth — a rare warning to address what he called an emerging crisis exacerbated by pandemic hardships.

Symptoms of depression and anxiety have doubled during the pandemic, with 25 percent of youth experiencing depressive symptoms and 20 percent experiencing anxiety symptoms, according to Dr. Murthy’s 53-page advisory. There also appear to be increases in negative

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy toured King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles before talking to a panel of students about mental health issues. Photo by Carolyn Cole for the “Los Angeles Times.”

emotions or behaviors such as impulsivity and irritability — associated with conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

And, in early 2021, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts were 51 percent higher for adolescent girls and four percent higher for adolescent boys, compared to the same time period in early 2019, according to research cited in the advisory. “It would be a tragedy if we beat back one public health crisis only to allow another to grow in its place,” Dr. Murthy wrote in a preface to the advisory. Mental health challenges in children, adolescents and young adults are real, and they are widespread. But most importantly, they are treatable and often preventable.”

Even before the pandemic, students from all backgrounds faced serious mental health challenges, Dr. Murthy said. But nearly two years of isolation and disruption have taken a toll and worsened their mental health — especially for immigrants, students with disabilities and students from low-income families.

Pandemic-related safety measures reduced students’ interaction with teachers, school counselors, pediatricians and child welfare workers. This isolation made it “harder to recognize signs of child abuse, mental health concerns and other challenges,” the advisory states.

A Surgeon General’s advisory is a public statement intended to focus national attention to an urgent public health issue and provide recommendations for how it should be addressed. “Advisories are reserved for significant public health challenges that need the nation’s immediate awareness and action,” the document says.

The advisory calls for a broad-based and rapid response from government, social media companies, community groups, schools, teachers, parents and students to address the mental health issues facing America’s young people.

Getting worse…

The COVID-19 pandemic has further threatened what was already a fragile area of Texas education.

A recent study by Rice University concludes that Texas has become worse at teaching students where English is their second language, which impacts both their academic success and potential lifetime income.

Across the state, researchers have found that the number of English learners who failed to become proficient in the language after five years of ESL classes is increasing. The study tracked students who entered first grade between 2000 and 2015 to see if

they would become proficient — basically, graduate from ESL — by the time they reach the 5th grade. Those who did not were labeled “long-term English learners.”

For several years, the number of long-term English learners remained steady. But that started to rise after 2008. By the 2014-2015 school year, nearly seven in 10 students who began 1st grade as English learners in Texas public schools failed to become proficient within five years. Children need to be English proficient by the 5th grade, as that gives schools plenty of time for intervention, researcher Lizzy Cashiola recently told the “Texas Tribune.”

Fellow researcher Daniel Potter said they have not pinpointed the exact reason for the significant rise in students who are failing to graduate from ESL classes, but he noted that factors include a lack of funding, teacher shortages and where students live.

And now, the path to student progress is further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.

“School may have been one of the few spaces where those students were exposed to an English-majority environment, and [COVID-19] just completely evaporated that space,” Mr. Potter said.

In 2021, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 560, which calls on the Texas Education Agency to help state legislators develop a more strategic plan to improve Bilingual Education programs in the state, including intervention efforts.

Schools as sensitive places …

Schools would remain classified as “sensitive places,” where concealed guns are not allowed for self-defense, under an expanded interpretation of the Second Amendment laid out during recent oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court heard two hours of arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which many observers view as the most important Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court in more than a decade. The case has drawn intense interest from gun control groups that arose after mass school shootings in recent years. The most relevant question for schools in this case is whether the court will do anything to further define “sensitive places” where guns may be prohibited, even if the justices invalidate New York’s law, which a majority of them seem inclined to do.

The justices seemed to take it as a given that firearms could be barred from sensitive places such as courthouses and K-12 schools.

(An earlier version of the Gun-Free School Zones Act was struck down by the high court in 1995 as exceeding Congress’s powers under the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause. But Congress fixed the measure by making it apply to guns that could be shown to have moved in Interstate Commerce.)

The gun-free-schools provision, and other federal laws barring firearms in government buildings and airplanes, “impose only a modest burden on the right to bear arms, and they are part of a long tradition of restricting weapons in sensitive places,” the Biden Administration said in its brief for the case.

In its landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court said the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm and to use that firearm for “traditionally lawful purposes” such as selfdefense in the home. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on … laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”

The Supreme Court has had little else to say on the Second Amendment since then.

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.