August and September will be busy months for the Senate Committee on Education since they have posted hearings covering various interim charges including:
- August 3 – Conduct a comprehensive performance review of all public schools in Texas, examine county-based school systems and monitor legislation requiring a minimum number of minutes of instruction for each school year.
- August 16 – examining school board governance policies and training requirements, pre-k grant programs and teacher preparation programs
- September 13 – evaluate digital learning opportunities and criteria for alternative measures of assessments to meet high school graduation requirements.
- September 14 – explore school choice programs across the nation and legislation establishing state intervention procedures.
The Senate Finance Committee will meet in September to take up various interim charges, including tax relief provided to property owners and the gradual phase out of the franchise tax.
Also in September the Senate’s State Affairs Committee will examine the practice of using public funds and employees for the payment processing of union dues and in October the committee will examine current ethics laws governing public officials & employees.
It is anticipated the House Committee on Public Education and the House Committee on Appropriations will also meet at some point in August/September to address some of their interim charges including discussing various school finance charges. In June of this year Texas House Speaker Joe Straus called on two House committees to jointly study key aspects of the state’s school finance system and make recommendations before the next legislative session. The first charge to the two committees: “Current law requires the elimination on September 1, 2017, of Additional State Aid for Tax Relief (ASATR), which was intended to offset the cost of tax-rate compressions enacted in 2006. Review how this loss of funding would impact school districts.” The second charge: “Study the use of local property taxes to fund public education and its effects on educational quality and on Texas taxpayers. Specifically, recommend ways to reverse the increasing reliance on recapture payments to fund public education statewide.” The charges also build on an earlier issued interim charge for the Public Education Committee to study the Cost of Education Index and school districts’ facility needs.