Volume 26 | January 12, 2021
Coalition news & updates
Hello All,

Thank you all for the incredible amount of work that I know all of you have done over the past two weeks to open schools and provide safety, warmth, and engagement for our community's children to the best of everyone's abilities. It continues to be an honor to be able to work with you and to try my best to offer some help/assistance when I am can.

A couple of quick updates:

  • SBEC adopted new rules for contract abandonment (description below), final approval of the rules go to the SBOE at the end of the month.

  • For school districts who are Community Lab partners - I have an update below regarding their funding, news on a Bexar County delegation letter, and an example letter you can use to contact TEA directly.

  • Save the Date for an interview with the new(ish) Director of the Broadband Development office - February 16th

  • Commissioner Morath shared on his last call that TEA would be reviewing attendance data to potentially make an adjustment to ADA funding. Stay tuned for a possible attendance survey part 2 in the next few weeks.

Over the next week keep your eyes out for a doodle poll to schedule an in-person meeting with Representative Lujan in mid/late-February.


Julia
Contract Abandonment Administrative Rule Update
On December 10th, the State Board of Education Certification (SBEC) adopted updated rules for contract abandonment and corresponding sanctions. As a quick review, the administrative rules proposed by SBEC go way beyond the call of the original legislation (HB 2519).

Included in the amended rules, SBEC redefined the term "mitigating factors" to include "a change in campus assignment," "a change in base pay," or a classroom situation that may "reasonably pose an immediate threat of significant physical harm to the educator." Further, all mitigating factors shall (rather than the previous "may") be considered in determining appropriate sanctions.

BCEC submitted feedback about the proposed rules (found here) along with 88 other state organizations opposing the change and requesting that SBEC stick to the legislative intent of HB 2519. Unfortunately, SBEC did adopt the rules and only made one change - striking the "change in classroom assignment" addition to mitigating factors.

The SBOE must approve these rules before they are effective. SBOE is set to approve these rules at the end of January. BCEC will submit a letter to our SBOE representatives to ensure they know our concerns with the new rules. I will send out a draft letter via email for you all to review before releasing the letter.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Community Labs Update
As many of you shared with me last week, Community Labs was not selected as a state wide vendor and is at risk of having their funding cut off for K12 in-school testing at the end of March.

Since 11 of our Bexar County ISDs are served by Community Labs, the Bexar County delegation is drafting a letter to TEA to ask for Community Labs to be added to the approved vendor list, or at the very least, be allowed to continue to serve schools until the of the year. The letter will be signed by the House and the Senate delegation and we should receive a final copy of that letter at the beginning of next week.

If you would like to send a letter to TEA as well, here is a sample letter to help get you started.
Save the Date - February 16th 8:30am
Greg Conde, Director of the Broadband Development Office (BDO), will join us for a zoom to discuss the work the BDO is doing across Texas and how it will effect Bexar County over the next few years.

If you have questions that you'd like to ask Greg, please email me and we will add them to the interview list!
What we are reading

AHISD, EISD, ECISD, FSHISD, HISD, JISD, LISD, MVISD, NEISD, NISD, RFISD, SAISD, SCUCISD, SISD, SISD, SWISD
We are here to help:

Julia
210-279-2787
Julia@BCECTX.org

Charles
940-768-8594
Charles@BCECTX.org

Matt
512-826-8103
Matt@BCECTX.org