Hello All,

As I am sure you have seen, Governor Abbott announced Monday night that a part of his "parental bill of rights" will include a push for education vouchers. 

In his own words: 

"Empowering parents means giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student."

Unfortunately, one of our Bexar Delegation members, Rep. Lujan, sat on the stage with him and signed the "Parental Bill of Rights" as his "witness." 

A focused push against vouchers will of course be a part of our legislative agenda moving forward.  I will email a doodle poll so we can gather via Zoom to discuss BCEC's response. 

Below you'll find links to summaries of recent interim hearings as well as an updated schedule of upcoming interim hearings. 

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Julia

I have three summaries to share (I'm listening to Senator Higher Education as I type, I will send out that summary next week). Due to their length, I've created separate documents for each:

House Business & Industry Committee (04/27/22): While the majority of the committee meeting was dedicated towards the impact of the COVID overall, there was an exchange with Carrie Griffith the Director of Government Relations from the Texas State Teachers Association on the impact of COVID on teacher attrition. The linked summary only includes her testimony. 

Senate Finance (05/04/22): The first hearing with Senator Huffman as the chair, the majority of the committee meeting discussed the impact of inflation over the last two years. I've included three exchanges for your review: Kevin Kavanaugh, chief economist for the LBB; Brad Reynolds, the chief revenue estimator for the Comptroller's Office; and Brian Gutherie, the Executive Director of the Teacher Retirement System. 

House Higher Education (05/05/22): The majority of the hearing was dedicated to the progress of 60x30 and the impact of COVID-19 on the progress of 60x30's goals. 

You can find all of the summaries in the newly create Interim Hearing Summaries Folder found here.

If you'd like these emailed directly to you, let me know and I can email them as attachments.

I tried to keep the summaries as short(ish) to be as pertinent to BCEC topics as possible. Please let me know if you have any questions.