Hello All,

My heart is broken for families of Uvalde, for what you all are shouldering this week, and for the months ahead, as we know the emotional toll of this senseless tragedy will continue to impact our school communities. 

Later this morning, Dr. Goldhorn and Dr. Woods will be updating the Bexar County House and Senate delegation on the situation on the ground at Uvalde ISD. Thank you to so many of you, your staff, and your counselors who rushed in immediately to help Uvalde ISD and are still there providing vital services and support.

I will be sending out two options for us to meet next week to discuss how you all would like BCEC to amend or adjust our legislative plan for the upcoming session in light of recent events. Prior to this week's tragedy, I had begun to reach out to Bexar County offices to schedule meetings to discuss our legislative topics. I know school safety will come up in said discussions, and I do not want to proceed with legislative office meetings until I have checked in with you all on this topic. 

I have updated the hearing list as well as the notes from the Senate Education and House Public Education committee hearings (House public education adjourned early due to the Uvalde shooting). 

It continues to be an honor to be able to work with you, to witness the strength and resiliency of you and your teams, and to help elevate the incredible work you all do everyday. 

Thank you for everything you do for our children and for our state. 

Julia

I have four summaries to share. Due to their length, I've created separate documents for each:

Senate Committee on Higher Education - 05/10/22 - Particularly interesting data from Harrison Keller on the impact of the pandemic on higher education enrollment and THECB's efforts to offer counseling services to k12 students. 

Senate Committee on Business and Commerce - 05/18/22 - Not a direct comment on cybersecurity impacts on k12 entities, summary included in case you have interest in other state-level supports. 

Senate Education - 05/24/22 - Morath shared with the committee that "$3.7 billion" was allocated for the purpose of tutoring, but schools have only spent $74 million (Julia commentary - this is a very interesting interpretation of the data/funding allocation). Here is TEA's presentation from the hearing. 

House Public Education - 05/24/22 - Extensive discussion on mental health and the resources available (or rather not available) to public schools. Also, an interesting exchange occurred between Rep King and Commissioner Morath about temporary federal funding that was currently paying for permanent requirements for accelerated tutoring. 

You can find all of the summaries in the newly create Interim Hearing Summaries Folder found here. (this link as been corrected - thank you Kelly!) 

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.