Volume 45 | July 15, 2022

Coalition news & updates

Hello All,

I hope you all are staying cool in this record-breaking heat.

Two updates for you this week:

The 2022 - 2023 Student Attendance Accounting Handbook was released at the end of June, which includes a positive update to the low-day attendance waiver. More details below.

The Comptroller has released an updated revenue estimate for the next biennium that gives legislators an additional $27 billion dollars to spend. More details below.

As you all know, I am very close to welcoming our second child. I am sending out the maternity plan to you all on Monday July 18th via email (unless baby arrives before Monday(!)), but please know you will have lots of coverage while I am out and will be in great hands.

All my best,

Julia

The Student Attendance Accounting Handbook

After many organizations continued to pressure the Texas Education Agency to adjust the low-day attendance waiver, it seems that we have a bit of an adjustment in the updated manual.

On page 9 of the change document (find that here) you will find the updated wording which I have copied below:

"3.8.1.5 Low-Attendance Waiver—Remote Conferencing The guidance in this subsection applies to remote conferencing only. This guidance does not apply to remote learning.

For a day when school was held and the district had at least one student present in remote conferencing (as defined in 12.3.1 Remote Conferencing—Regular Education Students and 12.3.2 Remote Conferencing—Special Education Students) but attendance was at least five percentage points below the overall average attendance rate for your district or the applicable campus for the prior year because of issues related to inclement weather, health, or safety, your district may apply for a waiver to have the day excluded from ADA and FSP funding calculations.

An application for a low-attendance day waiver for districts with students present in remote conferencing on the applicable date must be submitted using TEA’s automated waiver application system, which is available in TEAL.

Your district must include the following three items in its application:

• documentation of low attendance for the day, including the reason for the low attendance rate

• an attendance summary report for the date(s) requested in the waiver, including the number of students present in remote conferencing

• the prior year’s attendance report, showing the overall average attendance rate for the year for the district or applicable campus. For a district or campus with multiple tracks, the overall average attendance rate for all tracks must be used. For a campus that existed as two separate campuses the prior year, the overall average attendance rate for the district as a whole must be used.

These documents should be uploaded as attachments in the automated waiver application system."

Please let me know your thoughts on the text above, my review of this is it is good news for any days in the future that may result in a 5% drop in ADA instead of the prior 10% drop. There is still time to submit comments over the proposed attendance handbook if you think we need to suggest adjustments.

Comptroller Hegar Announces a $27 Billion Surplus

Yesterday Comptroller Hegar released an updated revenue estimate for the state. Instead of recent estimates of a $12 billion surplus, Hegar believes the surplus to be closer to $27 billion.

While Legislators do have a constitutional limit on how much they can spend during the upcoming legislative session (limit is based on a formula that factors in the state’s population and inflation), they will have a significantly inflated budget.

Read the comptrollers press release here and an informative Texas Tribune article here.

Upcoming Interim Hearings

You can find all House hearing live streams here and all Senate live streams here.

I'll continue to update this list each newsletter:

House Committee on Public Education - July 25th - Agenda - This hearing is the continuation of the hearing that was ended due to the tragedy in Uvalde. BCEC will be testifying on Chronic Absenteeism.
House Committee on Public Education - July 26th - Agenda - The hearing will focus on parental involvement, K12/Higher Education Partnerships, and use of instructional materials in public schools.
House Committee on Public Education - August 9th - Agenda - Focused on testing, this hearing will discuss the implementation of HB 3906 (online testing) as well as the unfilled work of the 2016 Commission on Next Generation Assessments and Accountability.