122 days remain in the 87th Regular Legislative Session.
Questions over missing students
This week, several state leaders have raised the issue of where the missing students are that have caused the 2.3% statewide reduction in enrollment. More than that, they have questioned whether schools have made and are making every effort to track down students who did not return to school.

Senator Larry Taylor said "If you just say, okay, we're going to hold everybody harmless…does that take away the incentive to go find these kids? And what levels have they gone to in order to find these kids?"

The Dallas Morning News reported that Speaker Dade Phelan said “I would support holding ISDs harmless provided that I also felt comfortable that all efforts were made and all due diligence was done” in reaching out to the missing students, .

While there may be some students who are still missing, hopefully no one has missed the fact that it is the mission of public schools to educate students--all students. Public schools' commitment to that mission has certainly been put obvious over the past year. Schools have gone above and beyond to serve students and engage them in learning, not because doing so would generate additional funding for schools (as was the instance when a hold harmless was in place), but because that is what schools do--educate students.

So during this last week of January 2021, it seems Texas public schools have been given a bit of a homework assignment from state leaders. Senator Taylor said "I do need to hear from the school districts...where are these kids? What have you done to try to find them?"

If you have not already done so, please be in contact with your elected representatives in the Texas House and Texas Senate to make sure they have information on your district's efforts to track down any student missing from the enrollment of your district. If possible, provide the data on how many students were missing, how many were tracked down and returned to educational services, and the reasons you have been able to obtain for those that have not returned. Please provide examples of your district's efforts and activities to do your due diligence to locate and serve students.

If you're not sure who your district's legislators are, you can find out here on this alphabetical list. And then you can easily look up contact information for any member of the House or Senate. And even better, you can check out more details about any legislator and the school districts they represent in our Profile Book--district maps included.
Conversation with Senator Larry Taylor
Earlier this week, the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith sat down with Senate Education Committee Chairman Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood) for his Point of Order Podcast to gather his thoughts on several key issues before lawmakers this session. You can listen to the full 45-minute conversation here, or read the excerpts on various topics below, which are all direct quotes from Senator Taylor.

On an Extension to the Hold Harmless:

  • Well, and that issue was going to be discussed quite a bit early on in session obviously, because they [schools] need to know fairly quickly; but, you know, overall statewide, our enrollment is down about 2.3%.
  • And these are kids that early on we heard them referred to as “into the wind.” The school districts can't find these kids. They were enrolled, COVID hit, they went to spring break; and then these kids never came back. And there've been efforts to try to reach these kids, but, our system is designed and funded based on average daily attendance…on kids being in school.
  • The 40% of that enrollment decline is actually pre-K and kindergarten, which are really voluntary. These are not statutorily required attendance. So that’s 40% of that 2.3%...
  • You know, I don't know what all efforts have been made to find those kids, but you know, this has been going on since last spring.
  • I mean, we'll find out some of these kids may move to other districts and those kinds of things. The state certainly shouldn't be paying for them twice...
  • I'm not going to tell you I'm for or against it. I'm looking. I want to get information. We've not had a chance to gather and have those discussions. We will do those very quickly, but I don't think the Commissioner will do it on his own. I think he'll do it in conjunction with leadership, working together on that.
  • But the most important thing is we need to find out what's happened to these students. The idea that we have that number of students who have disappeared is a little scary. What's happened to those kids? I think we really need to have an effort to find those kids. 
  • If you just say, okay, we're going to hold everybody harmless…does that take away the incentive to go find these kids? And what levels have they gone to in order to find these kids?
  • I do need to hear from the school districts, where are these kids? What have you done to try to find them? How do we know they haven't moved to some other part of the state? And are they enrolled in a school district there?


On School District Fund Balances:

  • We've got two different budgets from the house and Senate--those are merely starting points we start working on--but you know the local ISDs also have reserves. And you know, the minimum we require is like 90 days.
  • I'm not sure why they [schools] say they shouldn't use reserves for this. That's what reserves are for. We require a 90-day reserve. And the last numbers I have are from like the 18-19 year and that the cumulative--districts all across state had over $6.6 billion in excess reserves over that 90 days. And I'm sorry, over 110 days, we actually gave a little bit of a fudge factor over the 90.
  • And so they have as much as--almost as much as--we have in our rainy day fund in their funds. And that's for rainy days, such as this. 


On the State Budget

  • …the Senate version of the budget put out, it's fully funding HB 3, and the education commitments that we made last session.
  • I don't think you’re going to see a fight over, you know, whether we should cut here or there on education. I think everyone is fully in, on what we did last session.


On whether circumstances in the current biennium may have resulted in state savings, or the state not spending every dollar appropriated or intended on schools:

  • …maybe in the end, the price tag will be lower. And as a result, maybe that's one of the reasons that the shortfall on the current budget cycle ends up not being quite as bad as it could have been.


On Federal Stimulus Dollars, and in particular the $5.5 billion for Texas schools in the December COVID Relief Bill:

  • Well, obviously, you know that's going to be discussed during the session. Uh, I don't know exactly where it's got…some of it's already been accounted for. But it, you know, it's a welcome relief to have that.
  • We also had CARES funding that came in and we spent a lot of that on PPE devices. I mean, there's just a lot of things. And the deadline for that money has been extended, as I understand it, to spend it longer.
  • That was the thing with the budget that was calming. Everybody kept asking me how the budget is going to be the session. And the unknown was a lot of, it's still what the feds are going to do on their, on their last stimulus bill, how much money is going to go with the States that can obviously help with a number of these issues.


On whether there will be any major education bills this session:

  • It's going to be a slower set for education based purely on what all we did last session. That was a huge session for education, right? Monumental. And you know, there's some cleanup that was a big bill, very technical, a highly complex. And there's cause for some, cleanup that we'll be working on HB 3, and we've had some discussions on those issues.
  • But they've been just kind of rounding off sharp edges. There's nothing major. We're not transforming anything. We've done the transformation. Now we just have to make sure that we have, you know, a real good carry-through on what we put in that bill.


On whether Taylor supports local control:

  • Absolutely. I mean, I always have been, but, but there still has to be oversight at the end of the day because some districts do a better job at that than others.


On Virtual Schools and TEA’s plan for a statewide virtual school:

  • Well, actually the virtual school network, I had a bill last session, to try to expand that. Yeah. And COVID has shown that we have a lot of local districts now that want to do their own virtual school and they're limited by the current law. So I think that bill is going to have a lot more wind behind it. 
  • This time, we need to get that done because the school districts are seeing this is a valuable thing.

On whether the State will adopt a plan to expand broadband access:

  • I think we'll come out of this session with a broadband plan in law, signed by the governor. Right. We know that we need it. I've heard a lot of discussion on this particular from rural members, and this is going to some, we're going to have to address particularly in light of what we've just saying through COVID.

On Commissioner of Education Mike Morath:

  • I have to give the highest commendations to our commissioner. I mean, he is, you know, with HB 3, the leadership he provided and the experience. He has this depth of knowledge and his wanting to know and dig deeper. I don't know of any other commissioner in years past that I've known that would have been able and capable of doing the things that he was able to do of HB 3, and then to switch gears and to go into COVID. 
  • …he certainly did it with the students in mind, every decision I think he made that was what's best for the students.


On hearings/workload this legislative session:

  • For the foreseeable future for this session, our workload, as far as the number of bills we'll be hearing is going to be less, pretty small, right? When you think about the fact that every hearing we have, we have to have another hearing room uses an overflow [room].
  • That means there's half as many hearings going on. So we're going to be limited in how many times we'll be actually able to meet, which is going to obviously affect how many bills we hear.
What we're expecting in the weeks ahead
The Texas House and Texas Senate both met very briefly this week before adjourning until Tuesday, February 9. Next week is expected to be pretty quiet, but Speaker Dade Phelan said that we can expect House committee assignments to be announced next week.

Governor Greg Abbott will deliver the State of the State on Monday evening, February 1, at 7 p.m. This is a little different from standard practice, which involves a joint session of the Texas House and Senate. This year, everyone can watch the live feed instead. Check out this link to find out how you can tune in.

When legislators return to the Capitol the week of February 8, we also expect the Senate Finance Committee to begin conducting a long series of hearings on Senate Bill 1, the General Appropriations Act. They will begin with a budget overview, and then begin taking different articles and sections up one-by-one. We will keep you informed regarding when the committee plans to take up Article III, Public Education. We sent some details about the budget bills that were filed last week. In case you missed it, you can find that here.
Legislator School District Profiles & Maps
If you haven't already done so, please bookmark this link to our Legislator Profile Book. This link will allow you to easily access school finance details about the districts represented by every member of the Texas Legislature, along with maps of the school districts in each legislative district. It's a resource for our membership that we hope you will find useful. We're also going to be updating that book with key talking points and information as the session evolves, so it's a handy place to find information.
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