FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 15, 2017 CONTACT: Rob D’Amico, 512-627-1343 Texas AFT President Louis Malfaro commented today on the release of school accountability ratings by the Texas Education Agency: We’re pleased to see a decline in the number of districts rated as “Improvement Required,” but it’s also clear that charter schools continue to underperform traditional public schools, since charter...

An anti-teacher amendment was rejected decisively by a bipartisan majority in the Texas House late on Monday afternoon.  Rep. Bill Zedler (R-Arlington) tried to insert the anti-teacher amendment into SB 16, a bill creating a commission to study long-term fixes for school finance and recommend a comprehensive overhaul before the next regular legislative session in January 2019.  Zedler's amendment would...

The Texas Senate keeps delaying a vote on increased school funding for 2018-2019 and now has recessed until 4 p.m. Monday.  It may be just as well that they are still working out their stance, because what's on the table so far in the Senate is very little.  The $311 million senators have included thus far in their version of HB...

You have one more day to send your message to the Texas Senate to support a sensible compromise on school finance, because the Senate has delayed action until Sunday evening on the key House bill, HB 21.  Send your letter to your state senator now if you have not done so already!  These letters matter.  Just yesterday Senate Education Committee chair Larry Taylor...

With six days left in the current 30-day special session of the Texas Legislature, not a single bill has been passed and sent to Gov. Greg Abbott, despite Lt.  Gov. Dan Patrick's ardent efforts to push through many hot-button proposals, including private-school vouchers and transgender-discrimination mandates.  Still alive in the special session are important school-funding and TRS-Care cost-relief measures.  You...

The Texas House and Texas Senate both have passed competing bills providing $212 million to cut rising health-care costs they recently imposed on retired school employees.  The House passed HB 20 and the Senate passed an equivalent provision as part of SB 19 in direct response to grass-roots pressure from retired and active school employees.  However, with just a week...

House Sends School-Finance Bills to Senate with Supermajority Support: The Texas House hardly could have made it clearer today—by overwhelming margins, House members sent the Senate a $1.9-billion school-funding bill (HB 21) by a vote of 130 to 13, and they passed a measure (HB 30) to pay for it from the state’s $10-billion-plus reserve fund, the Economic Stabilization Fund,...

Texas AFT represents all non-administrative certified and classified public school employees.  We represent the interests of teachers, counselors, librarians, diagnosticians, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, nurses, teaching assistants, clerical employees, and the other men and women who work so hard to make our schools work.  We also represent employees in universities, colleges and community and junior colleges. 

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