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Keep Public Funds in Public Schools! Oppose HB 3! *NEW*

The Texas Senate passed SB 2, which establishes Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs), and now, the Texas House Public Education Committee is holding a hearing for its companion bill, HB 3 on Tuesday, Mar. 11th, 2025. ESAs are welfare for the wealthy. Texas already has school choice and needs to protect and fully fund its public schools. Contact the members of the House Public Education Committee to urge them to say NO to HB 3!

Say Yes to Supporting Relative Caregivers!

Say Yes to HB 215!

The House Committee on Human Services will meet on Tuesday, March 11th to discuss HB 215, a crucial bill supporting relative caregivers of Texas foster children. This legislation aims to ensure that over 200,000 foster children living with relatives receive appropriate benefits and support, empowering caregivers to create safe and stable environments. Contact the House Human Services Committee members now, and urge them to vote YES on HB 215!

Tell Your Members of Congress to Oppose the SAVE Act!

Congress has introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require citizenship documentation to register to vote even though voters in every state are already required to affirm or verify their citizenship status when registering. Americans do not need MORE obstacles to vote. Tell your representatives to say NO to the SAVE Act!

Voting Rights and Election Law

The House Election Committee met for the first time on Thursday. At this organizational meeting, only invited testimony was taken. The committee heard from the Secretary of State’s Office, the Department of Public Safety, the legislative coordinator for the Election Administrators Association, representatives of election technology companies, as well as other experts.

The SOS described the role of the office in assisting local election officials with a focus on voter roll list management, election system certification, and the success of the 2024 election. The DPS presentation was most interesting because of what it revealed about the success of voter registration through drivers license bureaus, in person, online, over the phone and by mail. In total the DPS registered 3 million voters in 2024. Of that number, half were online registrations for voters changing their addresses through DPS. Addressing proof of citizenship as required by Real ID, the DPS checks citizenship when issuing a driver's license once for citizens and every time the driver interacts with DPS if their status is permanent or temporary, but legal. However, the license issued is the same regardless of status. This information is transmitted electronically to the SOS. For voter registration, the DPS will soon provide two additional pieces of information: citizenship status and out-of-state driver's license. Since 202, the DPS has registered 1.1 to 1.4 million voters online with incident. The DPS system has the capacity to register first time voters if the legislature permits it.

Election Administrators have a number of priorities for this session including protecting countywide polling, ensuring ballot privacy, and protecting the confidentiality of election workers including poll workers.

Financing Public Education

The House Public Education Committee will hear public testimony on Tuesday, March 11th, to consider HB 3, the House Educational Savings Account (ESA) bill. Like the Senate bill, HB 3 pays lip service to prioritizing low-income students and students with special needs while also defining low income as a family of four making $156,000 or less. The bill does not require that private schools provide special education services. This past week, the Committee took both invited and public testimony on HB 2, public school financing. The bill provides for the first increase in per student funding since 2019. Adjusting for inflation, that increase should be over $1,000 per student. HB 2 only offers a $220 increase.

Women's Healthcare and Reproductive Rights

The House Public Health Committee and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee have both started holding hearings.

The Health Human Service administration within Texas presented at both the House and Senate committees, and here are some quick facts we learned from their presentation:

• Texas has 4.3 million people on Medicaid, 14.6% of our population, mostly children.
• Medicaid covers 50% of all births in Texas
• Medicaid covers 50% of long-term care (nursing homes)
• Medicaid or Chip covers 46% of children in Texas. Medicaid is based on the federal poverty level (FPL), CHIP is for children whose parents make more than the FPL ($32,150 for a family of 4 in 2025) but not enough to buy private insurance.
• There are several Medicaid programs in Texas, including Star (children), Star Kids (disabled), CHIP, and dental care for children.
• There is currently a wait list for children and individuals to be able to receive Medicaid benefits. There was some debate on how long the waiting list is for Medicaid. The SNAP backlog was cleared in November.

View their current report here.

Children's Issues

The Senate Committee on Health and Human Services met on Wednesday, March 5th to discuss a number of bills, including SB 513, relating to a rural community-based care pilot program. Community-Based Care is an attempt to reform the Texas foster care system, primarily by altering the ways in which families and children involved in DFPS cases are provided services. The program has some admirable goals, including placing children closer to their home communities and better matching services provided to the specific needs of the child. Community-Based Care (CBC) transfers functions related to foster care services from DFPS to a Single Source Continuum Coordinator (SSCC), or a nonprofit, community organization who is responsible for developing a network of services and placements, as well as monitoring all providers contracted by the program. The CBC program is already active in seven Texas regions, including the Panhandle, the Fort Worth area, and South Central Texas and the Hill Country areas, serving about a quarter of the state’s foster children. The CBC model aspires to provide tailored services to children and families involved with the foster care system, including those traditionally provided by CPS, like case management and reunification services. The SSCC and CPS work together closely to manage the transition from traditional foster care to community-based care, attempting to ensure that services for children and families are not disrupted.

The Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services (TACFS) supports the continued implementation of CBC programs across the state, stating that there have been “promising early results in improving outcomes for children and families…” but “the sustainability of the model must be ensured… with strategic investments and a focus on stability and transformation.” Others familiar with the program have criticisms, especially concerning the program's slow rollout, lack of funding, lack of flexibility, unclear impact on outcomes for children and families, and the possibility that outsourcing case management would push CPS caseworkers out. Finally, some have questioned if CBC is simply another attempt by the state to skirt its responsibilities around foster care and shrug off accountability should problems arise.

While SB 513 was left pending after last Wednesday’s hearing, testimony in support of the bill suggested that CBC is more of a model through which the specific foster care needs of a community can be identified and addressed. Moreover, supporters stated that a rural CBC pilot program would be able to address the specific foster care challenges and needs of rural communities in West Texas by prioritizing foster care service provider recruitment and working to ensure foster children in the area are placed closer to home, as West Texas has the highest rates of foster children being placed outside their home regions and counties in the state.