CAPITAL HIGHLIGHTS GHLIGHT
Leaders from the Texas House and Senate have agreed on an $8 billion school-funding package, which is being called the largest in state history, The Dallas Morning News reported.
The latest version of House Bill 2 was unveiled at a Senate hearing Thursday. It would give the state major discretion in deciding how the funds are spent, from teacher pay raises to special education to school safety.
House Democrats reportedly are unhappy with major changes to the original bill, first passed in mid-April. That version gave local schools more discretion on how to spend state dollars. The new version cuts the proposed per-student funding increase from $395 to $55 but also includes $7.2 billion in new funding, with more than half of that dedicated to teacher pay raises.
State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said critics should concentrate on the total number of funding being appropriated.
“It seems to be lost in narratives right now as we talk about this historic money, knowing that every district in Texas wins,” Creighton said.
An administrator testifying at the Senate hearing said lawmakers should put more trust in local school districts. “We hear a lot about (how) we need to be a small government, and yet I see a lot of the bodies talking about things that will put a lot of restrictions on the local independent school districts,” said Phillip Morgan, the Plano Independent School District fine-arts director. “Let those local ISDs make those decisions.”
Abbott: No soda, candy with food stamps Gov. Greg Abbott last week formally requested a waiver from the Trump administration to block the purchase of “unhealthy, highly processed food” with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
The SNAP program serves more than 3.2 million Texans with more than $7 billion in taxpayer funding, Abbott wrote in a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
“SNAP was created to increase access to nutritious food; however, many SNAP purchases are for food with little to no nutritious value,” Abbott wrote.
A bill to ban SNAP recipients from using benefits to buy “sweetened soft drinks” has passed the Senate and is up for a vote in the House.
SNAP recipients receive an average of $187 a month, according to the latest USDA figures.
Bills endanger wind, solar farms
Two companion bills pose threats to the state’s renewable energy boom, according to the clean energy industry, the Houston Chronicle reported.
House Bill 3356 and Senate Bill 715 would “require nearly every solar and wind farm in the state to back up their electricity output with natural gas power plants or a fleet of batteries.”
If an existing renewable project doesn’t have backup power, its owner would have to either stop operating or pay a steep fine. Clean industry leaders say such a requirement would be cost-prohibitive.
“I cannot recall legislation as damaging to our industry and to the energy market as House Bill 3356 and Senate Bill 715 being considered in both chambers this late in session,” said Mark Stover, executive director of Texas Solar and Storage Association, a trade group.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, said his goal is to “level the playing field” against what he called a highly subsidized renewable energy industry, so more natural gas power plants can be built in the state.
Power grid weathers an early heat wave
Temperatures soared near or above the 100-degree mark last week, setting records in several cities while power usage came close to reaching an all-time high, the Chronicle reported.
Demand hit 81 gigawatts, an all-time high for May, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, but no power shortages were reported.
The ERCOT grid has added more solar power to cushion the grid during the hottest hours and more battery storage to help meet the load when solar power is unavailable, according to energy analyst Rob Allerman.
ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas attributes a growing fleet of renewable energy facilities as one reason the power-grid operator should be able to get through the summer without resorting to rotating outages this summer.
“We’re really continuing to see the benefit of increased resources from the solar and battery perspective. That made a very significant difference last summer. I think that we’ll see the benefit of that this summer,” Vegas said.
North Texas home to five of fastest-growing cities Newly released U.S. Census data indicates that five cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are among the 15 fastest-growing cities in the country, The Dallas Morning News reported.
Topping the list is Princeton in Collin County, where population grew by 30.6% from July 2023 to July 2024. Its residents have more than doubled from 17,000 in 2020 to an estimated 37,000 today.
“We went from a small farming town to — I wouldn’t say the city level yet — but a lot of new faces, lots of traffic in a short period of time,” said Princeton Mayor Eugene Escobar Jr. “We knew the growth was coming.”
Three other Collin County cities cracked the top 15 — Celina (parts of which are in Denton County), Anna and Melissa.
Texas cities took seven of the top 15 spots, with Fulshear, near Houston, and Hutto, near Austin, also on the list.
House panel considers DEI ban in K-12 schools ATexas House panel is considering a bill to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in hiring and training in public schools, similar to a law passed in 2023 targeting DEI efforts in higher education.
The Austin American- Statesman reported state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, is handling the bill in that chamber. It has already passed the Senate.
“This is about performance and achievement and instruction, and very strongly stands against and prohibits discriminatory practices,” Leach said.
Ash Hall, a policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the bill could lead to classroom censorship.
“This bill creates red tape and compliance burdens that distract schools from teaching and learning,” Hall said. “It is not about improving education. It is about controlling it.”
Borders is a veteran award-winning Texas journalist. He published a number of community newspapers in Texas during a 30-year span, including in Longview, Fort Stockton, Nacogdoches, Lufkin and Cedar Park. Email: gborders@ texaspress.com.
Copyright © 2025 Texas Press Association, all rights reserved.
Comment
Comments