Just as Texas businesses and private schools enjoy great success because of our freedoms, Texas families (and therefore Texas children) thrive when they are free to make their own decisions. For the good of children, we celebrate, support and empower Texas families with the freedom to direct the education of their own children.
If you are worried about the workforce of tomorrow, look no further than at the infants and toddlers of today. The most efficient and cost-effective workforce training is to enhance and strengthen programs that serve our youngest children, birth to age five.
Now that we've observed Earth Day by planting a tree or cleaning up a stream, it's important to do one more thing: Let senators know that we want judges who will follow the law, rather than serving the Trump administration’s political agenda, in interpreting environmental statutes. Oppose the confirmation of Andy Oldham.
Many view oil and gas as an antiquated energy source — a relic of the past that will soon be replaced with so-called "green" alternatives. However, when looking at our ever-growing need for energy, it quickly becomes very clear that fossil fuels are going to remain our primary source of energy for the foreseeable future.
Many of our state formulas for funding public schools do not fully account for over 30 years of population growth, demographic changes, economic trends, and increased expectations for student outcomes. Texas does not allot enough basic funding per student, especially those who require special or bilingual education.
Even under an unlikely worst-case scenario for the Texas GOP, in January of 2019 the partisan distribution of forces in the Texas House would still be 82 Republicans to 68 Democrats. Today, a more realistic scenario would project a Republican delegation of between 87 and 93 representatives in 2019 and a Democratic delegation of between 57 and 63.
To what extent should local governments be entitled to legislative powers over the areas they are elected to represent? Who should local governments be accountable to: those who elected them or those who travel across the state to protest legally unenforceable local ordinances, such as previously existed in Olmos Park?
To refer to Mexican-Americans as Americans of Mexican descent is reductive and dismissive. The State Board of Education’s vote renamed an entire ethnic group and a long-standing academic field of study in a way designed to reject Mexican-American identity.
A new study in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology finds that data coding errors in previous research misclassified a number of deceased women as pregnant, and therefore, the actual maternal mortality rate in Texas is less than half of what previous reports indicated.
Each year the world celebrates Earth Day on April 22. It began in 1970 after a large oil spill occurred off the California coast near Santa Barbara. Concerns about the environment were increasing at the time in the U.S., and Republican President Nixon created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the same year.
All in all, a new Texas sex education law is an improvement over the old abstinence-only program, which was both factually incorrect and prevented participating schools from moving beyond merely saying “don't do it.” Texas, the state with the highest repeat teen pregnancy rate in the nation, should welcome this new law requiring “medically accurate and complete” sex-ed.
In recent weeks, state-licensed providers have opened for business under the state’s landmark Compassionate Use Act (Senate Bill 339), which allows qualified physicians to prescribe low-THC medical cannabis to patients diagnosed with intractable epilepsy. Many Texans are wondering how to go about qualifying for and obtaining medical cannabis under this law.
Disasters have a unique way of bringing businesses and residents together toward a common goal, but we must find a way to harness that potential by creating a culture in a city or region where every business engages in its community’s most pressing issues.
My fear is not simply that if Democrats nominate LupeValdez, she will lose to Greg Abbott in a landslide. It’s that Abbott and the GOP will use her lack of preparation to paint Texas Democrats as not ready to govern, then hammer at down-ballot Democrats who might have a chance to win seats that are open or held by vulnerable Republicans.
Human trafficking is a terrible and tragic industry, affecting every community across the country. Since 2012, the National Human Trafficking Hotline has seen yearly increases in reported cases, rising to 8,524 in 2017. Even so, this is a small fraction of the total estimated cases of human trafficking and exploitation that occur in our country every year.
If our state government truly intends to serve and protect the rights of all Texans, the state should end its baseless attack on the ACA and redirect its energy toward building on existing efforts to improve access to cost-effective health care for all Texans.
Now, on the 25th anniversary of the Waco Siege, agents admit horrible mistakes were made. They painfully lost some of their own. There is regret, a wish that someone had said “stop” to what agents call “go fever.” They wish they hadn’t played right into the hands of Koresh’s fateful prediction to followers that this fiery day would come.
Why do we have to sacrifice our community’s health for the promise of economic growth? Don’t we deserve to have jobs that don’t harm our people and land?
We need to act now to be prepared for the next drought — starting with putting less water on Texas lawns every day, not just during drought. Broad-scale adoption of outdoor watering ordinances could easily be considered a win-win-win, addressing landscape watering needs, the needs of cities and urban areas and the needs of the natural environment to sustain wildlife.
The facts are undeniable: The number of lives lost and families and communities terrorized by gun violence continues to rise. And yet the White House, Congress and both Republicans running for Congress in the state’s 21st Congressional District are conceding the fight, demanding that we accept our violent present as another “new normal.”
