While the Texas Association of School Boards compiles a slate of legislative priorities ahead of each legislative session for local school boards to consider, SISD's Governance Committee reviews the list and recommends only a handful of priorities for the district to adopt and bring to local legislators.
"All of the TASB priorities are worthwhile, but certain priorities are more relevant to Spring ISD," Trustee and Assistant Secretary Winford Adams said during the meeting. "There are different regional priorities around the state, ... so this is our attempt to make sure the priorities of Spring ISD are known."
Among the nine priorities presented by TASB, the SISD board of trustees unanimously voted to adopt the following five.
- COVID-19 pandemic: TASB calls upon the Texas Legislature to continue working with local school districts to identify and address student needs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and other disasters, such as access to technology and broadband utility services, mental health resources, meals, social services, personal protective equipment, additional support for economically disadvantaged children and remediation for students while maintaining local control. The state should also suspend accountability ratings during disasters that severely impact school operations such as the current pandemic, enact a temporary moratorium on the expansion or creation of new charter schools, not supplant state education funding with federal funds provided for disaster recover and fund schools based on student enrollment to ensure adequate instructional continuity.
- Charter schools: TASB calls up on the Texas Legislature to prohibit the expansion of charter schools to reduce the impact charter schools have on the state budget and on local public schools and to increase the transparency of charter schools and their operators, especially with regard to enrollment and expulsion practices, business operations and expenditures. The state should require charters to have publicly elected board members who are accountable to the communities they serve.
- Diversity and cultural awareness : TASB calls upon the Texas Legislature to support diversity and cultural awareness initiatives throughout districts, through staff and student education, and restorative teaching and disciplinary practices that treat all students with equality.
- Governance: TASB calls upon the Texas Legislature to recognize and preserve the right of public school boards to associate and collaborate with each other and to communicate the needs of their schools both directly and through representative organizations with lawmakers.
- Public school finance: TASB calls upon the Texas Legislature to aggressively commit to maintain the promises and dedication of funding made in the new school finance system implemented under House Bill 3 in the 86th session and to equitably share the cost of education with local school districts. Further, the state should implement a funding structure that recognizes the flexibility needed by and additional costs incurred by school districts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to these five priorities, trustee and Vice President Deborah Jensen said the Governance Committee also recommended the district adopt an additional priority that did not gain enough widespread support to become one of TASB's priorities for the 87th Legislature. The priority, which trustees approved unanimously, calls for the expansion of Senate Bill 2283, which became law in the 86th legislative session and prohibits a person who has been convicted of a felony or an offense under Section 43.02 of the Texas Penal Code—prostitution—from serving as a school board of trustee member.
While SISD trustees said they support SB 2283, it does not take into account deferred adjudication, which enables an individual to keep a conviction off his or her criminal record. As such, the board unanimously adopted the priority in hopes of expanding SB 2283 to also prohibit individuals who have received differed adjudication from serving on a school board of trustees.
"I just really am concerned with the qualifications of trustees in the state of Texas," Jensen said during the meeting. "I think we need to make them a little more stringent because ... with the financial dealings we work with, we want someone who is the highest ethical caliber of handling money, for instance. We handle human resources [and] private information, and you need to be responsible with that kind of information. There's just things in this voluntary job that we have that really require a person of higher quality and character than is presently required in the Texas state law."
With legislative priorities in hand, the SISD board of trustees will now work with local legislators to make their priorities known ahead of the upcoming legislative session.
