Advocacy Action Center
89th Texas Legislature
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As we gear up for the 89th Texas Legislative Session, the CHILDREN AT RISK team has developed a robust agenda centering the whole child that will guide our advocacy efforts. Our agenda is outlined below and will be regularly updated throughout the session as bills advance through the legislative process.
CHILDREN AT RISK’s Policy Priorities for the 89th Texas Legislature
Invest in Quality Early Education and Public Education: Ensure All Children Are Ready for School, College, and Careers
Child Care
Improving Child Care and Pre-K Within Existing Resources:
- Reduce administrative obstacles to develop public-private Pre-K partnerships with a focus on charter schools to expand pre-kindergarten offered by private child care providers.
- Prioritize income eligible child care employees for child care scholarships for their own children.
- Create franchise tax incentives for businesses that support child care for low-income working Texas families.
Address Child Care Deserts, Waiting Lists, and Staffing Shortages:
- Target persistent Child Care Deserts by allowing local workforce boards flexibility to reimburse Texas Rising Star child care providers at the state’s established rates.
- Serve 10,000 more low-income children of already eligible working parents with child care scholarships to help reduce the waitlist and assist more parents to work (estimated cost: $190 million for biennium).
Public Education
- Allocate funding to appropriately and equitably support all public school students.
- Create a statutory definition of chronic absenteeism, include chronic absenteeism in the “at-risk” category for state funding, and require TEA to report data.
- Continue to invest in Pre-K Partnerships between school districts and private child care providers and alleviate barriers that prevent public-private partnerships.
- Ensure accountability and transparency for education saving accounts if passed. Ensure children living in low-income families are prioritized to participate in education savings accounts.
- Ensure quality virtual learning is accessible to vulnerable students (such as human trafficking survivors) unable to attend public school in-person.
Invest in Programs and Strategies that Improve Children’s Physical, Mental and Social Development
Health
- Protect current requirements for immunizations, including requirements for public school entry.
- Ensure Texas has a functional system to help parents to quickly enroll eligible children in CHIP and Medicaid.
- Ensure sufficient funding for critical health programs like Medicaid, CHIP, Healthy Texas Women, Family Planning Program, DSHS Maternal Mortality & Morbidity Review Committee, and DSHS Texas AIM initiative.
Mental Health
- Increase access to school-based behavioral services so more districts can participate, and more students can receive services.
- Set minimum required mental health counselor to student ratios in public schools.
Food Access
- Implement 6-month automated eligibility check for SNAP certification and alleviate HHSC’s workload challenges.
- Reduce child hunger by implementing the Summer EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) program.
Prepare Young Adults and enhance the Texas Workforce
- Increase fiscal transparency by requiring data reporting on government workforce spending and activities for young Texans (16-24).
- Maximize taxpayer dollars and require local workforce development boards to include opportunity youth and young adults (ages 16-24) in strategic plans and reporting.
- Allow for better preparation for workforce needs by requiring notification to workforce officials when large-scale subsidized job creation occurs.
Protect Human Trafficking Survivors and Increase Penalties for Traffickers
- Empower district and county attorneys to collect penalty fees in Chapter 455 actions they bring against alleged illicit massage businesses.
- Expand orders of nondisclosure for human trafficking survivors to include additional nonviolent offenses committed while a victim was being trafficked and remove barriers to use.
- Ensure children vulnerable to human trafficking are identified by intervening state agencies as early as possible.
- Ensure that first responders and medical assistants can recognize the signs of human trafficking and report that information to the appropriate authorities.
- Criminalize the distribution of AI generated child sex abuse material (CSAM) and its use in grooming or sextorting children.
RALLY WITH US!
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Thursday, March 6, 2025
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TEXAS FAMILY LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
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Written & verbal testimony
C@R staff will visit the Texas Capitol to provide verbal and written testimony in support of specific bills.
Coming Soon!
Legislative District One Pagers
Opportunity Youth
Chronic Absenteeism
Early Childhood Education
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