Texas Legislature Meets in Less Than 100 days
With the coronavirus pandemic continuing to affect everyday life, Texas legislators know that it won't be business as usual at the Capitol during the 2021 legislative session. But how different things will be is still an issue they're working to resolve.
The Texas Legislature meets in less than 100 days. Nobody knows how the session will look.
"The Texas Legislature meets in less than 100 days. Nobody knows how the session will look." was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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The Texas Capitol is a bustling place when the Legislature is in session — the elevators are crowded, the hallways are packed, the committee hearing rooms are overflowing and the chamber floors are covered with state lawmakers.
But with less than 100 days until the 87th regular session and the coronavirus pandemic still upending once-regular ways of life, it’s unclear what typical functions at the Capitol will look like in January, or whether they will even exist.
That uncertainty this close to the session could have ramifications for what members say will be one of the toughest legislative sessions in recent years: tackling billions of dollars in shortfalls to the state budget, undergoing the process of redrawing the state’s political maps, and navigating issues like health care and public education that have been a focus during the pandemic.
On top of that, the Capitol has been closed to most everyone for months, prompting questions about the access that the public will have to the legislative process.
Senate and House members spearheading logistical discussions say that while much remains up in the air, the two chambers are working together to implement session rules that are consistent for both chambers. With wildly different dynamics in the 31-person Senate and the 150-person House, though, some suggest that the two chambers may not end up on the same page.
“Our primary concern is safety, transparency and public access,” said state Rep. Donna Howard, an Austin Democrat who serves as vice chair of the House Administration Committee. “There’s so much up in the air.”
State Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, chair of the committee, said the House is “in conversation with the lieutenant governor’s office,” but noted that “until there’s a presumed speaker, we don’t have a lot of guidance” in the lower chamber.
To Geren’s point, there’s only so much the House can do to prepare for the next session when its speaker is retiring and control of the lower chamber could flip to Democrats in November. There aren’t any declared candidates yet in the race to replace Republican House Speaker Dennis Bonnen. However, if a member collected the votes needed to win before January, they could become the presumptive speaker and informally lay the groundwork on what protocols would be in place.
On the Senate side, rumors have lingered for weeks over what Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has told senators to expect come January. On a recent call with Senate chairs, according to several people who had knowledge of the call but weren’t authorized to speak on the record, Patrick outlined a worst-case scenario that involved limiting the legislation allowed for consideration and banning the public, press and lobbyists from entering the chamber.
A senior adviser for Patrick declined to comment for this story. And state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Mineola Republican who chairs the Senate Administration Committee, did not respond to requests for comment.
Some decisions have already been made. Plexiglass dividers have been installed in several House committee hearing rooms, Geren said. Such barriers, he said, won’t be installed on the 150 House floor desks in the chamber after a trial run with a couple of them because they would interfere with the light used by new mobile sanitizing machines, as The Dallas Morning News first reported. House and Senate offices have also offered free webcams to offices in preparation for conducting more business virtually.
The Legislature, though, still faces a list of seemingly never-ending questions: Should temperature checks or some other form of screening be required before people enter the building? How can the House spread out 150 desks on the chamber floor — and will press and essential staff still be allowed on it? How can the public testify on legislation in committee hearing rooms, particularly on measures that generate a lot of interest?
Buoying those questions are layers of uncertainty about whether the virus will spike this winter, whether a vaccine will be available — and accessible — and, heading into the November election, whether Democrats will have control over the House, which could mean a change in leadership style to counter the GOP-controlled Legislature.
In August, Geren sent members results from a House survey over how and when the Capitol should reopen. Not every member responded, but those who answered questions about requiring temperature checks upon entering the Capitol and requiring face masks while inside committee rooms and public meeting spaces overwhelmingly supported those measures.
Howard told the Tribune that members are considering different sorts of screening protocols for how the public enters the Capitol but that no decisions have been made on what that could look like.
Since mid-March, the Capitol has been closed to the public, preventing members from holding interim committee hearings inside the building with public testimony. Those hearings are usually scheduled to help members consider or research business that could come up during the next session.
On Monday, hearing notices were posted for Senate Higher Education and Education interim committee hearings, both of which are set to happen next week. Each notice states that access to the Capitol “is limited to legislators and staff only” — and that only invited testimony will be allowed. “Invited testimony will be conducted via video-conference,” the notices say.
As a sort of workaround in the House, the speaker’s office released a memo in July detailing three options for how to conduct committee business while also adhering to lower-chamber rules, which do not allow for virtual hearings. Some committees have carried out interim business following that guidance.
Still, Democrats and Republicans have called on Gov. Greg Abbott, who oversees the Capitol, to reopen the building in recent weeks, arguing that if in-person fundraisers and public schools can resume, so can interim committee hearings. Such requests have gone unanswered publicly, and a spokesperson for the governor did not respond to a request for comment for this article. A spokesperson for the State Preservation Board also declined to comment.
“It certainly looks like we’re not going to have anything open before session starts,” Howard said. “We’ve really had no opportunity to have interim hearings, which has been extremely frustrating.”
State Rep. Phil King, a Weatherford Republican who chairs the House Redistricting Committee, said that “right now, we’re just locked out” — and added that it’s his “strong preference” that the Capitol reopen as soon as possible.
“I think it’s time now,” he said.
In the meantime, some members are already mapping out what office-specific guidelines they may issue for the 87th session. While most members say they are waiting to finalize those plans until closer to January, a number of them have already laid out protocols.
State Rep. Jon Rosenthal’s office, for example, has established a set of guidelines that staff and the lawmaker “will adhere to independent of rules and procedures the House Administration Committee provides the members for the 87th Legislative session,” according to a memo from the Houston Democrat’s office and assuming he wins reelection.
Masks will be required to enter Rosenthal’s Capitol office, which will not allow more than six people inside at a time. Rosenthal and his staff, the memo says, will also be tested for the virus “a minimum of once per week.” And interns, should they be hired, will work from home unless “dramatic changes happen” to prevent the spread of the virus.
On the other hand, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park and a member of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he and his staff “absolutely will not” mandate masks — and that his “office will be open to all just as it has been since I was first elected.”
“It won’t bother me if visitors want to wear [a mask], I’m not going to make them take them off,” Cain told the Tribune. “In 2017 or 2019, if someone wanted to wear a mask, I would not have cared.”
Another Republican, state Rep. Dade Phelan of Beaumont, said his office is considering limiting staff and the number of visitors allowed in the office at one time. He said his office is also thinking about trying to move meetings online, though no decisions have been made yet. Across the rotunda, state Sen. Borris Miles’ staff members said they have already installed a plexiglass shield at the front desk in the Houston Democrat’s office.
Meanwhile, a group of House Democrats including state Reps. Joe Moody of El Paso and John Turner of Dallas have spent the past several months working on a governance platform to add to the conversation about what the session should look like.
“Keep the ‘People’s House’ accessible to all who wish to safely participate,” read a line in a one-pager that was presented at the House Democratic Caucus’ recent virtual retreat. “Institute daily COVID checks for everyone entering the Texas Capitol,” reads another. Another one: “Propose penalties to discourage anyone from flouting pandemic rules.”
The pandemic has, of course, impacted other issues tied to the Legislature and its usual timeline. In addition to addressing the billions of dollars in shortfalls to the state budget and other core issues during session, state lawmakers are also set to undergo the once-in-a-decade process of redrawing the state’s political maps.
The pandemic has already halted several hearings that both the House and Senate redistricting committees had scheduled across the state during the interim. And, on top of that, King, chair of the House Redistricting Committee, said the census data that helps lawmakers draw political maps is not expected to arrive until at least June — which could put the Legislature on track to work beyond the 140-day regular session.
“I think we’re headed for a special session on redistricting regardless,” King told the Tribune.
Others agree. At a virtual event in July, the lieutenant governor said the Legislature could be in session until at least September, citing the budget and redistricting.
“I’ve told my staff and I’ve told senators,” Patrick said, “don’t plan any vacations until maybe after Sept. 30 of next year.”
Disclosure: The State Preservation Board has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/06/texas-legislature-coronavirus/.
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Students Reject Coronavirus Testing
Halfway through the semester, schools are reporting participation rates far below their goals, prompting at least one school to go so far as to offer prizes to students who volunteer to get a coronavirus test.
Texas colleges offer free coronavirus tests. Why aren't more students getting tested?
"Texas colleges offer free coronavirus tests. Why aren't more students getting tested?" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas colleges and universities spent the summer months bulking up their testing capacity to catch COVID-19 outbreaks fueled by students who are infected but don’t show symptoms.
The University of Texas at Austin said it could test up to 5,000 asymptomatic students, faculty and staff weekly. Texas A&M University trumpeted a similar goal of testing more than 5,000 students each week – about 7% of the student body. And the University of Texas at El Paso, with about 25,000 students, said it had the capacity to test up to 2,500 campus members weekly.
But halfway through the semester, schools are reporting participation rates far below their goals, prompting at least one school to go so far as to offer prizes to students who volunteer to get a coronavirus test.
UT-Austin, which has more than 50,000 students, has only required students to be tested before attending football games. During the first five weeks of the semester, the school had the capacity to test 25,000 community members but tested only 8,870 – an average of about 1,770 per week. That included the 1,198 students tested for the first home football game on Sept. 12.
“Why aren’t we testing 5,000 people per week? The answer, in part, is that we have fewer than 5,000 people a week who have been willing to take the tests,” reads a Sept. 28 memo from the UT-Austin Faculty Council.
Texas A&M conducted 6,195 tests in its first two rounds of random testing through Sept. 12. Meanwhile UT-El Paso, which tested 6,691 campus members from Aug. 17 to Sept. 18, has yet to break 2,000 weekly tests, the El Paso Times reports.
Experts say routine testing is crucial to stomping out “silent spread” on college campuses, as the CDC estimates 40% of COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic. And school officials rely on the results to get an accurate snapshot of the community’s health.
Major Texas universities have already mandated rigorous testing regimens for athletes, and some schools in other parts of the country require students and employees to get tested multiple times a week. But if the goal is to identify people who might trigger an outbreak on campus, waiting for students and staff to volunteer to get tested “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said David Paltiel, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health.
“Frankly, I think the whole idea is flawed from the get-go,” Paltiel said. “Unless you're going to have a routine program that you require the entire population to adhere to, I just don't know what you're doing.”
School officials are stopping short of calling testing participation a problem, even as they work to increase it.
Shawn Gibbs, dean of the School of Public Health at Texas A&M, said participation is “pretty much what we expected it to be.”
“Our participation rate isn’t low,” he said. “We always would like higher participation, and we're in the process, like everyone else, of taking a look at the students who aren't participating and trying to figure out ways to incentivize participation.”
At Texas A&M, that means appealing to “selfless service,” one of the Aggie core values, and emphasizing that the saliva-based tests are free, quick and easy, Gibbs said. The flagship College Station campus reported 144 active cases as of Sept. 29.
UT-Austin’s goal is to test 1,000 asymptomatic people per day, and participation is gradually building in that direction, said Michael Godwin, program director of the university’s proactive community testing. Monday was “a really great day,” he said, with close to 700 people coming out. The flagship reported 67 estimated active cases as of Sept. 30.
To boost participation, the school is launching an incentive program, with raffle prizes for students including $50 gift cards to local and national vendors, Godwin said. The university has also enlisted professors to make class-wide announcements and deployed ads on Canvas, its online learning platform.
UT-Austin faculty participation in the testing has been “very low,” according to the Sept. 28 Faculty Council memo.
“I don’t think anyone expected to see 5,000 people in the first week,” Godwin said. “It takes a little bit of time to get the word out, to get the process set up and working well, and … we’ll continue to build on what we have and get more people in the door to get tested regularly.”
Mandatory testing at Baylor
Students might dodge invitations to test for a number of reasons – especially if they don’t feel sick, said Diana Cervantes, an epidemiologist at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. Students may also be avoiding the inconvenience of quarantines in the event they do test positive.
“Let's say I think I had a high-risk exposure and I think that testing positive is going to mean something detrimental to me, maybe I'd decide not to get tested,” Cervantes said.
Julia Elder, a UT-Austin master’s student, said she has not taken the university up on its offers to get tested because she worries about being exposed to the virus during her appointment. Elder hasn’t eaten in a restaurant or socially interacted with anyone since March. She takes online classes and only leaves the West Campus apartment she shares with her twin sister to pick up food.
“I definitely have wanted to get tested … but it seems like more interaction than I do on a daily basis,” Elder said, adding that she recently drove past the health center and saw a line of students wrapped around the building. “It seems like an unnecessary risk to take if I feel fine.”
Some universities are making testing mandatory.
At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, students and employees must get tested twice a week. They’re testing about 10,000 people per day, and reporting positivity rates below a half of a percent. The university feels “very confident” in its plan, in part because it’s mandatory, said Robin Neal Kaler, associate chancellor of public affairs at UIUC.
“Our data scientists showed if you tested the vast majority of people twice a week … that would be enough to slow the spread, to keep potential outbreaks under control, and to let you know about them quickly enough that you can deal with them,” Kaler said.
“But that only works if it's mandatory testing. And it only works if you're testing basically the entire population, which is what we decided to do,” she added.
In Texas, Baylor University is one of the only institutions to require testing. The private Christian university chooses 5% of students and 5% of employees for mandatory testing each week; failure to comply may result in disciplinary action.
Unlike other Texas universities, Baylor also required a negative test from students and employees before they returned to campus in August. The school reported 62 active cases as of Oct. 1.
“We felt ... we needed to make it mandatory partly because there was some concern if people were left on their own, they would not want to be tested,” said Jim Marsh, dean for student health and wellness at Baylor. He added that even though the testing is mandatory, the school gives students raffle prizes such as meal vouchers, football tickets and scholarships for participating.
Legality in question
So far, none of the major public universities in Texas require testing – though some have left the door open.
Godwin said state law restricts UT-Austin’s authority to require testing “as a prerequisite to accessing any kind of educational benefit, or work, in the case of faculty and staff.”
“We are following the advice of the Office of the Attorney General,” UT spokesperson J.B. Bird said in an email. “State universities have not been delegated the authority to mandate testing as a requirement for pursuing an education.”
A spokesperson for the Texas attorney general's office said they can’t comment on whether it’s legal to require students to get tested because the office hasn’t been asked to give an official opinion on the matter.
In September, UT-Austin students had to test negative to attend a football game against UT-El Paso, even though the other 15,000 fans did not. Godwin said testing was allowed to be required in that instance because football games are not considered an educational benefit.
But Texas A&M has said it will move to mandatory testing if school officials deem it necessary.
“Our legal view is that we have the legal authority to require random testing on campus if it is necessary to protect public health and safety, but the issue has not been squarely addressed by the courts,” said System spokesperson Laylan Copelin. “So far, voluntary participation has been sufficient to meet the public health goal and mandatory testing is not necessary.”
For now, school officials hope their messaging and prizes will turn out more students, though Elder, the UT master’s student, questions whether it will be enough.
“Anything short of a reduction in tuition, there's no incentive they could provide anyone for getting tested,” Elder said.
Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at El Paso, the University of North Texas and Baylor University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/05/texas-coronavirus-college-free-tests/.
The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state. Explore the next 10 years with us.
Accusations Against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "Raise Serious Concerns"
Seven senior officials said in a letter obtained by the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE that they have reason to believe Paxton should be investigated for "abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses."
Gov. Greg Abbott says accusations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "raise serious concerns"
"Gov. Greg Abbott says accusations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "raise serious concerns"" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Senior officials in the Texas Attorney General's Office have asked federal law enforcement to "investigate allegations of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential crimes" by their boss, the Austin-American Statesman and KVUE-TV first reported Saturday.
The senior staff members, including Jeff Mateer, who resigned from his post as Paxton’s top aide this week after several years leading the agency, notified the agency’s human resources director that they sought the investigation.
“We have a good faith belief that the attorney general is violating federal and/or state law including prohibitions related to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses,” seven agency leaders wrote in a one-page letter obtained by the Statesman.
The brief letter, dated Oct. 1, says the officials notified law enforcement of a potential crime on Sept. 30, but does not provide detailed accusations. The officials also say they notified Paxton himself of the accusation via text message on Oct. 1.
Paxton, a second-term state official and former state legislator who serves as co-chair of the Lawyers for Trump coalition, has been under indictment for more than five years on felony charges of securities fraud. Paxton has yet to go to trial on the charges amid side battles over where the case will be heard and how much the special prosecutors appointed to take the case to trial will be paid.
The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday that the allegations are tied to Paxton's relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and campaign donor, citing the text message Mateer and the other officials sent to Paxton last week.
"General Paxton, yesterday, each of the individuals on this text chain made a good faith report of violations of law by you to an appropriate law enforcement authority concerning your relationship and activities with Nate Paul," Mateer told Paxton in the Oct. 1 text, obtained by the Chronicle.
According to the report, Mateer and the other officials felt compelled to act after Paxton allegedly appointed a special prosecutor to target "adversaries" of Paul.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said in a statement that "the complaint filed against Attorney General Paxton was done to impede an ongoing investigation into criminal wrongdoing by public officials including employees of this office. Making false claims is a very serious matter and we plan to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law.”
She declined to comment further, citing an open investigation.
Ryan Bangert, the deputy first assistant attorney general and one of the seven aides who signed on to the letter, wrote to agency staff Sunday encouraging them "to ensure the agency continues its important work without interruption."
"I write to assure you that the executive team remains committed to serving you, this office, and the people of Texas. The work we do together makes a difference every day in the lives of our fellow citizens," Bangert wrote. "Your work, your sacrifice, and your dedication to this office inspire us all."
Meanwhile, top Texas Republicans reacted cautiously to the allegations against Paxton.
"These allegations raise serious concerns," Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday in a prepared statement. "I will withhold further comment until the results of any investigation are complete."
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the news "obviously concerning."
"I learned about this from media reports," Patrick said in a statement. "I will wait until the investigation is complete before making any additional comments."
The office of House Speaker Dennis Bonnen did not immediately return requests for comment.
An attorney with Paxton's defense team in the securities fraud case, Philip Hilder, declined to comment. Brian Wice, one of the special prosecutors on the case, said Sunday that "we're going to look into this," but declined to elaborate further. It's not clear whether the latest allegations are related to the pending securities fraud charges.
Jordan Berry, a political adviser to Paxton, confirmed Sunday that he had resigned in the wake of the allegations.
Michelle Lee, a public affairs officer for the FBI, declined to comment on the matter, citing internal policy within the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice not to comment on the existence of pending or potential investigations. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the region said "we have no comment." Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore said Saturday evening "we do not have an investigation."
Paxton has faced numerous questions over his ethics over his more than a decade in public life. To help pay for his stacked team of defense attorneys, he has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts for his legal defense fund, claiming the contributions came from “family friends” and are exempt from a state bribery law that bars elected officials from receiving gifts from people who are subject to their authority.
In the securities fraud charges that are still pending, Paxton is accused of convincing investors to buy stock in a technology firm without disclosing that he would be compensated for it. He has maintained his innocence and criticized the prosecution as politically motivated. In 2014, the Texas State Securities Board fined Paxton $1,000 for soliciting investment clients without being registered, and he signed a disciplinary order without disputing its findings.
Last year, his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed a bill that would have expanded her husband’s power as attorney general, giving him the power to exempt individuals from state regulations like the one he has been charged with violating.
In 2018, Paxton’s office filed — and then abruptly recalled — a formal court brief in a lawsuit over Plano’s zoning policies, in a move that his supporters attributed to political influence from conservatives in his home county.
Paxton, a conservative who has often elbowed for airtime as the state’s top culture warrior, has kept up a busy and high-profile role during the coronavirus pandemic.
This spring, he declared that Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on elective medical procedures, an effort to conserve hospital resources for coronavirus patients, also barred abortions in the state, sparking a lawsuit that would drag on for weeks and force hundreds of women to cancel appointments to terminate their pregnancies. His office threatened to sue the state’s biggest cities if they did not roll back coronavirus-related safety precautions, including mask mandates, and told local officials they could not keep landlords from evicting their tenants during the pandemic.
Paxton used the power of his office to lean on a Colorado county after it shut its doors to vacation home owners — including a top donor.
Paxton has led major multi-state lawsuits to overturn laws like the Affordable Care Act and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, often landing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He’s made equally political choices in the cases he chooses not to take. His office refused to defend a state agency, as it typically would, when it was sued for disciplining a state judge who refused to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples. And it declined to defend the Texas Ethics Commission in a lawsuit brought by the hardline conservative group Empower Texans, a political donor.
Last year, he was a major player in Texas’ botched effort to review its voter rolls.
Paxton often boasts of his close relationship with the president, frequently greeting him on the tarmac when Air Force One touches down in Texas, and sharing stories during public appearances about their communication on major Texas-led litigation — the time Trump called while Paxton was in the shower is a favorite.
In 2018, Paxton narrowly bested his Democratic opponent, Justin Nelson, to win reelection in an unexpectedly tight race. Nelson had made Paxton’s indictments the centerpiece of his campaign.
“Ken Paxton is the top law enforcement official in the state,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement Saturday. “Yet, he has proven for years that he cannot follow the law himself.”
Calls could build in the coming days among other Republicans for Paxton to more specifically address the charges or resign. On Sunday, state Rep. Sarah Davis, a Houston Republican representing a district that Democrats are targeting this year, became the first known GOP member at the Legislature to suggest Paxton resign if he does not "quickly address these allegations."
"Although innocent until proven guilty, AG Paxton has been under indictment for the past five years," Davis tweeted. "With these new allegations of bribery and abuse of office, Paxton needs to quickly address these allegations or resign so he can devote his time to his own personal legal matters."
Cassandra Pollock, Patrick Svitek and Abby Livingston contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/03/texas-ken-paxton-bribery-investigation/.
The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state. Explore the next 10 years with us.
Sales Tax Revenue in Texas Down 6.1%
"The COVID-19 pandemic and low price of crude oil continue to weigh on the Texas economy and sales tax revenue," Comptroller Glenn Hegar said.
September sales tax revenue in Texas down 6.1% from a year ago
"September sales tax revenue in Texas down 6.1% from a year ago" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Texas collected about $2.6 billion in state sales tax revenue in September, state Comptroller Glenn Hegar said Thursday. That total is 6.1% less than what the state collected in September 2019.
"The COVID-19 pandemic and low price of crude oil continue to weigh on the Texas economy and sales tax revenue," Hegar said in a news release. "As was the case the last month, state sales tax receipts from all major sectors, other than retail trade, were down compared with the same month last year, with the steepest declines in the oil and gas-related sectors."
State sales tax revenue is the state's single largest source of funding. The total revenue for July, August and September this year, Hegar said Thursday, was down 2.5% compared to the same period in 2019.
Receipts from restaurants, Hegar said, are still "significantly below pre-pandemic levels." Receipts from big box retailers generally increased, he said, while department stores and apparel stores saw a decline.
Other sources of state revenue are still being impacted by economic shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic. For example, Texas collected $78 million in revenue from alcoholic beverage taxes in September — down 33.7% from the same month last year. Earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott said restaurants in the state could expand dine-in service to 75% capacity but that bars must remain closed.
Another major tax, the hotel occupancy tax, is also down about 37% in revenue from the same month last year.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/01/texas-sales-tax-economy/.
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Border Leaders say Restrictions at International Bridges Should be Lifted
Local leaders say the federal government’s decision to extend a ban on nonessential travel across the U.S.-Mexico border is crippling their budgets and local businesses.
As Texas reopens, border leaders say restrictions at international bridges should be lifted
"As Texas reopens, border leaders say restrictions at international bridges should be lifted" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
For a few days last spring, Amy Guadiar was able to take her mind off the shoppers from Mexico her store has been missing since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the borderland.
The government’s one-time stimulus checks, issued in April, briefly brought shoppers from El Paso back to Contigo, a downtown El Paso garment store that’s suffered financially since the Trump administration closed the southern border to nonessential crossers from Mexico in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. But the boost in business didn’t last.
“People came to shop after they received their checks,” she said. “But it’s difficult again.”
The international bridges that connect Texas and Mexico remain partially closed to noncitizens who can’t show their travel into Texas is considered essential, a definition that excludes people crossing for tourism or shopping. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security extended the policy until at least Oct. 21. The agency is also using additional screening measures, such as flagging more travelers for secondary inspections, to discourage nonessential traffic, which has made wait times even longer.
The hardening at the ports of entry along the border continues even as Gov. Greg Abbott relaxes COVID-19 restrictions for the rest of the state. Abbott announced earlier this month that stores, office parks and restaurants can now operate at 75% of their capacity, and college football is back with a limited number of fans in the seats. Because the bridges are under federal authority, Abbott’s orders don’t apply to border crossers.
That has some border leaders anxious over how long the restrictions at the bridges will last and how they’re going to keep afloat financially without the shoppers and the bridge tolls that are crucial to both businesses and local government budgets.
In Eagle Pass, bridge revenues, which make up half of the city’s revenue, are down by half, Mayor Luis Sifuentes said.
“We’ve had to make major adjustments and cut across the board in all departments,” Sifuentes said. “We passed a balanced budget, but it’s all dependent on the bridges to open up before January.”
In Laredo, home to the country’s busiest inland port, noncommercial and pedestrian crossings plummeted during the 2020 fiscal year compared with the year before. In fiscal year 2019, Laredo recorded about 4.4 million noncommercial vehicle crossings and 3.1 million pedestrian crossings. Those figures fell to 3.4 million and 2 million crossings, respectively, according to city statistics.
City officials in El Paso projected a $60 million loss in annual revenue earlier this year when it announced pay cuts and furloughs for about 400 employees. That was due, in part, to the lack of Mexican shoppers, who account for about 15% of retail trade, El Paso Mayor Dee Margo told local media in May. At that time, noncommercial crossings were down by a third, he said.
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, sent a pitch earlier this month to acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf outlining a plan that would allow the United States to screen for the coronavirus and allow nonessential traffic to cross into Texas if people are free of the virus and its symptoms. The plan would enlist the private sector to conduct rapid COVID-19 tests at the border and includes quarantine procedures for people who test positive or who have traveled from a high-risk areas.
It’s unclear whether Homeland Security has responded to the proposal; Cuellar has since called out the Trump administration for its patchwork policies that he says unfairly target the border.
“Allowing individuals to fly into the U.S. but restricting travel through our land ports of entry is unfair treatment to the land ports,” Cuellar said in a Sept. 18 statement. “Since DHS is obviously uninterested in working with us on finding a solution, we must take it upon ourselves to create public-private partnerships to implement enhanced screening strategies. Hopefully, DHS does not stand in our way as we continue to fight for employees, business owners, and customers in our community who are facing the economic repercussions of COVID-19. We can balance the health of the individual and the health of the border economy.”
On Tuesday, the Texas Border Coalition, a group of elected officials and community and business leaders from the Texas-Mexico border, urged Wolf to lift the restrictions “to avoid further economic devastation” at the border.
“Instituting efficient and safe operations at our land ports will ensure that international travelers are able to contribute to our binational economy,” wrote Cameron County Judge and TBC Chairman Eddie Treviño Jr. “We need international travelers conducting crucial commercial activities to re-invigorate our economy, not waiting in line at the international ports of entry.”
For Mexican citizens still able to cross into the United States, the frustration is growing. Martha Ayala, 59, a health care worker who lives in El Paso as a legal permanent resident but travels to Ciudad Juárez to see her father, said earlier this month she drove from Odessa to El Paso with her father and dropped him off in Ciudad Juárez.
“I waited five hours to come back,” said Ayala, whose job allows her to cross the border as an essential worker. “It was less time [on the road] from Odessa to here than to come back from Juárez.”
She wonders why other Mexicans are still blocked from crossing the bridges now that Texas has mostly eliminated its COVID-19 restrictions.
“I think it’s political,” she said. “We come and go because of necessity, and not just to pass the time.”
In Eagle Pass, Sifuentes isn’t calling the border restrictions a political move, but he disagreed with the notion that Americans are spreading the virus after they return from Mexico.
“There has been no indication of people getting it from Mexico. There may be be a handful of cases, but overwhelmingly it’s people here gathering with family and friends,” he said. “I don’t know where they’re getting that.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/29/texas-coronavirus-restrictions-international-bridges/.
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Federal Court - Texas Prisons Must Provide Hand Sanitizer for Some Geriatric Inmates
Texas has had more inmate deaths related to the coronavirus than any other prison system in the nation. Its death toll of at least 162 inmates outranks every other state as well as the federal prison system.
Federal court orders Texas prison system to provide hand sanitizer for some geriatric inmates during pandemic
"Federal court orders Texas prison system to provide hand sanitizer for some geriatric inmates during pandemic" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
A federal judge ordered the Texas prison system on Tuesday to provide more protective measures against the coronavirus, like hand sanitizer for wheelchair-bound prisoners, at a prison for geriatric inmates.
After a weekslong trial that started in July, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison ruled that Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials acted with deliberate indifference toward the inmates’ medical needs and recklessly disregarded obvious health risks during the pandemic.
“The Court acknowledges that [TDCJ officials] have taken a number of steps to address the spread of COVID-19 … at the Pack Unit,” Ellison wrote in his ruling. “But the Court views these measures as the most basic steps that TDCJ could have taken to prevent mass death within the prison walls on an unimaginable scale. Designing a policy and implementing some of the measures therein does not automatically satisfy Defendants’ constitutional obligations, especially in the face of an unprecedented public health crisis.”
Ellison, who has slammed the state prison system in another lawsuit over heat conditions, said he was dubious that TDCJ was implementing many of the procedures and policies it claimed to be. He cited officials’ text messages that revealed a confusion about coronavirus reporting among officials, modifications made just before trial to make the unit “look more favorable,” and staged visits to the prison as explanation for his skepticism.
The ruling follows a nearly four-week long trial in a lawsuit filed in March by older inmates against TDCJ and the Pack Unit, a prison near College Station whose population mostly consists of inmates over 65. The department is expected to appeal the order to the same court that previously halted Ellison’s pretrial, temporary ruling against the department, in part because it said TDCJ was already making efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Texas has had more inmate deaths related to the coronavirus than any other prison system in the nation. Its death toll of at least 162 inmates outranks every other state as well as the federal prison system. More than 20 Texas prison employees have also died with the virus.
Nearly 23,000 inmates and about 4,800 employees have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic was declared a Texas public health disaster in March, according to TDCJ reports.
At the Pack Unit, more than 500 inmates had tested positive for the virus by August 2, and 20 had died with it, according to trial records. TDCJ’s public reports on inmate deaths only include 17 Pack Unit deaths as of Tuesday, the second most behind 20 reported deaths at the Duncan Unit in East Texas — another geriatric facility.
Ellison’s permanent injunction includes many requirements that TDCJ has long said it already implemented, like providing unrestricted access to soap and water, sufficient cleaning supplies and face masks required for all staff and inmates. His injunction also requires, however, hand sanitizer to be provided to inmates that use a walker, a cane, crutches or a wheelchair. At trial, it was noted that wheelchair-bound inmates with unsanitized chairs could infect their hands with germs instantly after leaving the sink.
TDCJ has long fought against providing hand sanitizer for inmates, arguing it could be used as a fire accelerant or inmates could drink it. Inmates’ attorneys said the concerns were “disingenuous,” as fires are not a problem on the unit and inmates have plenty of flammable material, like paper.
Inmates at the Pack Unit sued the prison system in March as the coronavirus began to spread across the state, arguing its policies were "woefully inadequate" to protect the unit’s elderly and sick inmate population. The agencies' actual practices, they said, were even worse and violated the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. They asked for more protective gear, cleaning supplies and social distancing.
In a temporary ruling in April before the case went to trial, Ellison sided with the inmates and ordered TDCJ to make a slew of policy changes like providing hand sanitizer and face masks and testing all inmates for the virus. Though many of the demands, like providing masks and mass testing, had since been enacted by the department, TDCJ appealed to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judges on the appeals court agreed that TDCJ had already met many of the ordered requirements, though one of the judges urged Ellison to hold a trial in the case as soon as possible.
The trial included testimony from several inmates, TDCJ officials and experts on health and prison conditions. During the weeks in the virtual courtroom, inmate janitors — some of whom are wheelchair-bound and otherwise disabled — said they didn’t have enough cleaning supplies, contact tracing wasn’t properly done and more and more people were getting sick and dying. John Keville, the inmates’ lead attorney, said in his closing arguments on Aug. 6, that two more inmates had died during the trial.
The prison’s warden testified that he thought his unit had been doing “everything within reason” to combat the virus. He said he didn’t think security staff specifically asked inmates how they were feeling, noting that would be for medical teams, though the department’s deputy executive director said in a pre-recorded deposition that officers are supposed to talk to inmates about their health.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/29/texas-prisons-coronavirus-protections/.
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Postal Service is a Lifeline For Rural Texans
Business owners, farmers and local politicians said that they are more concerned with long-term problems than with the recent controversy surrounding the United States Postal Service.
For rural Texans, the Postal Service is a lifeline, but some say it's been in decay for years
"For rural Texans, the Postal Service is a lifeline, but some say it's been in decay for years" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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The problems with Denice Harlan’s mail didn’t start with COVID-19, the financial challenges of the United States Postal Service or the political tensions before a fiercely contested presidential election.
Yes, a check she was supposed to receive months ago got lost without ever reaching her office in Giddings, about 50 miles east of Austin. But her biggest concern is how delays have become more frequent and customer service has worsened in her rural town during the past several years.
“The postmaster used to be a local guy. You could go down to his house and tell him when something was wrong,” said Harlan, who is the CEO of the local chamber of commerce and works a block away from the post office.
Some of the local postal workers she knew have retired, and she thinks lost and late deliveries have become more common and more difficult to solve.
“I know people that don’t go to our local office because they are so afraid that they might get their mail lost,” she said.
In an election marked by the protracted COVID-19 pandemic when USPS could play a key role delivering mail-in ballots, the agency has experienced nationwide delays. But rural residents in Texas said that they are not as concerned about a potential impact on the election as they are about having regular, reliable service in the long term.
In rural areas where broadband internet connection is scarce, residents rely on the Postal Service to send checks, pay bills, get Social Security benefits and receive prescription medication. This is especially important for people ages 65 and older in the state, a group that represents 16.5% of the rural population and tends to trust physical mail for its needs.
According to data from the company SnailWorks, which tracks millions of commercial letters every day, there have been areas that have experienced delays during the summer, but it hasn’t become a statewide problem.
“We’ve seen overall statistically a half-day slowdown in first-class mail, which is not insignificant, but it is not the end of democracy,” said Dave Lewis, president of SnailWorks. “If you are unhappy with your service, you probably have been unhappy for a while. Things haven’t changed a lot. Places that had bad service probably still have bad service.”
Across rural Texas, business owners, community leaders and farmers told The Texas Tribune that the quality of USPS service varies from post office to post office. Most people haven’t experienced delays during the pandemic, others are happy with their local post offices and some, like Harlan, are worried about long-running decay of service.
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The U.S. Postal Service declined an interview for this story, but a report presented by the agency to Congress late in August showed a minor increase in delays since March that intensified in July. Some of the delays have been linked by workers and Democratic politicians to cost-cutting efforts by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who banned overtime and removed some sorting machines.
President Donald Trump has incorrectly linked mail-in ballots with widespread fraud during this year’s presidential campaign. Despite these criticisms, Trump has encouraged voting by mail in Florida. In Texas, Republicans have fought mail-in voting expansions and attempts to increase mail ballot requests in court. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, Texas is one of only five states that still require an excuse beyond fear of COVID-19 for voters to ask for a mail-in ballot.
Trump won Texas by almost 9 points four years ago, but recent polls suggest a tighter race against against Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
In Texas, anyone who is 65 years or older, cites a disability or an illness, is confined in jail but still eligible to vote, or will be out of their county during early voting and on Election Day can request a ballot by mail.
Last month, in San Antonio, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro confirmed the removal of machines after a visit to a regional distribution center, and workers later denounced that backlogged mail was hidden during the visit, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Since then, DeJoy has suspended his reforms until after the election and said in a Senate hearing that election mail will be delivered “fully and on time.”
“This will be a trial because it’s the first time the mail has become such a major issue during an election,” said Carlton Williams, president of the Texas Postal Workers Union, which represents 1,500 post office workers, most of them in small towns and rural areas.
His union has been critical of DeJoy’s measures and has endorsed Biden for president, but Williams believes there won’t be issues with mail-in voting.
In Leon County, a rural area north of College Station with a population of 15,000, County Judge Byron Ryder is not especially concerned about voters or election officials not receiving mail-in ballots on time due to the Postal Service delays he has seen for years. Most people in the area vote in person, he said.
“Whatever is happening now happened in the election before and the one before,” Ryder said. “This is not politically motivated. It’s a problem that has happened for the last four administrations. It’s a problem of inefficiency.”
And many other rural towns and counties haven’t seen delays. In Colorado City, west of Abilene, Earl Plagens just retired from being the publisher of the Colorado City Record, which delivers 2,200 newspapers a week.
“Our relationship with our post office is really good. We have no issues with the Postal Service, they are prompt and they do good service,” Plagens said. “Some of our subscribers in other parts of the state sometimes complain about not getting the paper on time. But as far as locally, our post office personnel are doing a great job.”
In Vega, a town west of Amarillo, Oldham County Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture director Jaci Roberson said that this community, and especially its restaurants, have taken a big hit because tourists have stopped visiting during the pandemic. But in the meantime, the Postal Service has remained reliable.
“We depend on our Postal Service, and we get taken care of by them,” Roberson said.
Tommy Engelke, executive vice president of the Texas Agricultural Cooperative Council, said that this is consistent across the state and that none of his members have complained about a decline of service.
“It’s not a coffee shop discussion in small-town America. If it is a problem, it’s not noticeable,” Engelke said.
He said he would have heard if service declined.
“When the post office goes away, in the same sense as when a school is closed, it disrupts lives,” Engelke said. “It’s an economic driver and a social institution. It’s much more than delivering mail.”
Another area where USPS plays a key role is in health care, by delivering prescription medications. According to the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, on-time delivery hasn’t been a problem for the patients of more than 150 medical centers that it represents.
“Rural communities are at the end of the line with regards to the mail and most services, and they do rely disproportionately on mail prescriptions, but I haven’t heard any stories of actual delays so far,” said John Henderson, president of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals.
While SnailWorks’ data shows a nationwide improvement in service during the last month, Ryder said customers will keep complaining because of the historical inefficiencies of the agency. For him, privatization is the only solution to the problem.
“You can see that people will complain and throw money and think they will solve it, but it won’t. They are the most inefficient office I know of,” Ryder said.
But postal worker leaders refute that private providers would help rural areas. According to them, serving less-populated counties is not always profitable for other providers.
“The Postal Service is grossly understaffed, especially in the rural areas that I represent,” Williams said. “This is a ploy to make the post office a public enemy and say that we are not doing what we are supposed to do. But in those areas back off the woods you are not going to get UPS or FedEx to deliver mail. That is not going to happen in rural America.”
In Giddings, Harlan said that most people, including herself, will vote in person despite the ongoing pandemic because that's how they prefer to cast ballots. But she remains worried that a decline in service and the reputation of USPS will affect an agency that she considers essential for a town like hers.
“We have learned to depend on the post office for a lot. And if they are not reliable, we will lose trust in the post office and we will start using other methods, like UPS or FedEx,” Harlan said. “In our country, we are in a crisis of trust: We can’t trust the government, we can’t trust the media, now we can’t trust the post office. Who we can trust now?”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/23/rural-texas-mail-usps/.
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Eviction Citations will Have to Inform Renters How to Apply for Protection
The Texas Supreme Court ordered that eviction citations will have to inform renters about the moratorium requirements and include the form needed to apply for protection.
Texas courts must start telling tenants how a federal eviction moratorium can keep them housed
"Texas courts must start telling tenants how a federal eviction moratorium can keep them housed" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Texans facing eviction must be informed in court citations about how they can remain housed under a national eviction moratorium, the Texas Supreme Court ordered Thursday. The measure clarified aspects that housing lawyers said were unclear after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its moratorium on evictions this month.
“Now you will be notified when you are served by the constable that you have this right,” said Fred Fuchs, housing attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. “For folks that don’t know about this, now they will. It’s absolutely critical that the court took this step. It will ensure to promote public health during this pandemic, because it prevents evictions and keeps people housed.”
Before the court's order, housing advocates expressed concerns that tenants wouldn’t know about the moratorium and its requirements, including that they had give their landlord a signed declaration that the eviction would leave them homeless. It also wasn’t clear if justices of peace could be proactive and educate tenants about the protections.
"Before, you had to print this piece of paper and sign it," said Becky Moseley, staff attorney at Legal Aid Northwest Texas. "This puts the declaration in the tenants' hands, and that's huge. We are very thankful for that."
To be protected by the moratorium, tenants have to declare that they have searched for rental assistance, and they cannot earn more than than $99,000 in annual income in 2020 or $198,000 if filing a joint return, among other requirements. Under the declaration, tenants also agree that they will pay rent eventually, as well as fees and penalties according to their leases or agreements with their landlords. This declaration has to be presented to the landlord and the judge.
Housing advocates and housing lawyers applauded the CDC eviction moratorium, which stops evictions for anyone who signs this declaration until the end of the year, when it was announced, but many pointed out gray areas and loopholes. It was unclear, for example, if cases that started before the publication of the moratorium would be covered and even whether the CDC had authority to issue such an order. On Sept. 9, the Texas Justice Court Training Center provided guidance for justices of peace, but advocates said that tenants still had trouble benefiting from the moratorium.
“I’ve watched 60 cases, maybe more, but I’ve only seen one successful use of the CDC moratorium,” said Zoe Middleton, Southeast Texas co-director with the advocacy group Texas Housers, on Thursday. She was monitoring hearings prior to the publication of the Supreme Court order.
In most cases, tenants weren't present or they didn't know of the declaration.
“The moratorium is not consistently applied, and this makes it difficult to understand for people,” she said.
Housing lawyers also explained that there wasn’t clarity about whether the moratorium should prevent an eviction that has been granted, but the order for the constable to actually evict a person — the writ of possession — hasn’t been issued.
“We saw a case or two in the Valley when the writ of possession had already been issued and they were set to execution by the constable,” Fuchs said. “With this order of the Supreme Court, it makes it very clear that the court must abate these situations.”
The Texas Supreme Court order also allows landlords to contest the declarations of their tenants.
Fuchs warned that although the order is good news for tenants, they will still have to pay rent eventually, many times with added late fees. He is concerned that if there is no action from the federal government on rental assistance, a wave of evictions will start happening once the moratorium lifts in January.
“Now is the time as a tenant to be proactive on getting rental assistance and try to pay as much as possible,” Fuchs said. “And is also the time for Congress to provide rental assistance to the folks that need it.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/18/texas-federal-eviction-moratorium/.
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August Unemployment Rate in Texas Drops
The U.S. Labor Department on Friday announced Texas' unemployment rate for August was 6.8%, underscoring a summer of large and steady numbers of jobless Texans.
August unemployment rate in Texas drops to 6.8% from 8% in July
"August unemployment rate in Texas drops to 6.8% from 8% in July" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Six months after the coronavirus pandemic began choking the economy, Texas' unemployment rate in August was 6.8% — a sign the state's economy has improved from the spring months, but is still suffering.
The Texas rate, announced by the U.S. Labor Department, is down from 8% in July and an even starker improvement from April and May when Gov. Greg Abbott closed or limited in-person commerce across the state.
But after Abbott sought to reenergize the flailing economy by allowing businesses to reopen, the coronavirus spread rapidly through Texas, eventually leading Abbott to reverse some of his economic decisions. And in late August and early September, after weeks of declining numbers of Texans applying for unemployment relief, that trend reversed.
Now, the new economic data helps paint a more clear picture of the recession in Texas — the economy has made progress from the dreadful early months of the pandemic, but economists said the data underscores a large and steady number of jobless Texans over the summer months.
“We were mostly stagnant,” Michael Carroll, director of the Economics Research Group at the University of North Texas, told The Texas Tribune.
On Thursday, in another attempt to energize the economy, Abbott again began loosening restrictions for restaurants and other businesses in most regions of Texas. Retail stores, restaurants and office buildings, which have been allowed to open at 50% capacity, will be permitted to expand to 75% capacity. Hospitals will be allowed to offer elective procedures again and nursing homes can reopen for visitations under certain standards.
It’s too soon to tell what impact Abbott’s moves will have on the economy, but Tim Fitzgerald, an economist at Texas Tech University, hopes the trend of Texans entering the workforce continues.
“Today’s report is a good sign for the economy and indicates there’s more labor force participation and more employment across the state,” Fitzgerald, who worked on the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, told The Texas Tribune. “Now, the future course of the virus is obviously going to be important."
The state's failure to control the coronavirus, which has left more than 14,000 Texans dead, means a strong economic resurgence, however, will have to wait, economists said. Nearly 2 million people across the state are still collecting unemployment relief and The Texas Workforce Commission has struggled to keep up.
Despite the agency’s woes, many unemployed Texans who were able to receive unemployment benefits during the spring and summer also received an additional $600 a week as part of federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act legislation approved by Congress, which expired in July.
“The CARES Act was predicated on a two to three month period of major slowdown,” Waco economist Ray Perryman told The Texas Tribune. “We are now at six and counting."
In an effort to supplant that money in August, President Trump announced new, extra $300 weekly payments would be distributed to unemployed people, but the program was short-lived and ended in September.
The consequences of the disintegrating safety net have already been dire — some Texans receive as little as $69 per week in benefits, a paycheck that was easier to manage when federal money was added.
Now, October is approaching and monthly bills will be due again, but despite the Trump administration announcing a new eviction moratorium, some unemployed Texans unable to pay their bills have not been protected, Houston Public Media reported.
Still, neither Congress nor President Trump have indicated additional money for unemployed people, who in Texas have faced “unprecedented financial challenges,” Abbott said Thursday.
“You still have a significant number of people that are unfortunately either unemployed or underemployed right now,” Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said recently during The Texas Tribune Festival.
As a result, Texans have spent less money over the last five months, leading to far fewer revenues from sales taxes, the largest source of revenue for the state’s budget. Already, state leaders have ordered state agencies to cut budgets by 5%.
“Consequently, further declines in sales tax revenue may ensue in the coming months,” Hegar said in early September.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has said he would rather die from the coronavirus than see instability in the economy, said Thursday’s announcement by Abbott was an important step in helping buck Hegar prediction.
“I know this is welcome news to everyone watching, and all the business owners out there,” Patrick said alongside Abbott Thursday.
But the Texas Restaurant Association said in a statement Thursday that many restaurants “will continue to struggle to reach the occupancy cap because of the social distancing requirements.”
“We’ve crossed the six-month mark of this crisis,” the statement read, “and it’s no exaggeration to say that the next few weeks will make the difference between tens of thousands of businesses surviving the economic fallout, or being forced to close their doors forever.”
Dr. Seth H. Giertz, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas who used to work in the Congressional Budget Office, wasn’t optimistic about the current trajectory.
“It’s possible we could have bad financial situations and many more businesses collapsing even on the route we’re going now, just because businesses aren’t able to operate the way they were before and they're not getting the same support,” Giertz said.
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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/18/texas-unemployment-rate/.
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Restaurants and Other Businesses can Open up to 75% Occupancy
Restaurants, retail stores and office buildings will now be able to operate at 75% capacity, Abbott said. Three regions — the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo and Victoria — were excluded from the loosening of restrictions, however.
Gov. Greg Abbott loosens coronavirus restrictions for restaurants and other businesses in most regions of Texas
"Gov. Greg Abbott loosens coronavirus restrictions for restaurants and other businesses in most regions of Texas" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that most of Texas will be able to loosen some coronavirus restrictions, including letting many businesses increase their capacity to 75%, as soon as Monday.
The standard that Abbott unveiled applies to the 19 out of 22 hospital regions in the state where coronavirus patients make up less than 15% of all hospitalizations. In those 19 regions, businesses that have been open at 50% capacity will be permitted to expand to 75% capacity — a group of places that includes retail stores, restaurants and office buildings. Hospitals in those regions will also be allowed to offer normal elective procedures again, and nursing homes can reopen for visitations under certain standards.
The three hospital regions excluded from the new reopening stage are in the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo and Victoria. Abbott said those regions’ hospitalizations are still “in the danger zone.”
At the same time, Abbott said the state was not yet ready to reopen bars, saying they are “nationally recognized as COVID-spreading locations.” He stressed, though, that the state is looking for ways to let bars reopen safely.
Abbott unveiled the new standard during a news conference at the Texas Capitol that marked Abbott’s first major announcement about the reopening process since early summer. In late June, Abbott shut down bars and ordered restaurants to scale back to 50% capacity as case numbers started to surge.
Days later, Abbott issued a statewide mask mandate.
A few weeks later, key coronavirus metrics began to trend downward. Those statistics include daily new cases, daily new deaths, hospitalizations and the positivity rate. For example, the state reported 3,249 hospitalizations Wednesday, a drop from several days in July when the tally was above 10,000 but still higher than springtime numbers than hovered around 2,000 or lower. Also on Wednesday, the seven-day average of daily new cases was 3,415 — again, a significant decline from July highs but still clearly above the levels in April, May and June.
Still, there have been regular questions about the reliability of the state data. On Monday, state health officials announced they were changing the way they calculate the positivity rate — the ratio of cases to tests — an acknowledgment that the previous method was flawed.
Democrats noted the data issues in their pushback to Abbott’s news conference.
“Gov. Abbott’s press conference today was notable for what he didn’t say,” state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement. "There was no mention of a contact tracing program, no mention of improving the state’s unreliable data and no mention of expanding Medicaid to increase access to health care for the millions of Texans who are uninsured.”
The Texas Democratic Party said Abbott is "basing his decisions on dirty data."
Abbott began the news conference hailing the state’s progress in the fight against coronavirus, saying the “biggest reason” for improvements has been that Texans are taking the pandemic seriously and exercising personal responsibility.
The governor reminded Texans that doctors have said the goal is not to eradicate the virus but to “contain the disease, to limit its harm and to maximize the health care system’s ability to treat both COVID patients as well as other medical needs of the community.”
When it comes to further reopenings, he emphasized the state will consider all data but “rely most heavily” on hospitalizations, calling that metric the “most important information about the severity of COVID in any particular region.” It is also the “most accurate information available on a daily basis,” Abbott said.
To that end, the regions that will be allowed to further reopen must have seen coronavirus hospitalizations makes up less than 15% of all hospitalizations for seven consecutive days, according to the governor. If coronavirus hospitalizations rise above the 15% threshold for seven consecutive days in a region, a "course correction is going to be needed," Abbott said, suggesting the solution would be a reversal of the area's latest reopenings.
In addition to stores, restaurants and offices, the business that will be able to shift to 75% capacity on Monday include manufacturers, museums, libraries and gyms.
As for elective procedures, Abbott said the restoration is effective immediately. In early July, also as part of Abbott's response to the statewide surge, Abbott expanded a ban on elective surgeries to cover more than 100 counties across much of the state.
The new rules governing nursing-home visitation go into effect Sept. 24. They apply to "all nursing-home facilities, assisted-living centers, state-supported living centers and other long-term care facilities," Abbott said.
After Abbott’s news conference, the state Health and Human Services Commission detailed the new visitation rules. They allow residents to designate up to two “essential family caregivers” who will be trained and then permitted to to go inside a resident’s room for a scheduled visit. The designated caregivers do not have to socially distance from the resident, but only one is allowed to visit at a time.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/17/greg-abbott-texas-coronavirus/.
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Teacher Wonders if Students are Learning with Online School
Spend a day with Westfield High School teacher Cris Hernandez, and you'll see the frustrations and uncertainties of virtual teaching. More than four weeks into the school year, he still can't tell if he's connecting with his students.
Faceless avatars and microphone malfunctions: A Houston teacher wonders if his students are learning
"Faceless avatars and microphone malfunctions: A Houston teacher wonders if his students are learning" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Standing before a marked-up whiteboard, Cris Hernandez asked his students to explain what they learned from the day’s history reading, which offered two takes on conflict in colonial America.
Not one of the faceless avatars on the Google Hangouts grid on his computer screen responded.
Hernandez, who teaches Advanced Placement U.S. history, tried harder to coax a response from about five students. Alone in his bare Houston-area classroom in Westfield High School on Monday, he couldn’t see the furrowed brows, glazed eyes or jiggling legs that might indicate his students were confused about the reading, or just plain tired. It was the last class of the day, and getting students to participate felt like pulling teeth.
Finally, one student unmuted herself and responded: “I was just finding it hard to read in general.”
Hernandez immediately launched into advice for building reading comprehension, encouraging students to come to his office hours for more help. As the hour continued, he used examples from the students’ lives to help them understand the dense political analysis. A camera perched on spindly tripod legs broadcast Hernandez and his whiteboard notes to students’ iPads and laptops as he tried not to move too far outside its field of vision.
After the class was over, he flopped down in a chair and sighed. More than four weeks into the virtual school year, Hernandez is often frustrated by the challenge of connecting with his students, sometimes unsure whether they’re learning or even sitting at their computers.
“They really don’t get to see me move around as much. If they are seeing me in the classroom, I bounce around everywhere and I jump. I get excited when I talk about this stuff,” he said. “I could get them excited about this by my body language.”
Hernandez and his Spring Independent School District colleagues are adjusting to a new normal in education as the majority of Texas public school students begin the year learning remotely during a global pandemic. A politico-turned-educator in his third year of teaching, Hernandez usually relies on his humor and energetic personality to keep students’ attention, tools that seem out of reach when he can’t see his students’ faces and doesn’t know if they’re watching him.
In the spring, many Texas school districts struggled to abruptly pivot to remote learning, and more than 10% of students didn’t complete assignments or respond to teacher outreach for some period of time, according to state data. Educators and politicians debated how and when to reopen classrooms in person this fall as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations piled up, weighing the health risks of in-person instruction against the social and educational pitfalls of keeping students at home.
As most students begin the academic year online, Texas has ordered school districts to resume grading, taking attendance and teaching new material, to get learning back on track. That leaves teachers juggling hefty responsibilities, including advocating for stricter safety guidelines, searching for students who haven’t logged in since spring break and facing down the challenge of engaging students over a screen.
For Hernandez and his peers, the stakes of delivering a quality education are especially high. Westfield High School students are predominately Black, Hispanic and low income, communities harder hit by COVID-19 and more likely to have received little instruction last spring.
During first period Monday, one of Hernandez’s chattiest students tried to talk to him and found that her voice would not go through. “MIC NOT WORKING,” she wrote in the chat box, followed by a string of unintelligible letters showing her frustration: “JHFAKFHKFEWF.”
Hernandez had his class of 24 students split in two groups to discuss the reading, meaning they had to close the classwide Google Hangouts window and open separate windows for the small groups. He had wanted the normally chatty student to lead one of the discussions, but it would be harder with her microphone off.
Students logged into the video lesson late, some 15 or more minutes in. Some appeared, then disappeared, then reappeared, their computers likely freezing or their internet spotty. “This is an AP class, so you’re rarely going to have kids come in late, and if they do there’s a reason, like they’re stuck in band hall,” Hernandez said. “Now, I can’t tell whether they have good reason. I have to assume they all have good reason.”
A lot has changed about this year. Before going to school each morning, Hernandez fills out an online checklist of COVID-19 symptoms, self-reporting no sign of fever, cough or shortness of breath. With just staff and a few students in the buildings, the hallways are mostly empty on the walk to his classroom. Rushing to the faculty bathroom between classes, he fits a disposable blue mask over his bearded face.
In normal years, teachers gather regularly with others in their department to talk about student progress and share ideas, a highlight for many. Now, those gatherings take place over video chat, each teacher confined to their own room to avoid spreading the virus.
Technology is more important than ever before. Hernandez is one of the most creative teachers, using an online polling tool to collect students’ answers and setting up separate chat rooms for smaller discussions. His classroom setup includes one camera, an iPad, one large monitor and two computers, so he can simultaneously show his notes on the whiteboard, refer to the historical text, check attendance and monitor students’ written pleas for technical support.
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None of his students turn their cameras on and he doesn’t push them, aware they may be too embarrassed or scared to show their homes in the background. “I told them: Look, you want to be on camera? Be on camera. If not, that’s OK. But that doesn’t excuse you for not participating,” he said. “At the least, let me hear you. Let me see you in chat.”
But even this tech whiz cannot surmount all the hurdles. Due to issues with the publisher, Westfield High students don’t have access to the online history textbooks the district purchased. For now, Hernandez is using a “bootleg book” he found online that’s about four or five editions old and doesn’t even reach former President Barack Obama’s term.
In his second class Monday morning, Hernandez did not recognize a student’s name that popped up on the Google Hangouts grid. In a normal year, he would greet that new student at the door, or pull him aside and introduce himself. Now, the main options are calling the student out in front of the entire class or attempting to email him later.
“How many times have I caught these new people? I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t see them. There might be people I’ve completely lost and I haven’t said anything,” he said. “I’ve been worried.”
Last weekend, school employees went door knocking to find about 80 students enrolled last year whose parents haven’t responded to phone calls or emails. Some likely have moved or enrolled in other districts, Principal David Mason said. A few administrators have conscripted students to help them track lost kids on social media.
In two weeks, Hernandez will be required to simultaneously educate nearly half his students in person and the rest online, adding another task to the precariously tall pile he is balancing. Westfield High phased in students with disabilities first, then freshmen and sophomores next week, and juniors and seniors in two weeks. The school will limit the number of students who can come in each day in order to allow for more social distancing. About half the school’s students decided to return in person by the end of the month, similar to the percentage districtwide.
The district previously told teachers it would close schools each Wednesday to sanitize buildings. But recently, administrators said teachers would be required to come into the building Wednesdays and the district would deep clean after they leave. Teachers and students will be responsible for providing their own masks, Mason said. Students who forget to bring their masks can request one. The school has provided each teacher with a bucket of 300 wipes, a refillable bottle of hand sanitizer and six cloth masks for the year.
Research shows that children are less likely than adults to suffer severe symptoms of COVID-19, but they can transmit it to their teachers or families. Hernandez worries about whether he’ll make it through the year without getting infected and wishes he felt his administrators were doing all they could to keep staff safe.
“This is us living or dying. This is not trying to pencil whip it so you can say, ‘Hey we’ve done these things,’” he said. “If I were an administrator or higher up, I’d be trembling with the sheer weight of the responsibility you have to us as your teachers.”
On Monday morning, despite the technical difficulties and late arrivals, the class discussion appeared relatively normal: A handful of students dominated the discussion, others listened silently and presumably a few daydreamed at their desks. Hernandez took attendance by asking students to drop their names into the chat so he could gather them later.
At the end of the hour, alone in his classroom, Hernandez sent his students off with what has become a catch phrase: “Have a wonderful day, love you all, be safe. I’ll catch you Friday.”
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Disclosure: Google has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/17/texas-teacher-virtual-school-coronavirus-pandemic/.
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Texas Supreme Court Blocks Harris County From Mail-in Ballot Applications
The Supreme Court granted the Texas attorney general’s request to temporarily halt the county’s mailing of applications while the case is appealed. A separate order blocking the effort was set to end this week.
Texas Supreme Court again blocks Harris County from sending mail-in ballot applications to all voters
"Texas Supreme Court again blocks Harris County from sending mail-in ballot applications to all voters" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
The Texas Supreme Court has once again blocked Harris County from sending mail-in ballot applications to all its 2.4 million registered voters ahead of the November election.
In a Tuesday order, the Supreme Court granted the Texas attorney general’s request to halt the county’s effort just before a separate order blocking the mailing was set to expire. The all-Republican court told Harris County to hold off on sending any unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots “until further order” and while the case makes its way through the appeals process.
A state district judge had ruled Friday that the county could move forward with its plan, shooting down the state's claim that Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins was acting outside of his authority by sending out the applications. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office claimed in court that the mailing of the applications would confuse voters, quickly appealed that ruling to the state’s 14th Court of Appeals. Paxton kicked the request up to the Supreme Court after the appeals court declined his request to block the lower court's ruling and instead set an expedited schedule to consider the appeal.
The Supreme Court had previously blocked the county from mailing out ballots in line with an agreement between Harris County and the AG’s office to pause the mailings until five days after a ruling from the state district judge. That agreement was set to expire Thursday.
In a statement Tuesday, Paxton celebrated the Supreme Court's order and reiterated his claim that Hollins "knowingly chose to violate Texas election law and undermine election security" — an argument the state district court rejected. On Twitter, Hollins said his was ready to send the applications and accompanying guidance on who qualifies to vote by mail "at the conclusion of this baseless litigation."
Harris County has faced intense criticism from Texas Republicans since announcing it would mail out the applications to every registered voter, going well beyond its initiative from the July primary runoffs when it sent applications to every registered voter in the county who is 65 and older. Under Texas law, those voters automatically qualify for a ballot they can fill out at home and mail-in or drop off at their county elections office.
The legal squabble over who can receive an application for mail-in ballot is part of a broader clash over mail-in voting in Texas during the coronavirus pandemic. The state’s Republican leadership has fought off any form of expansion. Texas also allows voters to cast ballots by mail if they will be out of the county during the election period, confined in jail but otherwise eligible, or if they cite a disability, which the state defines as a physical condition or illness that makes a trip to the polls a risky endeavor.
While lack of immunity to the new coronavirus alone doesn’t qualify a voter for a mail-in ballot based on disability, a voter can consider it along with their medical history to decide if they meet the requirement.
Despite the Supreme Court’s block on sending out any unsolicited application, Harris County has already proactively sent applications for mail-in ballots to voters who are 65 and older — an initiative several other counties are now taking on ahead of the November general election.
The order in the Harris County case was the second issued by the Supreme Court on Tuesday that affects mail-in voting procedures. The state's top civil court also ordered the state to add three Green Party candidates back to the ballot after a judge previously ruled them ineligible. That decision will lead to a scramble at county elections offices, which must update their overseas and military ballots by the Saturday mailing deadline and send new corrected ballots to replace any that had already been mailed.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/15/harris-county-mail-in-ballot-applications/.
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State Health Officials Walk Back Cuts to Health Services
The changes to the budget proposal come after lawmakers and advocates protested the previous plan would hurt vulnerable Texans.
Texas officials walk back $15 million proposed cuts to women’s and children's health services
"Texas officials walk back $15 million proposed cuts to women’s and children's health services" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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State health officials walked back a plan to cut $15 million in funding from health and safety net programs, including services that offer low-income Texans access to birth control and cancer screenings, and support families of young children with disabilities or developmental delays.
They are instead looking at other belt-tightening measures this year to find savings — and continuing to focus cuts on the agency’s administrative budget — under a revised proposal released Monday.
The latest proposal — part of a state-mandated budget reduction to weather the coronavirus pandemic — comes after lawmakers and advocates warned the previous plan would hurt vulnerable Texans and criticized top state officials for propelling the process without formal input from the Legislature.
The new plan says the Texas Health and Human Services Commission received “feedback” from numerous stakeholders and found “alternative savings opportunities.” The agency also has more “financial certainty” after the close of the fiscal year two weeks ago, the budget proposal said.
Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and outgoing House Speaker Dennis Bonnen asked state agencies in May to reduce their budgets by 5% as the coronavirus battered parts of the economy and left Texas with a projected deficit of $4.6 billion. Several state agencies responding to the virus and its economic fallout were exempted from the mandate, as were critical programs like child protective services and much of the health commission’s two-year budget, which includes about $29 billion in state funds.
Bonnen said a public hearing will be held to discuss the cuts, though money has already dried up for at least one program — a mobile unit for stroke patients whose director said funding was supposed to arrive Sept. 1 for the next fiscal year.
“The legislative budget board is statutorily required to hold a public hearing for the purpose of discussing interim cuts before they are finalized," the speaker said in a statement. "The House will follow the proper process and notice requirements so the public can be heard.”
Texas’ Republican leadership asked the health commission to come up with cuts worth about $133 million in state funds. Most of the commission’s proposals have focused on reducing administrative costs, shrinking its workforce and letting unspent funds lapse.
But in the initial plan, officials also suggested direct cuts to women's health and other programs, worth about 11% of the total reductions. Advocates and lawmakers feared the loss of funding could lessen oversight of child care facilities, make it more difficult to sign families up for health insurance or food benefits and reduce access for low- and middle-income women seeking contraception, postpartum treatment or checks for diabetes, breast and cervical cancer, and sexually transmitted infections.
A proposed cut of $3.8 million from women’s health programs would have left fewer Texans receiving birth control or cancer screenings, a budget document obtained by The Texas Tribune said.
State Reps. Sarah Davis, R-Houston, and Donna Howard, D-Austin, said the cuts to women’s health were not financially prudent, given the programs saved Texas an estimated $20 million in the 2019 fiscal year by averting births with contraception and family planning.
They also criticized the agency’s decision to leave intact a robustly funded program that discourages women from having abortions,and offers new parents financial counseling, social service referrals and children’s items like car seats.
State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, responding on Twitter to a Tribune report, said the health commission should “go back to the drawing board” to preserve funding for women’s health, and that it would remain at an “all-time high” as long as she chaired the powerful finance committee.
Health commission spokesperson Christine Mann did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new plan, but has said that agency is “deeply committed to ensuring budget reductions have minimal impact on the Texans we serve every day.”
“We’re equally mindful of the financial responsibility we have to Texas taxpayers as we face the economic challenges brought on by this pandemic,” she has said.
The agency’s latest plan assumes the $15 million previously cut from programs can now be almost entirely absorbed by funds left unspent at the end of each fiscal year.
Reductions to other services — like administration and regulatory oversight — could still affect low-income Texans. Shrinking the agency’s workforce that reviews applications for assistance programs could delay services and risk the state running afoul of federal guidelines that require needy Texans to be quickly enrolled, for example. A summary of the agency’s initial proposal conceded that some hiring freezes “would have a significant impact on the agency’s mission.”
In all, the agency proposed cutting about $54 million from its administrative budget, including regulatory oversight and benefits enrollment. The remaining $76 million would come from funds left unspent this fiscal year.
“This plan is not final and will evolve over time,” the new proposal says.
Stephanie Rubin, chief executive of the advocacy group Texans Care for Children, called the updated proposal a "step in the right direction," but said the administrative cuts could still have negative consequences for children and families.
“In particular, we’re concerned about proposed cuts that would create delays for kids who need to sign up for Medicaid insurance so they can see a doctor and proposed cuts that could threaten kids’ safety in child care or foster care," she said in an email. "We encourage the Governor, Lt. Governor, Speaker of the House, and other legislative leaders to take cuts for kids and families off the table for this year and next session.”
Kami Geoffray, CEO of Every Body Texas, said she was "heartened" by the revised plan but called for more transparency.
"Confusion over funding availability threatens the stability of the family planning safety... we urge HHSC to engage stakeholders early and often to ensure that the real-world impacts of policy and funding decisions are incorporated into agency analysis," said Geoffray, whose organization supports women’s health providers that contract with the state.
A Bonnen spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about the format and timing of a public hearing on the cuts.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/15/texas-funding-women-health/.
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Testing Backlogs Skewed Coronavirus Data
The Texas Department of State Health Services said it will now rely on a calculation that takes into account the date on which a coronavirus test was administered, rather than when it was reported.
Texas officials change how the state reports positivity rate after testing backlogs skewed coronavirus data
"Texas officials change how the state reports positivity rate after testing backlogs skewed coronavirus data" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Texas health officials announced Monday that they are changing the way the state reports a key metric used to evaluate the extent of coronavirus infection, a move that conceded that the state’s previous method of calculating the “positivity rate” muddied the extent of viral transmission by mixing old data with new.
The Texas Department of State Health Services said it will now “primarily rely” on a new calculation of the daily positivity rate — defined as the share of tests that yield positive results — that takes into account the date on which a coronavirus test was administered. Officials said the new metric will give a more accurate representation of viral transmission in Texas on a given day.
It also means that each day’s positivity rate will be an oft-changing number, fluctuating as officials collect lab results over time. Labs and hospitals report their test results to the state with varying degrees of timeliness, and state officials will have to recalculate the positivity rates for previous days as more test results from those dates pour in.
That’s a departure from the current system, which calculates the positivity rate based on the date the health agency receives test results, which can be weeks or even months after the tests were administered.
It marks the latest in a series of data methodology changes and corrections health officials have issued over the course of the pandemic.
While touting the new reporting method as an improvement, state officials defended the old system as providing the best information that was available at the time. The new positivity rate for the most part closely resembles the old metric, particularly when viewed as a trend line over time, officials said.
Health department spokesperson Chris Van Deusen said in an email that the different positivity rates generally moved in parallel until about August, when the state reported dumps of test results. “As long as the test results and new cases were reported fairly close in time, the case reported date was working as a metric,” he said.
Asked if the health department had concerns about the accuracy of the positivity rate before August, Van Deusen said, “We have to go off of the data that we have.”
The state said it will begin releasing the positivity rate under both the new and old methods later Monday. Health officials said they will publish a third positivity rate metric, which is calculated based on when lab results were reported to a national disease surveillance system, NEDSS, which officials said would reduce reporting lag time.
In its announcement, the Texas Department of State Health Services said the new calculations for the positivity rate will provide a more accurate representation of coronavirus transmission on any given day. It said the change was made after technology improvements last month improved the department's ability to use data from labs and other testing sites. The agency said that until recently, it wasn’t able to track test results by the date they were administered.
The state can now process about 100,000 lab reports per day, officials said, compared with about 45,000 per day before August.
“As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, so must the data we share,” Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner John Hellerstedt said in a prepared statement. “Our information must provide the clearest possible picture of what is happening now and what has occurred in the past.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has pointed to the positivity rate as one metric that guides the state’s response to the pandemic, helping policymakers calibrate the level of restrictions placed on bars and restaurants, for example. Abbott has previously said that a rate above 10% would be considered a red flag. According to the state's old calculations, the rate regularly exceeded that level in late June, after Abbott began allowing businesses to reopen in phases in early May.
The department did not immediately respond to a question about whether it agrees with the governor’s threshold.
Health experts have raised questions about the value of the old metric since it included test results from widely variable time periods, and they have pointed out the limitations of the state’s data.
“The numbers that we see from the county health departments or the state health department … they're not useless, but they are highly qualified and unreliable in terms of studying the trend,” Rajesh Nandy, associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, has said.
Coronavirus test results vastly undercount the extent of viral transmission; researchers estimate that the true number of coronavirus cases could be more than 10 times the number of positive tests. As many as half of the people who contract the virus may never experience symptoms and may not seek out testing.
Texas health officials said Monday that the positivity rate is just one of many metrics that inform disease surveillance. After a midsummer surge that overwhelmed some Texas hospitals, particularly in South Texas, the state’s number of coronavirus hospitalizations has fallen in August and September. Still, rates of viral spread and hospitalizations are higher now than they were before Abbott began the phased reopening of businesses in May. More than 14,000 Texans have died from the virus, according to the state’s accounting.
The decision to start calculating and posting the additional positivity rates began this summer, when thousands of backlogged tests were added to the health department’s reporting system, causing the positivity rate to spike, health department officials said.
Part of that logjam — some 350,000 of more than 850,000 tests — had accumulated because the state could not process enough test results each day before an Aug. 1 system upgrade. Labs have also struggled to upload their test results to the state’s system, with formatting errors and glitches as minor as an errant question mark sometimes causing monthslong delays. Local officials and lawmakers have called the data “meaningless” and “inaccurate.”
Just Sunday, San Antonio officials shared a health department email that revealed more backlogs — this time of roughly 205,000 test results from HCA Houston Healthcare, including 21,366 positive cases extending as far back as March. Baylor Scott and White and the health department’s own lab in Austin also encountered a “routing error” during the system upgrade that prevented some 140,000 test results from June to the present from being processed into NEDSS.
Van Deusen said some of the cases were reported to local health departments despite the “routing error.”
“I wish I could guarantee there would never be another IT issue that interrupts lab reports, but that’s probably not realistic,” Van Deusen said.
About 800 facilities have registered or are in the process of working with the health department to submit test results — many of them long-term care facilities, including nursing homes that are now under a federal mandate to regularly test staff for the first time, Van Deusen said. The department could not immediately provide a number for how many labs already testing Texans have been unable to upload their results into the state system so far.
The state has hired health technology company Persivia to help improve the reporting process. Another consultant, Deloitte, joined the Department of Information Resources and Abbott’s office in working with DSHS to improve “data quality and transparency,” the health department said.
State data will also start to more accurately and efficiently separate tests by county, which could eliminate a large pool of tests that have been stubbornly categorized as “pending assignment” without being tied to a specific county, health officials said.
Disclosure: The University of North Texas Health Science Center, Baylor Scott and White, and Deloitte have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/14/texas-coronavirus-positivity-rate/.
The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state. Explore the next 10 years with us.
Extra $300 Payments Will no Longer be Given to Unemployed Texans
The Federal Emergency Management Agency notified state officials Wednesday that the payments for out-of-work Texans have ended, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, which handles unemployment claims.
Unemployed Texans will no longer receive an extra $300 in weekly payments
"Unemployed Texans will no longer receive an extra $300 in weekly payments" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Texans receiving unemployment benefits who qualified for an extra $300 in weekly jobless payments issued by the Trump administration will no longer receive the additional funds after claims from last week are paid, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
The agency, which processes unemployment claims, said in a news release Wednesday afternoon it had been notified of the news by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provided the funds. Roughly 1.8 million Texans currently receive the $300 payment, according to the workforce commission.
It’s unclear whether more federal relief could be on the way for unemployed Texans. According to a report by The Washington Post on Wednesday, White House officials were considering an additional round of executive actions, including one to address unemployment benefits.
In August, President Donald Trump announced the extra weekly payments after an additional $600 weekly payment approved by Congress to help offset losses tied to the pandemic expired in July. The Trump administration said the federal government would provide $300 per week and that states could decide whether to contribute an additional $100, which Texas did not do. The state applied for federal funding roughly two weeks after the president issued his order.
Since the pandemic began in March, nearly 3.4 million Texans had applied for unemployment assistance as of Aug. 29. Texas has seen record-worst jobless rates in the months since the start of the pandemic, and the state's economy has, as the state comptroller has described multiple times, entered into a recession.
After news of the additional funding was made, the workforce commission said over 347,000 Texans receiving unemployment benefits would not qualify for the additional $300 weekly payment as of Aug. 24. A spokesperson for the agency said some people did not qualify because they did not indicate they had lost their jobs because of the pandemic when they filed for unemployment. Others did not qualify because they were receiving less than $100 in weekly unemployment benefits.
Disclosure: The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/09/300-unemployment-texas/.
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Texas is Revising its Sex Education Standards
The State Board of Education is taking up the first revision of sex ed curriculum in more than 20 years. LGBTQ students say they're being excluded again.
Texas is revising its sex education standards, but they'll likely remain silent on LGBTQ issues
"Texas is revising its sex education standards, but they'll likely remain silent on LGBTQ issues" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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By the age of 16, Atticus Sandlin has become a sex education expert.
As a student at Hebron High School in Lewisville Independent School District, in the suburbs of Dallas, he built what he calls a "sex ed mini career," educating himself through internet research, conferences and advocacy groups — then turning around and educating his peers.
Last school year, he says, students would find him in the halls to ask questions like, "What is a hymen?" or "Does this count as sex?" He handed out condoms, pamphlets and dental dams to anyone who asked, and highlighted the importance of respecting other people's boundaries. He even taught sexual education classes specifically for LGBTQ students through Youth First, a program in North Texas for queer teens.
Texas does not require public schools to teach LGBTQ issues in sex education, an omission that frustrates Sandlin, who is bisexual and a transgender boy. "There are some queer people who don't do their own research, and they don't get information from school or any resources," said Sandlin, now a high school junior at public iSchool Virtual Academy of Texas. "It's important that they get that information even when they don't have access to it or it's not safe for them to get access anywhere else."
This week, the Texas State Board of Education, which determines what millions of public school students learn, is expected to approve new standards outlining how schools should teach health and sexual education — the first revisions to that statewide policy since 1997. At an initial public hearing this June, many students, teachers and advocates asked the board to require that students learn about sexual orientation and gender identity, especially since LGBTQ students are more likely to be discriminated against and bullied.
One study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimates that as many as 158,500 LGBT youth live in Texas, about 2% of the state's youth population.
But the final proposal, set for debate and a preliminary vote this week with final approval expected in November, still excludes any direct mention of LGBTQ issues.
Over the last several years, Texas Republican leaders have targeted LGBTQ rights and protections. In 2017, they unsuccessfully pushed a policy preventing transgender people from using public bathrooms that match their gender identity, and last year they encouraged an investigation into whether a mother supporting her child's gender transition was committing "child abuse."
At its June hearing on the new policy, the 15-member elected education board — 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats — split down partisan lines, with Democrats pushing for explicit inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity and Republicans largely opposed.
"There likely will not be consensus on this," said Keven Ellis, a Lufkin Republican, who chairs the board, at the June meeting. He told The Texas Tribune in an e-mail that he supported teaching about "different types of bullying, including bullying for sexual reasons."
All Texas public schools must offer health education for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, but health education is optional in high school. The board is considering requiring all seventh and eighth grade health teachers to include lessons about contraceptive methods for the first time, now only a requirement in high school health.
Schools are not required to teach sexual education, but those that do must stress abstinence as the preferred choice for unmarried young people and spend more time on it than any other sexual behavior. Parents can opt their children out of any lesson they want.
Dee Lepine, a 17-year-old senior at Timber Creek High School in Keller ISD, remembers eighth grade health teachers showing students pictures of people with sexually transmitted diseases and telling them not to have sex. That was the last health class Lepine, who is nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, took. There was no mention in the class of sexual orientation or gender identity.
"I think just knowing that having attractions when you're a teenager is normal and you shouldn't scare kids with scary images," Lepine said. "It's really important that they don't feel like, you know, a freak, because everyone deals with it."
Lepine remembers learning the details of sex education from the media and friends, who were similarly uneducated and confused.
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Sandlin can clearly remember one of the most uncomfortable assignments he received in a public school sexual education class. Each eighth grade student was given a cup with liquid and told to pour it back and forth among other students' cups.
"At the end of it, they put drops in all of our cups. If your cup turned purple, you had a [sexually transmitted infection]," said Sandlin. "I just remember it being awkward. I was like, are they really trying to get us to simulate sex?"
And most important, the educator at the front of the classroom didn't include very many lessons that would apply to LGBTQ teens. Sandlin sat in the class with a few friends taking notice of the gaps in the lessons, like the statement that all sex risks pregnancy, which is untrue for many queer people.
In high school, whenever Sandlin realized a class had a substitute teacher, he would run to the front of the room to explain his chosen name and pronouns, which differ from the name and gender he was given at birth. Some teachers made a point of ignoring his requests — an indication, he believes, that comprehensive health education classes would be just as useful for those outside of the queer community.
"Pretty much every queer person I know has experienced some level of bullying or just plain ignorance," he said. "One time, I had a teacher straight up say, 'I'm not going to call you that.'" As he's gotten more confident, Sandlin has reported such incidents to counselors, but said it's scary to go up against a teacher.
The State Board of Education debated the importance of adding gender identity and sexual orientation into the standards in June, and a few Republicans suggested strengthening the lessons around bullying, making it clear that students know that they should respect everyone. But they largely opposed making direct references to LGBTQ students.
"If we start delineating things, we need to go back and make sure we include everybody else," said Ken Mercer, a San Antonio Republican on the board.
"If we can save a life because we include this and we allow these students to find that there is no shame in their gender identity, isn't it worth it to you? It's worth it to me," said Ruben Cortez, a Brownsville Democrat on the board. "Hearing and knowing of teens that have [killed themselves] ... because of some of the things they deal with, if we in Texas have the opportunity to correct some of this and save one life, I think it's worth it."
Georgina Pérez, an El Paso Democrat on the board, said including LGBTQ students in the health standards would parallel work the board has already done creating standards for Mexican American and African American studies courses over the last couple of years. "LGBTQI is an identity, an identity that's not reflected in any of our curriculum," she said.
"Racism is a lot bigger problem than the sexual thing as far as people being picked on for different things," responded Pat Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican on the board.
The state sets minimum standards for what should be taught, but districts are allowed to include additional topics they feel would benefit their students. Some districts, including Austin ISD and Fort Worth ISD, have adjusted their own health and sex education policies to include lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Conservative groups such as Texas Values have headed the fight against these policies, considering them pro-LGBT "indoctrination" and urging parents to opt their children out of sexuality courses. Left-leaning advocacy groups such as Texas Freedom Network, Planned Parenthood and the Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy have pushed in the other direction.
Sock Trimarco, who is "queer in most senses of the word" and uses gender-neutral pronouns, has taken sex ed workshops through Planned Parenthood after learning abstinence-only sex education in the online public school Texas Connections Academy.
The 17-year-old shies away from coming out as transgender and nonbinary in school or out in the world, worried about people "pushing back or being upset" or even resorting to violence. "I have to think in my head and say, 'Should I introduce myself as my deadname, or should I introduce myself as my name?'" Trimarco said, referring to their previous name.
Sex education that includes LGBTQ students benefits everyone, they said. "To teach people not only that it's OK to be you, but it's also OK for other people to be queer."
Disclosure: Texas Freedom Network and Planned Parenthood have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/08/texas-state-board-education-sex-ed/.
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Federal Judge may Hold Texas Responsible for not Meeting Foster Care Reforms
Federal Judge Janis Jack hammered state child welfare officials during a two-day hearing over what she called failures to improve Texas' foster care system.
Federal judge says she will again hold Texas in contempt of court for failing to meet foster care reforms
"Federal judge says she will again hold Texas in contempt of court for failing to meet foster care reforms" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
U.S. District Judge Janis Jack said Friday she will once again hold Texas health and human services officials in contempt of court, a punishment that may come with hefty fines, for failing to make progress toward foster care reforms she ordered to be implemented last year.
Jack indicated she would give the state about a month to make improvements before deciding whether to assess fines of up to several thousand dollars per day.
If finalized, the contempt finding would mark the second time in 10 months that Jack has punished state officials for being out of compliance with her demands, which are the culmination of a decade-long class-action lawsuit that brought the state under federal court supervision. Her announcement followed a two-day hearing, held by video conference, in which she frequently chided some of Texas’ top child welfare bureaucrats.
At times, she interrupted Paul Yetter, the Houston-based attorney representing more than 10,000 long-term foster children in Texas, to emphatically agree with his assertions that the foster care system “continues to hurt and endanger children.”
“I actually am stunned by the noncompliance of the state,” Jack said, “but I keep being stunned every time we have one of these hearings.”
The hearing focused on more than a dozen of Jack’s orders, which required state officials to beef up oversight of residential facilities that house kids, improve the timeliness of state investigations into abuse and neglect in foster homes and build software to alert caregivers and caseworkers about instances of child-on-child sexual aggression. Jack also urged state officials at the hearing to improve communication between two separate state agencies: one that oversees children in foster care, and one that licenses homes and facilities that house large numbers of foster children.
Throughout the hearing, Jack echoed concerns raised by two-court appointed monitors in a 363-page report released in June that detailed “substantial threats to children’s safety,” particularly in large, privately-run foster homes.
“The State’s oversight of children’s placements is in numerous instances lethargic and ineffective,” the monitors wrote. “Operations with long, troubled histories of standards violations and child abuse allegations remain open and are permitted to care for vulnerable children, some of whom are then hurt. The prevalence of physical restraints and injuries to children in some facilities is simply shocking, as are the numerous instances where DFPS staff document that the agency does not know where children are placed.”
Jack said she agreed with the monitors’ findings and accused state officials of dragging their feet on making meaningful changes. In particular, she took issue with Jean Shaw, the associate commissioner for child care regulation at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, for not coming down harder on residential operations with long histories of regulatory violations.
Texas foster care officials testified Thursday that they had recently stopped placing children in one facility where monitors identified problems. A Texas Department of Family and Protective Services official testified that the agency was terminating its contract this week with Prairie Harbor, a Houston-area residential treatment center where a teen died in February from a pulmonary embolism associated with a blood clot in her leg.
The home has yet to have its license pulled, though state officials indicated that was a possibility.
Jack berated Shaw for allowing the home to remain open for months after the teen’s death and for recently approving a variance that allowed the home to marginally reduce the number of staff supervising children. Shaw said the agency had approved the variance at Prairie Harbor, and similar variances at other foster facilities, because of private operators’ difficulties fully staffing during the coronavirus pandemic.
At one point, Jack told Shaw, “I don’t think you’re thinking at all.” At another, Yetter asked Shaw if she realized that granting the variance had placed children at Prairie Harbor at risk.
“I don’t realize that,” Shaw said.
Jack cut her off. “That’s the problem, Mr. Yetter,” the judge said, addressing the children’s attorney. “That’s the problem.”
In a statement after the hearing, Katie Olse, the chief executive of the trade group Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services, which represents foster home administrators, said that “Texas’ children must be at the center of this process” and that private groups have been “heroically serving children coming from terrible circumstances.”
“The community-based organizations serving these children take problems in Texas’ foster care system very seriously, and this legal process has no doubt brought attention to specific issues that need to be addressed,” Olse said. “It’s clear that better alignment between state agencies would improve care for vulnerable children. We also need to be sure that all available resources are flowing to help the young people who need them.”
During the two-day hearing, state officials described their efforts as a work in progress and resisted the sweeping terms Jack used to criticize the system they oversee. But given the opportunity, they declined to name any perceived inaccuracies in the court-appointed monitors’ report, which detailed 11 recent child deaths.
At one point, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Jaime Masters told the judge, “Your Honor, I’m concerned by what I’m hearing as well.”
In a recent legal filing, lawyers from the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which is defending child welfare officials in the case, wrote that they had “taken tremendous strides” to comply with Jack’s order. The arguments made by the children’s attorneys, they wrote, paint “an incomplete picture” of the state’s efforts.
In November 2019, Jack held the state in contempt of court after a similarly fiery hearing for failing to comply with her orders, at the time focusing on a requirement that large foster homes have 24-hour, awake supervision. Based on initial information from the monitors, she said then she no longer found the state’s child welfare agency “to be credible in any way.”
She fined the state $150,000 at the time.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/04/texas-foster-care-lawsuit-judge-hearing-contempt/.
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Millions of Texans Could be Shielded From Evictions
A previous federal order, which only protected renters in federally backed housing, expired in July.
Millions of Texans could be shielded from evictions under new Trump administration order
"Millions of Texans could be shielded from evictions under new Trump administration order" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
The federal government announced a nationwide eviction moratorium Tuesday that is designed to protect renters from losing their homes until the end of the year. The order could keep millions of Texans from being evicted.
Housing advocates had been calling for such broad protections since the start of the pandemic. A previous measure, which expired in July, only stopped evictions in homes that were backed by federal loans.
The new order, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and set to be published Friday, says that COVID-19 is a “historic threat to public health” and that eviction moratoriums can facilitate quarantining.
“I want to make it unmistakably clear that I’m protecting people from evictions,” President Donald Trump said in a White House press release.
In Texas, advocates for renters applauded the order but said more protections are needed, and representatives for landlords expressed concern about its potential impact on their businesses.
Rent, typically one of the largest items in any household’s budget, has become one of the top worries of Texans who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19. According to a survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, 39% of renters in Texas weren’t certain they could pay their rent in August. Most eviction moratoriums enacted during the pandemic’s initial blow to the economy have expired.
A provision included in the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act expired in late July. But that measure only delayed evictions for tenants in federally backed housing. The new order from the CDC is more extensive, protecting most renters who expect to earn no more than $99,000 in annual income in 2020, or $198,000 if filing a joint return.
“The prior moratorium that Congress adopted only covered tenants in certain federally backed properties. Less than half of renters were covered by the prior protection,” said Heather K. Way, director of the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic at the University of Texas Austin. “This order covers all renters that meet an additional criteria. There are no limits in terms of the type of housing.”
Tenants will have to provide declarations to their landlords stating that they meet all the requirements in the order, including that they fall within the income limit and that they tried to get any available government assistance for rent or housing. They will also have to state that they have been unable to pay rent due to loss of income, work or health expenses, and that they might be at risk of homelessness or doubling up if they are evicted.
Finally, renters will have to state that they are using their “best efforts” to pay rent on time. Tenants can face criminal charges for false statements in their documents.
“This applies to most tenants. They should begin communication with their landlords to enjoy their protections under this order,” said Zoe Middleton, Southeast Texas director of the advocacy organization Texas Housers. Middleton added that it is important to know that this order is not automatic and that it doesn’t allow people to stop paying rent.
There are no statewide numbers on evictions, but data from The Eviction Lab, a research center based at Princeton University, shows that they have increased in cities like Houston and Fort Worth since local and national moratoriums ended. An exception is Austin, where justices of peace have agreed to not hear these kinds of cases. Yet evictions remain below pre-pandemic levels despite the fact that 3.3 million Texans have applied for unemployment. Researchers said that the stimulus checks, unemployment benefits and rent assistance programs have helped.
Housing advocates also warned that more action is needed, including rent relief.
“This action delays but does not prevent evictions. Congress and the White House must get back to work on negotiations to enact a COVID-19 relief bill with at least $100 billion in emergency rental assistance,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told The Washington Post.
Both legal experts and landlord representatives also stated other concerns about the new order.
“There’s a lot of subjective criteria that could be used against renters that are trying to utilize this order,” Way said. “For example, they have to show they used their best efforts to get any rental assistance that is available, but what does that mean?”
David Mintz, vice president of government affairs for the Texas Apartment Association, said that the organization is still analyzing the order and that evictions are always a last resort.
“How all the details work out and what it means in real life is something that we are going to have to see,” Mintz said.
Mintz added that it is yet to be seen the impact the order will have on landlords, especially owners with fewer properties, who are “already working on smaller margins” and “still have to pay their bills, their employees, their taxes.”
“The real focus needs to be on making sure we have robust rental assistance programs for renters in need,” Mintz said.
Disclosure: David Mintz and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/01/evictions-trump-order/.
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Texas Students are Being Left out of Virtual Learning
In South Texas, students share computers, phones and spotty internet with siblings.
As the school year begins online, thousands of Texas students are being left out of virtual learning
"As the school year begins online, thousands of Texas students are being left out of virtual learning" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Texas schools struggled this spring to abruptly shift from teaching students in classrooms to reaching them at home. Many students fell behind in the makeshift remote learning systems cobbled together when the pandemic hit.
Education officials vowed to do a better job come fall.
But as the new academic year ramps up, a patchwork system will still leave many students across Texas struggling to get an education. Some will be sharing computers with three or four siblings, their districts unable to muster more than one laptop per family. Others live in rural areas beyond the reach of broadband internet. Thousands of laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots remain on back order, and the state still hasn’t finished building out the system of virtual courses it is offering school districts.
Meanwhile, Texas has ordered school districts to resume grading students, taking attendance and teaching new material, pushing them to get academics as close to normal as possible after a chaotic, unfocused spring. The state standardized test is set to resume this academic year, along with ratings for schools and districts, though elementary and middle school students who fail the tests can still advance to the next grade.
Many superintendents are already begging the state not to think of this as a normal year. After all, the pandemic continues to ravage some communities and threatens to cycle back through others. They know that as the virus disproportionately sickens and kills Hispanic and Black Texans, the pandemic also may result in more students from those communities getting a lower-quality education online.
“Their parents want their children to learn. Whose fault is it that their home is located where the infrastructure [for internet access] is not there?” said Jeannie Meza-Chavez, superintendent of San Elizario Independent School District, a majority-Hispanic district where 65% of students have opted to stay online.
Outside of El Paso, a stone’s throw from the border with Mexico, many San Elizario families complained that the hotspots their district provided worked only sporadically. It’s common for the signal to be stronger on Mexico’s side of the border, and families struggle to find internet service providers who can reach them.
“They ended the year at a disadvantage. Instead of more money thrown into assessment, throw it into the area where you can fix the infrastructure for rural districts,” Meza-Chavez said.
The problem is not limited to rural districts: Experts say hotspots used to bridge the digital divide in southern Dallas are a short-term solution, with demand far exceeding availability and the price of monthly internet above what many residents can afford, The Dallas Morning News reported.
In the Rio Grande Valley, Blanca Alcaráz didn’t think internet access was a necessity for her family before March. She had a phone with a data plan, and her children spent most of their time in and around Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD anyway, where Alcaráz volunteered often.
Now, with her four children learning from home indefinitely, she can’t imagine going without the service. She bit the bullet and decided to pay Spectrum about $55 per month, which her one-income household can barely afford.
“If the price starts going up any further, I’ll have to cancel it,” she told The Texas Tribune in Spanish.
Community leaders in the Rio Grande Valley, where COVID-19 has filled morgues and hospitals, are rallying for high-speed internet in the region’s colonias, stretches of land along the border with Mexico that may lack services such as drinking water or sewage lines.
Alcaráz lives in Loma Linda, among broad swaths of Texas where a significant percentage of families do not have access to broadband. She knows other families, living farther from services such as phone lines, who may struggle to find an internet provider to cover them; federal data shows about 44% of households in the school district boundaries don’t have broadband subscriptions.
She applied for laptops from the district but isn’t sure how many she will receive, and the district has predicted they won’t arrive for weeks. When school starts Sept. 8, Alcaráz’s children may still be waiting for their laptops to arrive and sharing phones to complete assignments, while other students have had high-speed internet and personal laptops for years.
Texas did make improvements throughout the pandemic, with more school districts prioritizing direct contact between teachers and students and providing more educator training. The state is offering districts free access to a virtual learning system and contributing hundreds of millions through federal stimulus money to subsidize bulk orders of computers, hotspots and iPads for school districts. The state’s “Operation Connectivity” program, as of mid-August, has ordered 756,000 devices and 310,000 hotspots for more than half of Texas’ school districts.
But with supplier backlogs across the country, some may take as many as 14 more weeks to arrive, according to a mid-August estimate from the Texas Education Agency.
Last Tuesday, Killeen ISD Superintendent John Craft announced at a virtual school board meeting that he would need to open classrooms for in-person instruction a week earlier than planned. The Central Texas district was not reaching up to 7,000 students through virtual education, and a shipment of 16,000 iPads, processed through the state, possibly would not arrive until October. State guidance only allows schools to keep classrooms fully closed if all students have access to online education.
“We felt we had an adequate number of devices and hotspots. … Once we started distributing the devices, it became clear everybody needed one,” Craft told the school board and community members tuning in on their phones and computers. “In hindsight, could we have tried to problem-solve ahead of time? We did. Or we tried to.”
South Texas’ Mercedes ISD has distributed hundreds of Chromebooks and hotspots, some paid for with state help, but still can only afford to issue one per family — even for families with four or five children, according to Superintendent Carolyn Mendiola. About 70% of students want to continue learning online; the district is almost entirely Hispanic and low income.
“We know it’s gonna put a burden on some of these families, but at this point, with our finances, that’s what we’re able to purchase,” Mendiola said.
In Brazosport ISD, in the curve of the Gulf Coast, every student has had a school-issued laptop for about five years, from the smallest pre-K student to the oldest high schooler. Last spring, when school leaders closed classrooms, they had “plenty of Chromebooks” to check out to elementary school students, as well as 800 hotspots for those who needed internet access at home, said Superintendent Danny Massey. The district even ordered extra Chromebooks and hotspots that were subsidized through the state.
Even so, he worries about the 35% of students who have opted for online education in the first grading period, many in schools with more low-income students. “Remote learning is just going to increase the equity gap. The economically disadvantaged students are staying at home, which I know is not the best quality of education, despite the best efforts of our kids,” he said. “We’re just going to see that equity gap grow throughout the pandemic.”
While most Texas districts didn’t require teachers to deliver live virtual lessons to students last year, more are attempting that type of instruction this year, by having teachers broadcast their classroom lessons to kids sitting at home. Others are using a combination of prerecorded videos, self-guided assignments and paper packets to reach students learning remotely.
Texas was one of the states awarded a federal grant, almost $20 million, to train hundreds of thousands of teachers and build out new virtual courses for students in pre-K through 12th grade. But the grant came too late to set up the system by the start of the school year.
“We have shared with our superintendents [that the courses] are not going to be fully ready for this fall,” Lily Laux, TEA deputy commissioner of school programs, told The Washington Post this summer. “But we do hope to be caught up by Christmas.”
Alcaráz is hopeful that with Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD’s support, she will learn how to help her four children complete their lessons while their father is away working at an oil refinery during the week. In March, she missed the school district’s orientation for remote learning, unable to get connected to the virtual meeting.
Now, she has broadband and a single tablet, in addition to her older son’s cellphone, a massive improvement. She worries about her 7-year-old daughter, who is too shy to interact with her teachers across a screen. She also worries about her 16-year-old son, whom she fears is depressed, with too much time spent in front of a screen and without his friends.
She arranged space in her home where her children can dedicate themselves to learning without getting distracted. “Everything has been very, very different since the pandemic arrived,” she said in Spanish. “We weren’t prepared.”
Emma Platoff contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/01/texas-schools-reopening-virtual-learning/.
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Investigation into Fort Hood
The Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus reupped its request on Friday for a congressional investigation into Fort Hood, the Killeen military base.
Photo by U.S. Army - Sgt. Elder Fernandes, 1st Cavalry Division, 1st Sustainment Brigade
The Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus wants an investigation into Fort Hood. At least nine soldiers stationed there have been found dead this year.
"The Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus wants an investigation into Fort Hood. At least nine soldiers stationed there have been found dead this year." was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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A dozen Texas Senate members are reupping their request for a congressional investigation into the Fort Hood military base after a soldier was found dead earlier this week, becoming at least the ninth person stationed at the Killeen post to have been found dead this year, according to officials and media reports.
The body of Sgt. Elder Fernandes was found Tuesday in Temple, about 30 miles from the base, roughly a week after he was reported missing. Temple law enforcement officials said foul play was not suspected.
In May, Fernandes reported he had been a victim of sexual assault. Army officials said Wednesday that an investigation determined the inquiry was unsubstantiated and that Fernandes was made aware of the results, according to The Washington Post. But an attorney for the Fernandes family said Thursday that Fernandes, who was transferred to a new unit after reporting his assault, was harassed and bullied over it before his death.
Earlier this summer, the remains of 20-year-old Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén, who had reportedly told her family that she was harassed on base, were found in Bell County after the soldier had been missing since April. The circumstances surrounding Guillén's death sparked protests across major cities in Texas, with demonstrators calling on the military to reform its investigations into sexual assault allegations.
After her remains were found, the U.S. Department of Justice said the main suspect in Guillén's death, fellow Fort Hood soldier Aaron Robinson, killed himself when confronted by police.
In July, after Guillén's remains were found, the Army called on an independent panel to review the base's command climate. But in a letter Friday, the Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus said that the review did not include an examination of the base's policies and processes with sexual assault or harassment cases, as well as soldier deaths or disappearances. The caucus sent the letter to Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, Gov. Greg Abbott, members of Texas' congressional delegation and Scott Mras, legislative liaison to McCarthy.
"While we acknowledge the U.S. Army is taking steps to examine the base, these reviews are still led and conducted by the U.S. Army itself," the caucus wrote. "Anything other than a thorough transparent investigation into the processes, discipline, and the United States Army’s handling of the matters in their aftermath would be a disservice to the [Guillén], Morales, Morta and now Fernandes families."
Other lawmakers and elected officials have recently called for changes to the base. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for example, wrote a letter to McCarty this week before Fernandes' body was found saying that changes were needed to "better safeguard the soldiers stationed there."
When reached for comment later Friday, a spokesperson for the Army told The Texas Tribune via email that, as with all correspondence involving elected officials, the department "will respond directly to the authors of the letter." The email also cited the July 30 announcement of an independent review of the military base.
A spokesperson for Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/28/Texas-Hispanic-Caucus-Fort-Hood/.
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