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Texas is making new laws—six in specific—to improve the schools around the Lone Star state. This will help out teachers and students. Some of these bills are very helpful, the other’s are a little more overdue. Let’s go through them.

House Bill 11

Teacher Pay and Workload is meant to be codified by some recommendations that were made by the Teacher Vacancy Task Force. Within the group of beyond 40 public school teachers and administrators had been spending beyond a year of creating potential solutions for an overwhelming amount of teachers that quit and retire. An additional recommendation was seen in the bill as an increase if the state’s very own per-pupil funding. Raised from $6,160 to $6,210.

Additionally, the state is looking into a new minimum salary program for teachers. If this bill is passed, it would differentiate the least salary that a teacher can make from their years of experience, cross-reference that with the certification that a teacher may or may not have and therefore, officialize itself as $35,000.

Plus, through a mentor program, the Texas Teacher Partnership program, the lowest a school district could pay first-year teachers would be about $43,000.

House Bill 600

The changes that could occur for retired teachers could very well be a real game changer. An adjustment for cost-of-living for education retirees would go from 2% to about 6%, all dependent on the dates of retirement. With all that said, the constitutional amendment could give way to legislative power for ongoing benefit enhancements towards likely retirees with the Texas Retirement System. It would help those who have inflation taxing their own fixed income.

House Bill 3

Safety has to be made into a change in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, as it has shocked the nation entirely. Texas Representative Dustin Burrows, a Republican out of Lubbock, has had to file the bill after the House committee saw the shooting at Robb Elementary to be totally unnecessary where around 19 children and two teachers had been killed.

House Bill 13

As an addendum, this bill proposed by Representative Ken King, a Republican most Canadian, believes that there should be many new needs for campuses to address when it comes to physical security and mental health. The Employees interacting with students are in need of completing “mental health first aid training” where they can see mental health and substance abuse issues. There will be an opportunity for school “guardians” to hang on to weapons on school grounds. Guardians are going to be in need of completing a training course created by the TEA, as they will have a stipend of beyond $25,000 per school year.

House Bill 400

The legislation is going to come up with a possible grant program that would award “incentive payments towards training programs for physicians, specialized in adult psychiatric care or even pediatric care. As far as funding goes, the program will look for federal funds as well as private donations and public donations too. Even 60% of the grants will be going over to medical schools where physicians will be trained to specialize in psychiatric care for kids. Indie grants are going to be as big as $1 million.

House Bill 100

Finally, this bill would amend a law that makes for funding calculation dependent on the rate of daily attendance in schools. Might be dicey but Ken King can figure it out!