Bill Filing Deadline Next Week

As we approach the bill filing deadline—the 60th day of the session—next Friday, drafting and filing activity is nearing a fever pitch. More than 15,000 bills have been drafted, though drafting by no means guarantees that a bill will be filed before March 14. In recent years, we’ve seen more bills filed, especially in the House, while the rate of passage is holding relatively steady. Less than 20% of bills will pass in any given session, and a good rule of thumb is that it will take three sessions to get a bill passed.

This is of course just a guide and typically will not apply in the cases of statewide and leadership priorities. To that end, last month Chairman Brad Buckley (R-Killeen) filed his companion bill package to outline changes to the school finance system (HB 2), including the House’s own voucher program, HB 3.

HB 2 includes provisions to raise the basic allotment (the biggest driver of school finance), add specific allotments for priority items like Fine Arts Education and high school advising, make revisions to the teacher incentive program, and even make some expansions to the Additional Days School Year (ADSY) program, which allows districts to draw down money for summer learning.

The changes to ADSY, which TXPOST supports, expand the program to include middle school and reduce the number of days a school must operate in order to tap into funds—a barrier to access since the program started—while increasing the incentive value for any school that operates 200+ days per year.

HB 2 also creates a planning grant program, modeled after The Wallace Foundation’s support of ADSY participants over the previous five years. The ADSY Planning and Execution Program (PEP) demonstrated the immense value of technical assistance services to support high-quality implementation of programs up to and including larger gains in math and reading scores for young people in PEP programs relative to both non-PEP ADSY programs and also those students who had no ADSY program at all.

ADSY is a key strategy to increase access to summer learning and enrichment by reaching young people in innovative, engaging ways on school campuses and with support through the school finance formulas. This program is a key element of TXPOST’s vision that every young person in Texas has access to opportunities in out of school time that match their needs and passions.

And speaking of that vision, on Tuesday, Representative Trent Ashby (R-Lufkin) filed HB 3672, which creates the Extracurricular Community Learning Grant Program. TXPOST brought this legislation to Representative Ashby, a longtime champion of this field and this work, who understands just how important community-based OST is in the ecosystem of resources and supports for kids across Texas.

Leveraging existing school-based models like ADSY, expanding community-based OST opportunities through bills like HB 3672, and increasing intermediary supports for high-quality programming are all central to TXPOST’s priorities for this session. There is still a long path to success, but filed legislation is a vital first step to making our vision a reality.