Moore County Journal

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When 53 people contracted COVID-19 at the Calvary Chapel of San Antonio in June, the church closed for two weeks to protect the rest of its parishioners. It had shut down months before, when the pandemic first swept over Texas and local officials quickly shuttered businesses, office buildings and other places where people gather in person.

More than a year since the government-mandated closure last spring, Pastor Ron Arbaugh says the county didn’t have the right to shutter his church. And despite the outbreak after Gov. Greg Abbott allowed churches to reopen and deemed religious services essential, Arbaugh doesn’t regret welcoming the congregation back.

“I’ll never close our doors again,” Arbaugh said. “Even if I would be taken to jail, then I would be taken to jail.”

The required shutdown of places of worship also didn’t sit well with many Texas lawmakers who are now trying to ensure such closures by government officials don’t happen in Texas again.

“When the restrictions were put on the church, it crossed the line from what we could do, which was buy groceries, and what we couldn’t do, which was worship as we want to worship,” state Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, said.

“Praise God,” she added.

The Texas House has already passed House Bill 1239, which bans state agencies and officials from issuing orders that “close or have the effect of closing places of worship in the state.” But some experts worry the bill could prevent the government from acting to protect people in future emergencies, such as evacuations and public health emergencies. They also worry the bill’s vague wording could lead to unintended consequences.

The Senate has passed Senate Bill 26, similar legislation authored by Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney. The House Bill has yet to be assigned to a Senate committee, and the Senate bill has yet to get a hearing in a House committee. Both chambers will have to agree on one of the bills before legislation can be sent to Abbott.

The bills continue to float in the legislature despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against COVID-19 restrictions on churches last November. The court decided that government officials couldn’t close churches unless they were also closing down other, nonreligious organizations. HB 1239 would not allow government officials to shutter places of worship in any situation.

The Texas Supreme Court did not take a stance when Houston faith leaders filed a lawsuit against Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo for shuttering churches as part of a general stay-at-home order last March. Long after orders were lifted, the court declined to review a trial upholding them in late July.

“Churches provide essential spiritual, mental and physical support in a time of crisis,” said Rep. Scott Sanford, R-McKinney, during his explanation of HB 1239, which the House passed 122-22 on April 9. “Closing churches not only eliminated these critical ministries and services, but it violated their religious freedom, guaranteed by our laws and Constitution.”

But COVID-19 has battered churches practicing in person across the state. In Houston, a Catholic church closed after five of its leaders tested positive for the coronavirus. In Southlake, only parts of a megachurch closed after a dozen members tested positive, and an Arlington priest died after being hospitalized for the virus.

“There are very few occasions or reasons on which it would ever be necessary to shut down a place of worship, but COVID is one,” said Douglas Laycock, an expert on religious freedom policy at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. “This bill is absolute. It says it doesn’t matter how crowded the church is, it doesn’t matter how high the infection rate is, it doesn’t matter how deadly the disease is.”

State tax code defines religious organizations as “an organized, established group of people regularly meeting at a designated location to hold religious worship services,” and they have to apply for tax exemption, according to the Texas comptroller’s website. But the bill defines a place of worship as “a building or grounds where religious activities are conducted.”

“That’s not just worship,” Laycock said. “It’s anything a church does, all sorts of collateral activities that churches are engaged in. It’s an extremely broad bill.”

That includes recreational activities hosted by places of worship, he said. Laycock also worries the bill could have unintended consequences in rarer occasions, such as emergency evacuations or when criminal conduct is involved.

Under the existing Religious Freedom Act of Texas, “compelling” government interest allows for state involvement in places of worship. In rare situations, this applies to criminal activity, such as the alleged child abuse occurring at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco in the 1990s.

State Rep. John Turner, D-Dallas, attempted to add amendments specifying the definitions and terms during the bill’s second reading. Both failed. Turner included examples of shutting down churches during hurricanes or for other natural disasters, and said he would have supported the bill if his amendments passed.

“I just thought it was a broadly written bill that could be problematic if it’s applied as written,” Turner said in an interview with The Texas Tribune.

In response to Turner’s concerns, many of the representatives who voted to advance the bill repeatedly said it was unfair how “strip clubs, bars and liquor stores” were allowed to remain open while places of worship were limited. Under local stay-at-home orders, restaurants remained open for takeout at low capacities, and some bars began selling food to qualify as restaurants.

The week the House passed HB 1239, 27 national groups across faiths including Christianity, Judaism and Islam signed a letter opposing legislation “seeking to exempt houses of worship and religious gatherings from the reach of regulations and emergency orders related to public health issues,” according to the letter.

“This letter warns against legislation that is overbroad, unnecessary, and sends the message that religious people are more concerned about special treatment than they are public health,” said Holly Hollman, the general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, one of the 27 organizations. The bill “appears to be a drastic overreaction to some legitimate concerns,” she said.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts 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.

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Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday he would sign legislation allowing Texans to carry handguns in public without a license, breaking his silence on a proposal that has been building unprecedented momentum in the Texas Legislature.

“I support it, and I believe it should reach my desk, and we should have ‘constitutional carry’ in Texas,” Abbott told North Texas radio host Rick Roberts.

As recently as a week ago, Abbott had declined to say whether he supported such a proposal, which the House passed earlier this month. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said the Senate does not have the votes for the legislation, but he is trying to find a way to move it through the process.

Last week, Patrick created a new committee with a majority of permitless carry supporters. The House legislation, House Bill 1927, was then referred to the panel, and HB 1927 is set for a hearing Thursday.

Abbott said he has talked to “several senators” on the new Senate Special Committee on Constitutional Issues.

“I believe it is making progress,” Abbott said. “Once the Senate passes it out, the House and Senate will convene and work out any differences and get it to my desk, and I’ll be signing it.”

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President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he will nominate Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, a vocal skeptic of cooperating with federal immigration authorities in certain circumstances, to serve as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As head of ICE, Gonzalez would help oversee one of the most contentious parts of Biden’s agenda: enforcing U.S. immigration law. Biden has promised to unwind much of predecessor Donald Trump’s hardline border policies.

Gonzalez is a former Houston police officer who served on the City Council before first getting elected sheriff in 2016. He won a second four-year term in 2020. During his first term, he was a vocal critic of Trump’s approach to immigration.

In 2019, when Trump tweeted that his administration would be deporting “millions of illegal aliens,” Gonzalez posted on Facebook that the “vast majority” of undocumented immigrants do not proposed a threat to the U.S. and should not be deported.

“The focus should always be on clear & immediate safety threats,” he said.

Soon after he took office, Gonzalez ended a Harris County partnership with ICE that trained 10 deputies to specifically screen jailed individuals for immigration status and hold any selected for deportation. According to the Houston Chronicle, cutting the program still meant Harris County would hold inmates for deportation regardless of their charge, but only if ICE officials themselves make the request.

Gonzalez also vocally opposed 2017 legislation that would prevent cities from banning local law enforcement from asking about immigration status and would push civil fines and a misdemeanor offense on law enforcement who don’t comply with federal immigration enforcement.

In a letter to the Senate Committee on State Affairs, Gonzales opposed what supporters dubbed “anti-sanctuary city” legislation, saying it would take public safety resources away from addressing other local safety issues, such as human trafficking and murder.

“I am also concerned about the risk of an unintended consequence: creating a climate of fear and suspicion that could damage our efforts to reinforce trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve,” he wrote.

Also on Tuesday, Biden said he was tapping another Texan, Gina Ortiz Jones, to be under secretary of the Air Force. Jones is a former Air Force intelligence officer who twice ran as a Democrat for one of Texas’ most competitive congressional districts.

Both positions are subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Jones would be the No. 2 civilian leader of the Air Force as under secretary. Defense News, which first reported Biden’s plan to nominate Jones, a Filipino American, said she would be the first woman of color to serve in the position.

Jones also is a member of the LGBT community and served in the Air Force under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” After her time in the Air Force, Jones went to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency and later the office of the U.S. trade representative. She ran against U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, in 2018 and lost by less than 1,000 votes. She made a second bid for the seat last year, when Hurd did not seek reelection, and lost by a wider margin to Republican Tony Gonzales.

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The Texas Senate tentatively approved a bill Monday in an 18-13 vote that would classify providing gender affirming health care to transgender minors as child abuse — just one of the Legislature’s many attempts to prevent transgender children from transitioning before their 18th birthday.

Senate Bill 1646 is among several other bills that advocacy groups say erode the rights of transgender Texans. Authored by Lubbock Republican Sen. Charles Perry, it amends the definition of abuse under Texas Family Code to include administering or consenting to a child’s use of puberty suppression treatment, hormones or surgery for the purpose of gender transitioning.

But it’s unclear what the legislation’s chances are in the House, where another major bill targeting transgender children appears to have stalled.

In a Senate committee hearing, SB 1646 attracted over four-and-a-half hours of public testimony from LGBTQ Texans, their parents and several state and national medical associations opposing the bill’s intrusion into intimate medical decisions. Social workers also testified the bill could put more transgender children into the foster care system, where they face elevated rates of suicide and depression.

Perry argued in floor debate that the bill was necessary to prevent children from making irreversible decisions that they may regret later, but experts say both of those claims are questionable.

According to Marjan Linnell, a general pediatrician, puberty suppression treatments are completely reversible and have been used for decades to delay early onset puberty. While other treatments such as hormones and surgery may cause irreversible changes, Linnell said the risks are discussed extensively with children and their parents before the procedures, which is typically only performed after puberty.

Research also shows that children typically solidify their gender identity around age 6 to 7, according to past Texas Psychological Association President Megan Mooney. In committee hearing and floor debate, legislators and invited experts claimed the many transgender children ceased to experience gender dysphoria later in life. However, many of the studies they cited have been widely critiqued for casting wide nets for participants that often include children who may act gender non-confirming — for example, Linnell explained, a young girl who enjoys playing with trucks — but do not identify as transgender.

A 2021 study by the Fenway Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital found that only 13.1% of transgender people have detransitioned at some point, and 82.5% of those cases were caused by external pressure and stigma related to being transgender rather than regretting their transition.

The Senate is set to take their final vote on the bill Wednesday. It previously passed Senate Bill 29, legislation that would force transgender students to participate in school sports based on the sex originally labeled on their birth certificate.

That bill has been sitting in a House committee since the Chair Harold Dutton, D-Houston, told the Houston Chronicle its identical House companion bill likely didn’t have the votes to make it to the full lower chamber.

Angela Hale, senior adviser for Equality Texas, is glad that House committee doesn’t support the bill and said that the conversation about restricting transgender Texans’ rights should have been left in 2017 with the death of that year’s so-called “bathroom bill,” which would have restricted public restrooms transgender Texans could use.

“We ask the legislature, and especially leaders in the Texas House, to once again reject this and all unnecessary and harmful legislation and focus on issues that unite us as Texans,” Hale said.

In the Senate, both the floor vote and committee vote on SB 29 were split directly down party lines, with every Republican voting for and every Democrat voting against. In both cases, Republican majorities pushed the bill forward despite backlash from LGBTQ Texans and business leaders.

But once the bill reached the house, Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, assigned the Senate bill to the Public Education Committee instead, where its House companion had been sitting since the end of March. The day after SB 29 was assigned to the committee, House Bill 4042 was heard by the committee’s six Democrats and seven Republicans.

If the House bill had gone through the State Affairs committee like its Senate equivalent, it would have faced a 8-4 Republican majority. Instead, it went before what Houston Republican Rep. Dan Huberty, who was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated Saturday, called “the most bipartisan committee we have in the Texas House” during the hearing.

However, Phelan, who assigns bills to committees, may have difficulties making the same maneuvers for other bills, like SB 1646.

The Speaker did not return a request for comment, but previously told Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith in a podcast interview last session that he didn’t support bills “bashing” LGBTQ Texans.

“It’s completely unacceptable,” he said at the time. “This is 2019.”

Last week, the House Public Health committee, made up of six Republicans and five Democrats, narrowly passed a bill that would ban children from receiving gender affirming medical care, such as puberty suppression treatments or hormones. That bill hasn’t yet come up on the House floor.

Opposition to the sports ban also didn’t pertain entirely to how it would affect transgender students. Huberty pointed out in committee hearing that the bill is nearly identical to current University Interscholastic League rules.

“I’m trying to figure out why we continue to pass bills that we don’t need bills for,” he said in the hearing.

Even if the bills pass through committee and floor votes in each house, they’ll still need to be signed by Gov. Greg Abbott to become law. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed legislation that would ban transgender women from school sports, and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed another piece of legislation that would ban gender affirming medical care for transgender youth. Hutchinson’s veto was later overturned by the Arkansas legislature.

Abbott did not return a request for comment.

In 2017, Abbott placed a controversial “bathroom bill” on his legislative priorities for the session which would restrict transgender Texans’ access to public bathrooms. That bill died before reaching the House floor. But in 2018, a Republican state legislator alleged that Abbott may not have supported the bill after all, saying he “did not want that bill on his desk.”

Yet Abbott in 2019 also gave credence to a father’s claim that his ex-wife was committing child abuse by supporting their child’s gender transition. In a 2019 tweet, Abbott said the issue would be looked into by the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

In response to the case, State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, said in a since-deleted tweet “the 1st bill I file in the 87th [legislative session] will add ‘Transitioning of a Minor’ as Child Abuse.” Toth is the author of House Bill 2693, legislation that would mandate the Texas Medical Board to revoke the medical license of any physician or health care provider who performs or prescribes gender affirming medical care. That bill has been sitting in the House Public Health Committee since March 17 and has yet to receive a hearing.

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is suing the federal government claiming that the Biden administration’s COVID-19 relief plan passed last month discriminates against white farmers and ranchers.

Miller, a conservative Republican and rancher, states in the lawsuit filed Monday in Fort Worth federal court that he is suing in his capacity as a private citizen — not on behalf of the state.

Among several other major provisions, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 offers relief to “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers, which the plan defines as people of color. Miller’s complaint against the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the definition in the program fails to include “white ethnic groups that have unquestionably suffered” because of their ethnicity, such as those of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish and eastern European heritage.

Attorneys are seeking class-action status for the suit on behalf of white farmers and ranchers.

The lawsuit is sponsored by America First Legal — a group founded by Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former senior adviser, along with other Trump officials to be a conservative response to the ACLU.

“America First Legal opposes discrimination in all forms,” AFL President Stephen Miller said in a statement.

Black farmers in America make up about a quarter of disadvantaged farmers targeted in the relief bill and have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, according to the Washington Post. Agricultural experts and advocates for Black farmers say this stems from systemic racism, biased government policy and social and business practices that have denied African Americans equitable access to markets.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill signed by President Joe Biden last month, which would provide an estimated $10.4 billion for agricultural and food supply-chain programs. Nearly half would go to relief for farmers of color. While Congress passed last year’s $2.2 trillion CARES Act with significant buy-in from both political parties while Donald Trump was in the White House, the American Rescue Plan passed solely with Democratic votes in both the House and Senate this year, after Biden was elected.

The lawsuit says that the exclusion of white ranchers and farmers in the program is unfair and asks the court to declare benefits targeting only people of color unconstitutional.

“Doing so will promote equal rights under the law for all American citizens and promote efforts to stop racial discrimination, because the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” the lawsuit states, saying the program “lurches America dangerously backward.”

The lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, whose court became a favorite for the conservative Texas Attorney General’s Office for federal lawsuits fought during the Obama administration. A 2007 appointee of President George W. Bush, O’Connor handed Texas several major wins over the federal government opposing Democratic policies, including gutting Obamacare, ruling against family leave benefits for gay or lesbian couples and blocking guidelines to allow transgender students to use bathrooms aligning with their gender identity.

Miller has repeatedly been criticized in the past for sharing or amplifying racist memes, as well as misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories on his social media accounts.

Spokespeople for Miller, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Farm Bureau Federation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The complaint asks the court that if it doesn’t rule the definition unconstitutional to “at least” expand it to include those of Anglo Saxon heritage that have experienced historical discrimination or include those with “any discernible trace of minority ancestry.”

“An interpretation of the underlying statutes that excludes plaintiffs like Miller because he is not ‘black enough’ would raise grave constitutional concerns under Bolling v. Sharpe and it should be rejected for that reason alone,” the complaint states, referencing a lawsuit where the U.S. Supreme Court case held that the Constitution prohibited segregated public schools in Washington, D.C. “The statutes should not be construed to empower the Department of Agriculture to choose a minimum threshold of minority ancestry when determining eligibility for benefits.”

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The board overseeing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the independent nonprofit entity that operates and manages the electricity grid that covers much of Texas, named former executive Brad Jones on Tuesday to be interim president and CEO.

Jones, who worked for Texas energy companies and in senior roles at ERCOT before leading New York state’s power grid operator as president, takes ERCOT’s top job from Bill Magness, who was fired as president and CEO in early March after a winter storm in February left millions of people in the dark for days amid freezing temperature and claimed more than 100 lives.

Jones’ hiring as interim president and CEO, after stints as a vice president and chief operations officer at ERCOT between 2013 and 2015, provides more time for the organization to find a permanent leader. Magness will soon depart ERCOT following a 60-day termination notice handed to him by ERCOT’s board of directors in March.

In the weeks since the winter storm, both ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the regulatory body that oversees it, have been lambasted for failures in preparing for and responding to the storm.

ERCOT underestimated the maximum amount of power that would be demanded by homes, businesses and industry during a severe winter storm in its fall projections, and it overestimated the amount of power generation that would be available to the grid during such a storm.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick had called for Magness and DeAnn Walker, then the head of the PUC, to resign. While Magness was fired, Walker resigned after also coming under harsh criticism from lawmakers. Gov. Greg Abbott called for reforming the governance of ERCOT, and legislation to do so is advancing through the Legislature.

But after recent leadership shakeups at ERCOT and the PUC, it is state lawmakers who are now increasingly coming under pressure to pass substantial legislation that would protect the state from another power failure the next time inclement weather hits Texas.

An immediate concern Jones must confront at ERCOT is the prospect of an atypical summer that pushes demand for electricity beyond normal summer peaks. Texas is likely to see a hotter and drier summer than normal this year, according to an April climate outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and 2021 is likely to rank among the 10 warmest years on record globally.

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Millions of Texans lack access to high-speed broadband internet. After a year of seeing constituents deal with remote school, working from home and telehealth appointments — all to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic — state lawmakers seem determined this legislative session to begin to fix the issue.

State Rep. Trent Ashby, a Lufkin Republican, filed a bill that would create a state hub for coordinating resources, and establish a grant program to incentivize access to and the development of broadband services. The legislation would also direct the office to create a map showing the quality of internet connections.

Texas families living in unincorporated neighborhoods outside major towns, known as “colonias,” have been frustrated about the lack of quality internet connectivity. Watch as we take you to a couple of colonias in South Texas, where learning safely at home is extremely difficult for students without reliable internet.

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In the latest episode of our podcast about the Texas Legislature, Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith talks to Elena Marks, the president and CEO of the Episcopal Health Foundation, about long-shot efforts to expand Medicaid in the 2021 legislative session — and failing that, what the state can do at a time when our uninsured population is growing.

Disclosure: Episcopal Health Foundation 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.

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Aiming to upend policies that have disproportionately punished Black students, the Dallas Independent School District is moving to rewrite its school disciplinary code, ending suspensions for low-level infractions like disrupting class or using profanity.

Instead of kicking students out of school, the district plans to use digital tools that have become part of school life during the pandemic to create in-school “reset centers” where students can Zoom into classes and access mental health professionals and teletherapy.

If approved by the Dallas school board as expected, the new policies in Texas’ second-largest school district would be unprecedented in the state and among the most progressive discipline reforms in the country, education experts said.

“If it’s done correctly, it could be truly historic,” said Andrew Hairston, director of the Education Justice Project at Texas Appleseed, a social and economic justice nonprofit.

The move would not only end suspensions for minor behaviors, but also change how more problematic issues like fighting and bullying are handled.

Students involved in more serious infractions such as sexual assault and felony drug possession will still be expelled as required by state law.

“Suspension was never the right structure, but it is certainly not the right structure coming out of a global pandemic,” said former Dallas ISD school board trustee Miguel Solis, part of a task force charged with overhauling how the district handles disciplinary issues.

After the murder of George Floyd sparked a national reckoning on issues of institutional racism, Solis said, Dallas ISD resolved to take a clear-eyed look at its systems and policies. Board President Justin Henry called on trustees to suggest comprehensive policies addressing the unequal experiences and academic outcomes of the district’s Black students.

In the 2019-20 school year, Black students made up 21.6% of the district’s enrollment and accounted for 51.6% of out-of-school suspensions. Meanwhile, Black students’ academic outcomes were worse than their peers.

“Every way we sliced the data, African American students are at the bottom, but when we look at special education and discipline, they’re at the top,” said Pam Lear, a member of the task force and Dallas ISD chief of staff and race equity officer.

Anticipating a “second pandemic” of mental health challenges as students return to school next academic year, the task force recommended capitalizing on technology schools have used to connect teachers and students for more than a year.

Tools like teletherapy, Google Classroom and Zoom — though rarely used before the pandemic and considered not as effective as in-person counseling or classes — have become ubiquitous. Dallas officials say they can be used to safely connect struggling kids to help rather than banishing them from school.

Mental health issues, academic frustration, social anxiety and a lack of coping skills often fuel incidents that get students kicked out of class, said Solis. All are likely to increase as students relearn how to be in a school building with their peers and process the economic hardship, fear, instability and grief of the past year.

While people used to be skeptical of teletherapy for behavioral and mental health support, that perception is changing with the pandemic, said Stephanie Taylor, clinical director of psychoeducational services for Presence Learning, which provides online special education services for thousands of schools across the country. “The pandemic forced some changes,” she said.

School districts now have the chance to be proactive as they account for the trauma students have endured and adjustments they will have to make to reacclimate to school, Taylor said. “Those who anticipate the different settings and the different levels of need … are the ones who will have the easier transition.”

Without the right resources, ending out-of-school suspensions ultimately leads to more in-school suspensions, which Solis said are harshly punitive and academically damaging.

He remembers, as a middle school teacher, seeing students under in-school suspension wearing orange safety vests so teachers could identify them, he described, “like prisoners.” Relegated to a portable building for most of the day, the students would travel in a supervised group for bathroom breaks.

“It was a quasi-criminal justice situation,” Solis said. The teacher in charge was not trained in restorative justice, didn’t teach lessons, didn’t do anything except oversee the preteen inmates.

Dallas has been adopting restorative practices for years, but fully ending discretionary suspensions and making proper use of the reset centers will require full buy-in from teachers, said Lear. “Everybody who is implementing has to go through the process of ‘why are we doing this?’”

According to a report by Texas Appleseed, school suspensions have been a common school discipline tool in Texas at least since 1969, when lawmakers wrote disciplinary standards into the state’s education code under the title “Law and Order.” Efforts to end the practice have been opposed by teachers and administrators as well as state lawmakers, Texas Appleseed senior staff attorney and former educator Vicky Sullivan said.

The desire to end exclusionary discipline as much as possible has existed in the district for a long time, Solis said. In 2017, the school board banned suspension for children in pre-K through second grade, a local policy that became state law later that year. However, the peak year for suspension was seventh grade, and Solis wanted to see the ban used where it was needed most.

“This issue never went to sleep for me,” Solis said.

Exclusionary discipline was heavier not only in certain grades, but in certain schools as well. It was a districtwide problem, but looking closer, it was possible to see clusters of expulsions, teachers who relied on it more heavily than others.

“We also have to look at implicit bias,” Lear said. “We need to ensure that there is awareness.”

To help with this, the task force is proposing increased training for teachers and the creation of an early warning system to help address trauma and prevent larger problem behaviors. The goal is for teachers to have classroom cultures that minimize stress and for campus staff to intervene with mental health checks before a disciplinary code is even needed.

“The teacher-student dynamic is going to be radically different,” Solis said.

Lowering the emotional temperature will serve teachers who have their own trauma and strain from the pandemic, which stretched many of them well past what they’d been trained for in the classroom, on top of fears and losses from the virus.

Implementation will be everything, said Hairston, and initially Dallas ISD should expect to hear from administrators and teachers that “kids are still acting out.” The change in culture won’t happen immediately, he said, but neither did the punitive system Dallas is trying to replace.

“It took [decades] to create this behemoth — it will take more than a few years to address the full magnitude of its past and present harms,” Hairston said, speaking not only of Dallas ISD, but of the national K-12 public school system’s heavy reliance on suspension and expulsion.

Retooling a disciplinary system for more than 150,000 students is no small feat, Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa acknowledged. But it could be one way that the “new normal” created by the pandemic is better than the old. It may take time to get every teacher at every campus on board, but Hinojosa wants to see progress beginning in August, assuming the board greenlights the initiative, which should cost around $4 million, in May or June.

“I’m going to be patient, but also impatient,” Hinojosa said. “We’ve got to get it right.”

The 74Million.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization focused on America’s schools, education policy and 74 million children.

Disclosure: Texas Appleseed 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.

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The Texas Legislature is considering bills that would ban homeless encampments statewide, almost two years after the city of Austin decided to lift a similar local ban — a move that critics say triggered the proliferation of tent cities throughout Austin.

If lawmakers approve the legislation and Gov. Greg Abbott signs it into law, it would become the latest instance of the Republican-led state government overruling local ordinances. State lawmakers also are trying to stop cities from decreasing police funding after the “defund the police” movement sparked by last year’s national protests against police brutality.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in not only the number of homeless living under bridges or on the streets, but also the rise in crime,” said state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, the author of House Bill 1925. “And really the difference has been that, at least in this case, this city has overturned their own ban.”

Austin’s City Council decided to lift the ban on public encampments in certain areas in July 2019, arguing that the policy had led to citations for people experiencing homelessness and hurting their ability to find housing. The move was quickly criticized by Abbott, who promised to take action against Austin and in his budget priority list asked the Legislature to withhold state grant money from cities that don’t ban such encampments.

The proposed bills — HB 1925 and its companion, Senate Bill 987 — would make camping in an unapproved public place a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500.

“We as a state act to make sure that our public spaces are safe and that our homeless population is taken care of. The situation has simply gotten out of control,” state Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, said during a hearing for SB 987, which she authored.

The House bill was debated on the floor Monday, and Democrats attempted to amend the bill to decrease the penalties against people experiencing homelessness. After state Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, raised a point of order claiming a discrepancy in the bill’s witness list while in committee, it was sent back to the Urban Affairs Committee; it’s expected to receive a new hearing soon.

During Monday’s floor debate, some Democratic legislators criticized the bills, saying that they would criminalize people experiencing homelessness.

“What I’m concerned about is folks that can’t pay these fines and they are caught in the system and they get deeper and deeper in the hole,” state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, said during debate on the House floor Monday. “[It’s a] fine that they can’t pay, we are setting people up for failure.”

State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, said the bill would disproportionately impact Black Texans because they are more likely to experience homelessness than white Texans.

“We should not criminalize those who can not afford a place to stay,” Crockett said. “What we’ve seen specifically here in the state of Texas is that minorities are criminalized at a lot higher rate.”

Austin voters to decide on camping ban

Although the visibility of homeless encampments has increased in Austin in recent years, both the Dallas and Houston areas have more people living in the streets, according to 2020 data. Some Austin residents have complained that allowing the encampments on public property — many are beneath overpasses or next to major roads — has created health and safety problems.

Other residents and most advocates for people experiencing homelessness said lifting the ban on encampments has made it easier to offer services to people experiencing homelessness and helped them avoid fines that they frequently can’t pay.

The city’s residents will be able to decide on the matter Saturday, after the group Save Austin Now managed to get more than 24,000 signatures to put a proposition on the ballot to reinstate the camping ban. Early voting began April 19 on Proposition B, which would reinstate not only the camping ban, but also penalties for panhandling, sitting and lying in public areas.

The Legislature could make that vote moot by imposing an encampment ban throughout Texas.

Save Austin Now’s co-founder, Cleo Petricek — a Democrat who has said the group has bipartisan support — said during the committee hearing on the Senate bill that she has heard many complaints about the encampments being safety and health risks, especially in Hispanic neighborhoods.

“It is these communities that have shouldered most of the destruction to their neighborhoods, parks, schools, playgrounds from unregulated homeless encampments, compared to rich parts of Austin,” Petricek told the committee members.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler has criticized both the city proposition and the Senate and House bills.

“All SB 987 does is impose possible jail and fines for those without homes. At best, it will force those without shelter to hide, and that’s even less safe,” Adler said in a written statement. “This bill, like Proposition B, offers no help and no solution. We can’t go back to the failed policies of the past that we know don’t work, like threatening jail and fines to make people move — when there’s nowhere for those people to move to.”

Homeless advocates agreed that the bill won’t help efforts to house people experiencing homelessness.

“Banning people from sleeping or sitting down in public won’t help them find housing; it’ll just further ostracize them from our community because they can’t afford rent,” Matthew Mollica, executive editor at Austin’s Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, said in his written statement to the Senate Committee on Local Government. “Evidence shows that, far from ending anyone’s homelessness, criminalizing basic human functions like sleeping increases the trauma associated with experiencing homelessness and makes it harder for someone to end their homelessness.”

“It ties their hands”

Homeless service providers in other Texas cities say they also are worried about how a state law banning encampments could play out. Regulations and enforcement related to camping in public places vary greatly among cities. Some, like Austin, don’t have a universal ban, but camping is not allowed in places like public parks. Others, like Dallas, don’t have a ban but will remove encampments if there are safety concerns.

In Houston, a city that has been touted as a national model for how to handle the homelessness crisis, tents and makeshift structures are banned, but the city does removals only when there is available housing for the people involved. Mike Nichols, CEO and president of the Coalition for the Homeless in that city, told lawmakers that he opposed the bills they’re considering.

“We have to have collaboration with the police, with the city, with the county. … This bill will kill our collaboration because it ties their hands,” Nichols said in the Senate committee hearing.

In Brown County, Linda Heitman, executive director of Brown County Home Solutions, said she has a similar worry.

“We’ve worked very hard to foster a good relation between the police and the homeless population. If the police are forced to do the enforcement and ticket people, that would totally undo what we’ve done,” Heitman said in an interview. “If the police are out there trying to get them to go to a shelter, they would be afraid that they would be taken to jail.”

Eric Samuels, president and CEO of the Texas Homeless Network, is also concerned about lawmakers’ threat to cut state funds to cities, even though the state’s contributions to homeless solutions are considerably smaller than what the federal government and many local governments provide.

“Any cut in that funding would be substantial, and it would really weaken our efforts to end homelessness,” Samuels said. “And if a community says that we’re not going to put a ban on camping in public, then I think we need to respect what that local community has decided.”

He called the proposed statewide encampment ban “the stick method — all it does is end up pushing people further in the shadows, pushing people behind the tree line, and that does not serve to get more people into services.”

Camping bans have led to court battles across the country. In February, the city of Boise, Idaho, had to commit $1.3 million for homelessness as part of a settlement in a decadelong case that six people experiencing homelessness filed against the city. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas sued the city of Houston in 2017 for its encampment ban, but the lawsuit was withdrawn in 2019.

Nick Hudson, policy and advocacy strategist with the ACLU of Texas, said the group is “closely watching” what happens with the legislation.

“Criminalizing Texans who are trying to meet their basic needs is unconstitutional. Under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, it is cruel and unusual to punish someone for status they cannot control, such as experiencing homelessness,” Hudson said. “Courts have found that it is unconstitutional to criminalize someone for sleeping or camping outside when they have no place else to go.”

Disclosure: Steve Adler, a former Texas Tribune board chair, 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.