Legislative

Legislative Activities

This legislative session, the 87th, will be a bit different - socially distant and corresponding with lawmakers virtually. I currently serve on the Legislative Subcommittee and we, together with District Legislative Staff have met virtually with every member of our local legislative delegation to share our District priorities with them. Typically, every legislative session, I attend Plano Legislative Days in Austin with board members, community members, PTA leaders, and administrators from our district. We meet directly with state representatives, senators, the Commissioner of Education, and other officials to provide facts about our school district to lawmakers, communicate our perspective of the issues facing education, and the impact the lawmakers' decisions have within our community. This year, the event will be virtual.
With fellow trustees, I attend the TASA/TASB Legislative Conference each session and meet with state representatives and senators about District priorities and to inform them about Plano ISD.

Since its inception, I have attended Collin County Legislative Days during the legislative sessions, in order to speak to legislators and network with fellow members in Collin County in order to further the District's legislative priorities. The event will be virtual this year.
In 2012, 2014, and 2016, I represented our school district as the member elected by my peers in Region 10 to serve on the TASB legislative advisory committee. I met in Austin with fellow trustees from districts throughout Texas to determine the legislative priorities for which TASB will advocate to the state legislature this session.

I have established meaningful relationships and maintain communication with local State House Representatives and State Senators on a regular basis.
As board president, I initiated meetings with our local legislative delegation one year prior to the start of the legislative session, in order that to work together on issues relating to public education. Relatedly, we hosted them into the district to dine on lunch prepared by students in our culinary arts program, and to visit an early childhood campus.
In February, 2016, I helped authored a proposed bill regarding transparency for ISDs in connection with the annual tax rate adoption, in response to an inquiry of a state representative.

I believe the following are the most critical education-related issues being considered in this current legislative session, and my position on each, are:

School Finance:

The State should continue the crucial Hold Harmless funding provision to school districts through the end of the school year, as attendance, especially at the early grades, has been impacted by the pandemic. Case in point: Plano ISD will lose millions of dollars in funding due to lower enrollment caused by Covid-19 if the State does not continue the Hold Harmless provision of funding. The District's budget and staffing allocations are based on predicted enrollment. No one predicted a pandemic, and staff are hired on contracts. Because of quarantining, all available staff are essential to teach. Our students need their teachers now more than ever due to covid learning loss. Maintain the Hold Harmless funding through the end of the school year.
Federal funding related to COVID 19 relief that is intended for schools should be sent directly to ISDs and not be dependent on the state, cities, or counties to distribute. Case in point: the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds were sent directly to the State and the TEA (Texas Education Agency) supplanted those funds to meet its obligation for funding schools. Plano ISD received $0 of the anticipated $4.155 million due to the reduction of ADA (average daily attendance), recapture ("Robinhood"), or set- aside for nonprofits. Where is the local control?
Funding should be based on enrollment; not attendance. Students may choose alternative education options to either learn virtually or pursue CTE (career and technology education) courses where they may not physically be in the classroom, but they are actively participating in coursework. Compulsory attendance minimums should be set appropriately. As we've learned in the pandemic, virtual learning is not going away and provides solutions for some students, for example, those with health issues.
Allow traditional public schools to expand virtual instruction. Plano ISD has the capacity to provide high quality virtual learning (it currently has eSchool), yet is only funded to provide up to three courses in a school year. Compare that to the few charter schools accredited by TEA to provide an entire K-12 education online. Of those charters, Responsive Ed is the only state charter with a virtual school, and has been rated "D", "F", or "IR" (improvement required) in the past six out of seven years. Funding should be based on enrollment, and the limitation on traditional public schools to only three online courses needs to be eliminated. This is NOT a level playing field for traditional public schools who may find themselves competing for their own students against charter schools that are also funded by taxpayers, yet do not outperform traditional public schools.
Lawmakers should maintain the work that was done in the 86th legislative session in 2019 to create HB3, including the public school funding levels including instructional and basic allotments. Especially noted here is the maintenance of high quality pre-K funding for all children. I was proud to vote on March 14, 2017 to approve an expansion of the District's full-day pre-K program to 18 campuses serving students from at-risk populations. Early Childhood Programs are the most proactive programs in public education because they enable students to enter Kindergarten with the literacy, math, and social/emotional competencies needed to be successful. Programs must be high quality and have trained staff to address the needs of at-risk children to capitalize on early brain development that establishes a child’s social competence, cognitive skills, emotional well-being, language, literacy skills, physical abilities and is a marker for well-being in school and life resiliency. It used to be that our children needed to be college ready. Now, they must be kindergarten ready for success in life! In addition, I was proud to vote on March 14, 2017 to approve moving forward to partner with higher education to deliver specialized instruction in targeted, high skill and high demand occupations, especially those that may not require a four-year college degree. I feel it is so important to respond to the workforce demands from employers related directly to the expansion of economic development in Collin County and Texas. HB3 funding provides some funding for middle school CTE and College, Career, Military Readiness, which is valuable to our students and the future workforce.
Expansion of charter schools be strictly limited. I do not believe the taxpayers should be funding a duplicative system of public education if it does not have better outcomes that the former system. 2019 STAAR results for all subjects and all grades show that traditional public schools continue to outperform charters in all three performance levels measured. The amounts spent on charter schools is not transparent; ultimately, taxpayer funding goes to privately owned and managed entities whose governance is not overseen by elected boards. Charters are not held to the same accountability or financial transparency standards as traditional public schools. The five charters with combined enrollment of 1,648 students within the PISD boundaries receive $815 more per-student funding, yet PISD is a consistently "A"-rated district. Two of the charters have a "C" rating, two have a "B" rating and one has an "A" rating. Charters benefit from several inequitable advantages, such as the ability to provide unlimited online instruction, the option to exclude certain students from admission, and the option to hire non-certified teachers. By the way, charter teacher turnover rate is almost twice that of traditional public schools, and teacher years of experience in traditional public schools is more than twice that of charter school teachers. Traditional public schools dedicate more dollars to student instruction, CTE instruction, special education, and extracurricular programs than charters because charters incur higher administrative costs, in part due to the management fees paid to affiliated privately operated Charter Management Organizations. Although charters are purported to better educate underserved urban students, from a study conducted by William Gumbert, here's statewide evidence to the contrary: "Based upon data from the Texas Education Agency (“TEA”), 25% of the African American students enrolled in State Charters attend a campus with an academic rating of “D” or “F”. In addition, over 9,000 African American students have been displaced from State Charter schools due to mandated or voluntary campus closures since 2015." Why are our taxpayers asked to fund this?

Assessment & Accountability:

I support a system of assessment and accountability that values student growth and achievement over standardized, high-stakes testing. The system should focus on measuring and rewarding student growth and full campus environment, rather than punitive sanctions and labels, such as the A-F rating. The system should be developmentally appropriate and reduce testing redundancy.
I question why the TEA is using scarce resources to conduct the STAAR test this school year (it's mandatory to be in the school building to take the test), even when many students are learning remotely. The data will not be comparable to any year and a meaningless measure for distribution of state funding or determining teacher pay, in districts that do so (not Plano). Plano ISD uses the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress), a computer adaptive test to identify student growth between two or three assessments throughout the year to provide diagnostic purposes to inform differentiated teaching strategies.
I support maintaining the designation for Districts of Innovation. On May 3, 2016, I was proud to vote to adopt the resolution to designate Plano ISD a District of Innovation. This provided increased local control to permit the District access certain flexibilities to improve student outcomes, such as setting the school start date that meets our community's needs, seat-time attendance rule to expand instructional offerings (such as eSchool, blended learning, and internships), permission to hire non-certified teachers from industry for certain CTE (non-core) courses, and minimum minutes of instruction to allow flexibility for teacher planning.

Safe and Healthy Schools:

I support maintaining the school safety allotment. Currently, Plano ISD receives $479,000 related to provisions from Senate Bill 11 in the 86th legislative session. This is used to provide campus peace officers, infrastructure and security equipment.
I support funding to prioritize the mental and physical health of students by providing a new allotment for school counselors, nurses, and other essential staff to better address individual issues, including crisis situations. This will provide partners in telehealth and tele-behavioral health, as well as the required staff training, which is otherwise another unfunded mandate. HB5 in 2013 mandated that 8th graders select an endorsement (pathway of study) for high school, creating significant demands for counselors. Now more than ever there is a need for mental wellness and counselors to assist our students.
I support funding for the Inspire Program which Plano ISD is piloting to provide therapeutic and academic resources to our special education population with the greatest needs.

Vouchers:

I oppose any legislation that would remove funding from public education in favor of charter schools or corporate/private sector education. All schools receiving public funds should be held accountable to the same standards to which public education is held, academic and managerial.