Texas Planned Parenthood Ban Upheld

(The first video explains the debate between Planned Parenthood and the State of Texas and how the Texas State Legislature is involved. The second video explains the effect of the recent ban upheld by the Texas courts on Planned Parenthood's participation in the Women's Health Program.)

A Texas judge upheld a ban on Planned Parenthood to participate in a state-run and state-funded program, the Women's Health Program. The program is named after the federally funded program that the State of Texas passed on participating in and subsequently passed on hundreds of millions of federal dollars in Medicaid aimed at women's health all because the program would benefit local Planned Parenthood chapters.

A state law that went into effect this year requires Texas to provide funding to all women's health clinics except those that are affiliated with abortion providers. Because of this new law, Texas is no longer eligible to receive federal funding and therefore Planned Parenthood loses their federal funding as well.

According to CNN, 90% of the services Planned Parenthood's "clinics provide are cancer screenings, birth control and testing for diseases." Last year alone Planned Parenthood accounted for half of the Women's Health Program services. According to New Republic these services were "mostly in the form of cancer, diabetes, and STI treatment, plus high blood pressure screenings, contraception dispersement and annual checkups."

This leaves 50,000 women to search for new primary care doctor within the Women's Health Program, a program that may not be able to accommodate all of those women.

After forgoing participation in the federally funded Women's Health Program, Texas will now have to come up with over $200 million over the next 5 years to fund state's program.

Drinking Age to 18

       Some states in the United States have laws allowing legal adults ages 18-21 to drink alcohol in public places of business if they are with their legal guardians or parents. Texas does not allow this, but I'm researching what efforts have been made to change this law.
    
       Texas State Representative J.M. Lozano filed House Bill 892, which will apply to Active Duty and Veterans of the US Military aged 18-21. According to his statements, he believes that because that if a person is old enough to make the decision to fight and die for the safety of his/her country, that individual should be considered old enough and mature enough to be allowed to make the decision to drink alcohol if he/she so chooses.

       When asked to explain why he believed that active duty military members should be allowed to decide for themselves as to whether or not they will drink alcohol, Lozano said, "Men and women will put their lives on the line. They volunteer to do that for their country. I would always ponder and recall their sacrifice and they can't even have a beer."

      Representative Lozano believes that this should be a federal law, applied to all states across the nation. States that do not agree would then have the opportunity to make exceptions and basically ban the bill in their state, but that would be individual state-by-state action.

http://www.woai.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=3925329

-Hannah Teague

School Nutrition

The Texas House Bill 1781:
"Relating to a limitation on sanctions imposed on school districts for the sale of foods of minimal nutritional value."

Filed on February 25, 2013
Sponsor: Representative Ken King

This bill states that "the department may not impose on a school district a sanction, including disallowing mean reimbursement, based on the sale to students at a high school of food of minimal nutritional value, if the sale is approved in advance by the school and is made: outside of a school area designated for food service or food consumption of during a period other than a school meal service period; and for the purpose of raising money for a student organization or activity sponsored or sanctioned by the school or the school district in which the school is located.” http://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1781

In 2011-2013, only 12% of Senate bills made it past committee and only 2% were enacted. o   http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s39

The bill immediately takes effect if two-thirds of the members elected to each house vote to approve the bill.

Nutrition is a national issue, and many other states have succeeded in implementing programs to better child nutrition. For example, a few high schools in California implement a program to help children to change their eating ways. The school serves fresh and never frozen foods to the children, less sodium and trans fats, and more whole grains, fruits and vegetables. They also limited the calories for each school's lunch: 650 calories for elementary school, 700 for middle schools, and 850 for high schools.   For more information on this topic, visit this link:
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/18/healthy-school-lunches-se_n_2506756.html?utm_hp_ref=education

Obesity is a huge problem in Texas, and will only lead to future health care costs. In the picture below, you can see that Texas has one of the highest obesity rates, and California is among the lowest. If Texas school's followed the same programs as California schools, we would see the obesity rate drop dramatically.


For more information regarding this bill, visit http://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1781 


Shelby Knight

School Nutrition

Van ISD employee shot during gun class

According to KLTV, Texas school worker Glenn Geddie was shot yesterday at a hand gun training class for Van Independent School District employees.

In January, the Van Independent School District school board allowed specific school staff members and employees to carry firearms on campus in order to protect their students. In addition to that they immediately started training those staff members who would be carrying concealed weapons.

According to the Van ISD, Geddie stayed behind with the instructor for more private instruction but they realized that they had a malfunction with their gun. Van Independent School District said in a statement. “With the assistance of the instructor, the malfunction was addressed, but the gun misfired and the bullet ricocheted coming back to strike the VISD employee in the left leg.”

A school board member told The Tyler Morning Telegraph that the shooting would not affect their decision to arm employees on campus.

Now how backwards is that.

It is understandable that Texas School Districts want to prevent another event similar to the Sandy Hook shooting, especially after the Lone Star College shooting that took place this January in north Houston where students were left defenseless.

But the last thing Texas schools need, is a 3rd grader getting shot by one of these bullets in another accident. Even if these teachers do undergo the initial one or two day training, it does not adequately prepare them to protect their students. These teachers are unqualified to use the firearms to protect their students and this event goes to show what can go wrong when using deadly weapons. Sad as this incidence was for Glenn Geddie, hopefully it is a wake-up call to legislation that allowing guns into teacher's hands is the wrong way to go about this issue.

By Rian Worm

SB 245 Passes Stage Two

The Senate Bill 245, regarding the Child Protective Services Community Action Council (CAC) was heard by the Senate on February 19th at 9:00 a.m. This bill has been said to be put on the back-burner but will now move forward to stage three of the seven stage process. This bill was filed January 24th and passed out of the senate committee February 26th. The next stage will be the senate vote, followed by the house committees, house vote, and governor action before it will become a law.

This bill is currently sponsored primarily by Royce West, a Democrat from District 23. West is supported by two cosponsors, Jane Nelson, R-D12 and Carlos Uresti, D-D19.  

If passed, this bill will benefit the CPS program in Texas and primarily the responsibilities of caseworkers. This bill is attempting to improve the quality of work by caseworkers and balance their responsibilities more effectively. This will improve the work of current caseworkers and avoid the layoffs of workers in the future.

On February 26, 2013 the bill was reported on favorably by the senate without any amendments. And on February 27 the co-author had been authorized.

-Brelle de Groot

Education Budget: A brief history

The education budget has always been an issue in Texas history. Most notably was the budget cut last time the legislature met. The 82nd Legislature cut $4 billion of the education budget. They thought this was a good idea, but in the past two years we have seen dramatic changes occurring across the board. The student to teacher ratio is extremely disproportionate. When the legislature approved the budget, they did  not account for new students coming to the system or how many teachers they would have to cut as a result. This cut was the first major cut to education since World War II.

But there is good news! The Senate Financial Committee panel has just approved a proposed budget to add $1.5 billion dollars to the state's education fund! The rest of the Senate still needs to approve the budget, but if it passes this money would significantly impact education in Texas. The money includes funding for Teach for America, pre-kindergarten programs and Texas' Virtual School Network. The budget does not currently have money allocated for important programs such as early college education programs or a program designed to help students who are falling behind in school.

Ivy Anderson

Four Year Tuition Freeze

Many parents and students are unsure how much money they are actually going to spend on tuition each year. Andrew Roush with the Alcalde stated “Tuition was deregulated by the Legislature in 2003, and has increased by 55 percent in the past decade, while state general revenue funding has decreased.” D-Republican and house higher education committee chair Dan Branch has filed house bill 29 that would make it so state schools have a “tuition freeze” that gives each incoming class the same tuition for each year, presuming an on time graduation.  

Gov. Jerry Brown of California proposed the same freeze in tuition apparently the state's legislative analyst is saying it is a bad idea and is moving to reject the idea.  "While this would help current students, it likely would increase volatility for future students," said Mac Taylor in the SFGate.

Less than 30 percent of students have been graduating within a four year period.  The thought behind the freeze is not only to help families save money but to help students focus more on getting through college in the standard four year time period.

This is Gov. Perry also proposing a four year tuition freeze for state schools.

 

-Shelby Campbell