Happy New Year! We hope your holiday break was filled with rest and relaxation. Please enjoy this week's education update from the ATPE Governmental Relations team.

• ELECTION UPDATE: Endorsement news and resources for educators
• New resource: Teach Me How to Texas
• Candidate forums planned on public education
• The latest from TEA on school finance and accountability

ELECTION UPDATE: We have less than two months until the Texas primary election on Super Tuesday, which is March 3, 2020. ATPE Lobbyist Mark Wiggins shares the latest election news, including new endorsements and presidential race updates, in this blog post. Don't forget that the deadline to register to vote in one of the primaries is Feb. 3, and you can verify your voter registration status here.

The upcoming runoff election for three vacant House seats in the Houston and Dallas areas is scheduled for Jan. 28, 2020. The seats are Texas House District 28, 100, and 148. Early voting starts Tuesday, Jan. 21. Registration to vote in these elections closed on Dec. 29, 2019. Remember that as long as you are a registered voter residing in one of these districts, you can vote in the upcoming runoff even if you missed out on voting in this election back in Nov. 2019. Since voter turnout is typically even lower for special elections and runoffs, these House races could be decided by a very small group of voters. Make sure you are among them!

ATPE joins our partners in the Texas Educators Vote coalition in thanking educators for their involvement and helping us spread our "Get Out The Vote" (GOTV) messages around the state. We hope you'll take advantage of the many election resources available at TexasEducatorsVote.com and prepare to be an informed voter in 2020 by learning about the candidates. Join educators around the state in taking the "Oath to Vote" and be sure to vote on Educators' Voting Day - February 18, 2020!

ATPE's Governmental Relations team members are currently updating our Teach the Vote website with profiles of all candidates running for the Texas House or Senate, plus the State Board of Education. In the coming weeks you'll be able to view their responses to the 2020 ATPE Candidate Survey (where available) plus additional information about the candidates. ATPE also provides voting records for all incumbent legislators, showing you how they voted in the 2019 legislative session and prior sessions on education issues. Check out the candidate profiles here on Teach the Vote.

ATPE is helping our friends at The Texas Tribune to promote a new resource for Texans to learn about voting in the Nov. 2020 general election: Teach Me How to Texas. Learn everything you need to know about Texas elections in The Texas Tribune’s free five-week crash course. You’ll learn interesting facts about Texas’ past and culture, how different communities and regions in Texas vote, how candidates raise and spend money, how to spot a good poll from a bad one, and how to decode your November ballot. Click here to sign up!

The Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation has launched "For the Future", which is a series of candidate forums and town halls focused exclusively on public education. Over the course of 40+ events all across Texas, interested educators and community members will have the chance to learn more about candidates' positions on public education before voting in the 2020 primary elections. Below, please find the dates and locations of candidate forums that are currently planned for January, and find additional information on all the town hall events here.

• January 23 - Livingston
• January 29 - Northeast Tarrant (Colleyville)
• January 29 - Lakeway
• January 30 - Ozona
• January 30 - San Antonio
• January 30 - Del Rio

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) kicked off the new year with a new video in its “HB 3 in 30” video series, which aims to explain the many different parts of House Bill (HB) 3, the school finance reform bill the Texas Legislature passed in 2019. This week’s video focuses on tax compression, which is a major component of the bill. Without getting into too many technocratic details, HB 3 aims to slow the increases in local property taxes in order to get closer to a reasonable balance between school funding that comes from local taxpayers and funding that comes from the state. Legislators promised that the state would put in enough additional money that the local tax compression under HB 3 would not reduce the amount of funding schools currently receive. You can read this set of slides from TEA that explain how this is supposed to work. The agency also released this guidance to districts explaining how tax rate changes will be implemented in 2020 and announced it will begin collecting local tax data in May 2020.

The agency also released 2018-19 School Report Cards under the A-F system in late December. Under the new accountability system, some schools are able to assign themselves a grade based upon a local accountability system. The agency is hosting webinars in February and March to explain the requirements and how to start up a local accountability system.