The House Public Education Committee’s Subcommittee on Academic and Career-Oriented Education met Thursday to consider the following five bills.  

• House Bill (HB) 295 by Rep. Matt Shaheen (R–Plano) would call out antisemitism in the definition of bullying for school discipline policies, ostensibly making it easier to give disciplinary consequences for the offense.  
• ATPE-supported HB 824 by Rep. Jolanda Jones (D–Houston) would include civics instruction in the required government curriculum for high school students.  
• ATPE-supported HB 1579 by Rep. Bobby Guerra (D–McAllen) would establish the Texas State Seal of Bilingualism and Biliteracy for high school students. The bill would create a formal recognition on a student’s transcript that the student is biliterate and has achieved fluency in a language other than English. 
• HB 1581 by Guerra would provide training materials to school districts for bilingual, dual language immersion, and special language programs, as well as additional monitoring of the program by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). The bill is derived from the recommendations of the TEA Strategic Plan for Emergent Bilingual Support.  
• HB 2189 by Rep. Donna Howard (D–Austin) aims to improve high school health-related CTE courses by providing high-quality instructional materials; studying the feasibility of partnerships between districts and colleges for the purposes of sharing labs and equipment; and requiring a regular review of dual-credit health programs to ensure alignment with university degree programs.  

The bills were all left pending. The subcommittee does not vote on, or have a formal process of, forwarding legislation to, or holding legislation from, the full House Public Education Committee. After they hold a hearing on a bill, the bill is then eligible for a vote on passage by the full committee.