The House Committee on Public Education met Tuesday for what is likely its final regular hearing of the 2025 regular legislative session as the deadline to move Senate bills out of committee draws closer.  

House committees must hear and report out Senate bills by this Saturday, May 24. This means there are just five days remaining for Senate bills to make it out of House committees in order to stay alive. The House’s deadline to hear all Senate bills and joint resolutions on second reading is Wednesday, May 27. The session ends June 2. 

At the beginning of the hearing, Chairman Brad Buckley (R–Salado) acknowledged that this was likely the committee’s last regular hearing and thanked the members for their service. The committee met 19 times over the course of this session and heard over 94 hours of testimony.  

The committee considered the following bills during its May 20 meeting: 

• Senate Bill (SB) 204 by Sen. Angela Paxton (R–McKinney) would require the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to create a handbook of parental rights in education and require the State Board of Education (SBOE) to develop training for school board members on parental rights.  
• ATPE-supported SB 570 by Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R–Houston) would require school districts to take additional steps to prevent truancy, such as home visits and connecting students to support services.  
• SB 735 by Sen. Jose Menendez (D–San Antonio) would strengthen Holocaust education in K-12 settings by requiring public schools to enhance instruction and training for educators, reaffirming Texas's commitment to historical awareness and combating antisemitism. 
• SB 747 by Sen. Phil King (R–Weatherford) relates to public school policies involving prohibiting the creation or distribution of intimate visual material by public school students, including material created through artificial intelligence. 
• SB 784 by King allows for school district transfers of students who are the children of peace officers.  
• SB 875 by Sen. Brian Birdwell (R–Granbury) would prohibit a district superintendent or school board member from campaigning, encouraging, or posting political signs for or against a political measure and creates misdemeanor offenses for doing so.  
• SB 1207 by King seeks to require public schools to teach about adoption in their parenting and paternity awareness programs.  
• SB 1396 by Sen. Bob Hall (R–Edgewood) would ban the adoption of national sexuality education standards in Texas public schools.  
• ATPE-supported SB 1447 by Menendez is a cleanup bill that would allow students with IEPs or 504 plans to use their assistive technology during the school day.  The bill aims to clean up unintended consequences of the SCOPE Act passed last session, which limits use of social media and technology as well as data collection during the school day.  
• SB 2392 by King seeks to expand the list of conduct for which educator reporting to law enforcement is required to include sexual coercion, human trafficking, obscenity, and child pornography. Additionally, the bill would allow a reporting exemption if a principal "reasonably believes that the activity does not constitute a criminal offense." SB 2392 also requires that the principal report misconduct immediately upon, or no later than 72 hours after, becoming aware of it. 
• SB 2540 by Sen. Robert Nichols (R–Jacksonville) would set minimum requirements for the terms of certain agreements involving minor boundary adjustments between two contiguous school districts. 

Additionally, the committee voted to advance the following bills:  

• SB 401 by Paxton, the companion to House Bill (HB) 775 by Rep. James Frank (R–Wichita Falls), would allow school boards to vote to decline homeschool student participation in University Interscholastic League (UIL) events. If the school board denied participation, the student would then be allowed to go to the next closest school and participate there. 
• SB 568 by Bettencourt would provide funding for special education under the Foundation School Program. This bill would move special education funding to an intensity of service model, ensuring students with the highest needs would receive the most funding. ATPE voiced concerns while the bill was in the Senate about the implementation timeline. We also called out that the appropriations for special education evaluations and services continue to be too low to cover the true costs incurred by school districts and do not significantly close the current gap between funding and the cost of services provided. The committee substitute approved by the House committee was modified to align with the Senate’s version of HB 2, the school finance bill.  
• ATPE-supported SB 865 by Sen. Carol Alvarado (D–Houston) would require instruction in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the use of automated external defibrillators for certain school district, private school, and charter school employees and volunteers.  

The House Public Education Committee will hold a formal meeting sometime this week to vote on some remaining bills.