Happy Student Voting Day! Here's your update from the ATPE lobby team on what's been happening in Texas this week:

• ELECTION UPDATE: Early voting is underway
• ATPE delivers invited testimony to school finance commission
• More negative scrutiny for Empower Texans and its billionaire backers
• Long-range planning committee looks at educator preparation
• ATPE shares input on federal reauthorization of HEA

ELECTION UPDATE: Early voting for the 2018 Texas primary elections began this week and continues through Friday, March 2. Election day is March 6.

Today, Feb. 23, 2018, is Student Voting Day in Texas, as designated by Secretary of State Rolando Pablos. Pablos issued a proclamation for Student Voting Day and has encouraged Texans to urge eligible students to vote today. We applaud all of the educators and parents who have worked hard to help students learn about and exercise their right to vote.

If you know a student voter or if you are new to voting in Texas, we've got some helpful basic tips on voting in this primary election. Check out this blog post from ATPE Political Involvement Coordinator Edwin Ortiz, newly updated with some additional guidance about the prohibition on using cell phones in the voting booth. Looking for background information about those Republican and Democratic party ballot propositions? We've got a list of all the non-binding party platform propositions here, along with some analysis from ATPE Lobbyist Monty Exter here.

Have you checked at our new series of blog posts for Teach the Vote on Why March 6 Matters? ATPE's lobbyists are writing about some of the top legislative issues at stake in the primary elections happening now, explaining why the choices made by voters at the polls over the next week and a half will have a gigantic impact on the future success or failure of bills dealing with teacher pay, retirement benefits, private school vouchers, and more. Check out the posts we're published so far and watch for more analysis of "Why March 6 Matters" on the Teach the Vote blog next week.

• Why March 6 Matters: Payroll Deduction
• Why March 6 Matters: Vouchers
• Why March 6 Matters: Teacher Pay

ICYMI: ATPE Lobbyist Mark Wiggins was quoted in today's brand new PolitiFact article about a claim made in one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's re-election campaign ads. Patrick raised eyebrows with the radio and television ads in heavy rotation right now when he claimed to have proposed a $10,000 pay raise for teachers last session. The journalists of PolitiFact investigated and rated the claim as "mostly false" on its Truth-o-Meter, concluding that "Patrick made no proposal to direct more of the state's education budget to teacher salaries," instead touting a preference for an unfunded mandate on school districts that did not pass. Read the full analysis here.

ATPE Executive Director Gary Godsey and Lobbyist Monty Exter testified before the school finance commission on Feb. 22, 2018.

The Texas Commission on Public School Finance met again in Austin on Thursday, Feb. 22, and ATPE Executive Director Gary Godsey was one of the witnesses invited to testify at the hearing. ATPE Lobbyist Mark Wiggins attended the meeting and provided a report on the day's discussions, which focused on the importance of the teacher pipeline and early childhood education. Godsey, joined by ATPE Lobbyist Monty Exter, urged the commission to consider recommendations for strengthening educator preparation, support, compensation, and retention in order to avoid the high cost of teacher turnover. Read more in Mark's blog post here.

By now readers of our blog are probably familiar with the antics of Empower Texans, the dark money group that in addition to trying to influence elections through massive campaign spending has been at the center of efforts to intimidate educators and shut down get out the vote (GOTV) efforts within the education community. We've written recently on our blog about how Texas educators responded to the group's threatening "whistleblower" letters with their own #blowingthewhistle social media campaign. Today, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus also took to social media and penned a newsletter urging educators to vote this weekend and expressing his support for our coalition efforts to create a culture of voting in school districts across the state.

This week we learned that Empower Texans is under criminal investigation for highly questionable tactics it has employed in an effort to convince Ft. Worth residents to vote against one of their state legislators, Rep. Charlie Geren. Geren is presently facing a challenge in the primary election by an Empower Texans-funded candidate, and the group has attacked the incumbent for being married to a lobbyist. As reported by the Texas Tribune, prosecutors are looking into a postcard mailed to voters in Rep. Geren's House District 99 that was designed to look like an official state document and sent by an entity called the "Texas Ethics Disclosure Board." The mail piece was paid for and sent by Empower Texans, which recently filed documents with the Secretary of State to use the name "Texas Ethics Disclosure Board" as an alias, giving unsuspecting voters the impression that the postcard was sent by an official government agency, which does not exist.

ALERT to voters! There is no state government agency called the “Texas Ethics Disclosure Board.” Glad to see some real #blowingthewhistle here on deceptive and unethical campaign ads by desperate billionaires... https://t.co/0mx2PsJPjG

— Jennifer Canaday CAE (@ATPE_JenniferC) February 22, 2018

With Empower Texans spending so much money to try to unseat legislators that it deems to be too friendly toward public education, it's no surprise that there has been growing interest in learning more about the sources of money being used by the group. Empower Texans is not required to disclose all of those who contribute money to the organization, but campaign finance reports for the Empower Texans PAC are publicly available, as is the case with all political action committees. One person who has spent considerable time reviewing those campaign finance reports and chasing the trail of money connected to Empower Texans is Chris Tackett, a former Granbury ISD trustee and parent who has written extensively about his findings. This week, we republished Tackett's article entitled "Following the money in Texas politics: A citizen’s look at the influence of mega-donors in contested elections." The piece illustrates how a small group of wealthy families have used the Empower Texans PAC and a few other PACs to steer millions of dollars in campaign contributions to certain candidates, giving the impression that they have broader support. Learn more in Tackett's guest blog post here.

A huge thank you to @TeachTheVote for being interested in publishing my guest post. It’s a consolidated look at money pouring into Texas politics, how one family is driving it, who‘s involved, and what you can help do about it (Vote!) #txlege #txed https://t.co/Yj5N7S3NE1

— ChrisTackettNow (@christackettnow) February 22, 2018

The Dallas Morning News also published an extensive article this week describing how west Texas's Wilks family, the largest funding source for Empower Texans, has been using its wealth to influence contested races around the state in 2018. That includes nearly half a million dollars spent to help Sen. Bob Hall try to win re-election despite a serious primary challenge and targeted efforts to shape the election of a new Texas House Speaker when the 86th Legislature convenes in January 2019. The same family is profiled in a brand new website sponsored by an unidentified citizens' group that also appeared this week called WhoOwnsTexas.com.

Voters can learn about candidates vying for their support in the primary elections happening now by checking out our candidate profiles here on Teach the Vote. The profiles include detailed voting records for incumbents, responses provided to our ATPE candidate survey on education issues, links to the candidates' own websites and social media accounts, and additional information such as endorsements from well-known groups or major newspapers. ATPE does not endorse candidates, so you won't find endorsements from us, but we'll tell you which candidates have received the endorsement of Empower Texans and other groups to help you make informed decisions at the polls.  

The State Board of Education's steering committee for the Long-Range Plan for Public Education also met this week. The meeting focused largely on the issue of educator preparation with a goal of improving recruitment and retention. Read more about the conversations in Wednesday's blog post from ATPE Lobbyist Mark Wiggins.  

Today is the final day to submit comments to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA). As we previously shared, the committee is working to rewrite the federal law that pertains to higher education, and several programs dealing with educator recruitment, training, and retention are housed under the law. ATPE Lobbyist Kate Kuhlmann reports that while the Senate committee works to write its bill, its U.S. House counterpart has already advanced legislation to the full House that omits these programs. ATPE submitted comments to the Senate committee expressing our concern over the House omission and stressing the importance of programs like these. "Educator training that is held to high expectations and standards plays a vital role in ensuring every student has access to a well-prepared, productive educator. It also has a lasting impact on retaining those strong educators in the classroom."

ATPE's full comments encouraging the committee to maintain federal support of these programs can be read here.