Texas Legislature Begins Interim Hearings Ahead of 2027 Session

Presession work for the 90th Legislature has officially kicked off with the first round of interim hearings, including a House Public Education Committee meeting to discuss the broadest of the committee’s interim charges: the state of education.

The May 11 hearing touched on school finance, school safety, enrollment trends, truancy, the role of educational technology, school turnaround, and other topics, as well as invited testimony from 12 superintendents. While the committee failed to invite a single teacher, student, or parent to speak on any of the seven panels, individuals from each of these groups attending in person to provide public testimony as well as many more who submitted comments through the House public comment portal. They raised concerns about a lack of funding, overtesting, school closures, district takeovers, and how excessive use of technology and artificial intelligence are hampering student learning and engagement. (Find a full report on ATPE’s TeachtheVote.org.)

Your ATPE Governmental Relations team has also been hard at work preparing for the 2027 legislative session. We recently completed work with the ATPE Legislative Committee to review and make recommendations for updating the ATPE Legislative Program. The committee’s proposed changes have been reviewed by the ATPE Board of Directors and will go before the ATPE House of Delegates (HOD) during the upcoming ATPE Summit for discussion, potential revision, and adoption. (Learn more about the ATPE Summit, July 14–16 in San Antonio.)

Your lobbyists have also met with lawmakers to share our members’ perspectives based on the feedback we receive directly from you. In fact, you may have seen the surveys we recently conducted on the impact of student use of educational technology, the cell phone ban, teacher compensation and special education, all significant topics covered during the first two House Public Education Committee interim hearings.

In addition to the work on the ATPE Legislative Program and feedback collected through direct member conversations via phone, email, and the ATPE Online Community, we plan to release more short surveys to gather actionable feedback from you on specific topics that will be part of interim and session discussions. When you see these requests for input in your inbox, please take a few minutes to share your thoughts. Your feedback directly informs how the ATPE lobby team advocates for you, your colleagues, and Texas public education, and it also helps legislators understand how educators view the issues under consideration.

The second interim hearing took place June 1, during which the House committee reviewed its oversight of House Bill (HB) 2, the omnibus school finance legislation from the 2025 session, as well as discussed teacher recruitment and retention and the state’s investment in special education. (Find a full recap on ATPE’s TeachtheVote.org, including links to ATPE testimony.)

House committees still have the following charges to cover:

• Eliminating educator misconduct (House Public Education Committee)
• Improving middle school outcomes (House Public Education Committee)
• Teacher Retirement System of Texas review (House Pensions, Investment, and Financial Services Committee)
• Data privacy and security (House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency)
• Social media’s impact on youth health and well-being (House Public Health Committee)
• Childcare access and workforce participation (House Trade, Workforce, and Economic Development Committee)
• Property tax relief (House Ways and Means Committee)
• Local government spending (House Ways and Means Committee)
• Education foundations (House Governmental Oversight Select Committee)

In addition to perspective interim charges, the House is monitoring several key bills related to public education, including measures addressing educator liability in cases of alleged misconduct, student discipline policy, testing and accountability, and proposals related to school choice and vouchers.

The Senate also has interim charges and bill monitoring but has not yet indicated when interim hearings will begin.