This interactive shows the dramatic drop in employment at Texas state agencies from the third quarter of fiscal year 2011 to the last quarter, right before $15 billion in cuts to the 2012-2013 biennium budget kicked in Sept. 1.
Public Education
Explore The Texas Tribune’s coverage of public education, from K-12 schools and funding to teachers, students, and policies shaping classrooms across Texas.
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University of Texas/Texas Tribune Polls
UT/TT Poll: Mormon Candidates Face Hurdle
More than one in five Texas voters say most of the people they know would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate even if they agreed with him or her on the issues, according to the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll.
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Public Education
County Government Websites Earn F In Transparency
Texas county government websites earned a failing grade from the Sunshine Review, a nonprofit organization that advocates for more online transparency on government sites. Texas state government performed better, and school districts got the highest marks.
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Health care
Randy Neugebauer: The TT Interview
The GOP congressman from Lubbock on Gov. Rick Perry, cuts in direct payments that could be headed for Texas farmers, his hopes for the supercommittee and what the 2012 elections will say about Americans’ view of the economy.
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Public Education
Little Opposition to Measure That Would Increase School Funding
Proposition 6 on the Texas constitutional ballot would allow the land commissioner to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to public education. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports that the measure has seen little opposition.
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Higher Education
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Galbraith and Collier on the drought’s economic impact, Grissom on the latest in the Morton and Skinner cases, Hamilton on university regents’ potential conflicts of interest, Murphy on spending by Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, Philpott on Rick Perry’s plans for Social Security, Ramsey on the dirty little secret about dropouts, Ramshaw on how Perry and his staff downplayed allegations of abuse at state centers for the disabled, Root on Perry’s flirtation with birtherism, M. Smith on GOP candidates making public ed their focus and Tan and Hamilton on why students in Texas illegally get access to state financial aid: The best of our best content from October 24 to 28, 2011.
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Energy
Drought Eases, but Schools Still Trying to Keep the Grass Green
Fall weather conditions may bring a small amount of relief to the drought-stricken state, but as Nathan Bernier of KUT News reports, Texas’ worst single-year dry spell still has school districts wondering what to do with their football fields.
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Public Education
School Dropouts, Politicians and the Funny Arithmetic of State Budgets
Every time a student drops out of public school, taxpayers save money. That’s one fewer student, at an annual savings of more than $11,000 per year from state and local sources.
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Public Education
Schools and Taxes: The Next Big Thing
The primary elections come in less than five months. The general election is about a year away. When that’s all out of the way, we’ll all be talking about lawsuits — some that have been filed, some that will be filed later — on school finance and franchise taxes.
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Public Education
Schooling the GOP
As the field of candidates shapes up for the March 2012 primaries, a new — at least since last election cycle — breed of GOP hopeful is emerging: the education Republican.
