It’s the first day of the Texas legislative session!

Our team is at the Capitol today, with high hopes for what we can achieve for Texas kids working together with you and other partners. We’re ready to spend many long days there over the next five months advocating for Texas kids, although the action will really start heating up in a few weeks.

As you keep an eye on the Legislature and state leaders over the next 140 days, I encourage you to see how they answer the following six questions:

Will they extend Medicaid health insurance for moms to cover a full year after pregnancy? House Speaker Dade Phelan and the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee have both identified the policy as a priority.
Will they address unintended barriers that are blocking parents from signing their eligible kids up for Medicaid insurance? Texas has the highest children’s uninsured rate in the nation. Approximately 40 percent of the state’s uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid but unenrolled.
Will they ensure more children can be with safe, loving families? The Legislature can safely prevent kids from entering the foster care system by drawing down federal funding for family preservation services and give more kids in foster care a chance to live with relatives or well-trained families instead of living in dreary, impersonal facilities.
Will they provide dedicated student mental health funding to school districts? Children’s mental health challenges have skyrocketed over the past decade. Schools play a key role in supporting the mental wellness of ALL students — but they need the resources to do it.
Will they ensure affordable, high-quality child care is accessible to working parents? As federal pandemic relief funding for child care expires, parents, kids, employers, and providers are at risk of getting squeezed even more if the Legislature does not invest in child care.
Will they leverage billions in additional state revenue to support children? The Legislature should invest in child care, student mental health, chronically underfunded Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) services for toddlers with disabilities, the workforce at HHSC and other agencies, and more.

These certainly aren’t the only topics the Legislature will discuss this session. You can read our full legislative agenda here. As always, there will also be very important policy discussions that have an impact on kids and families but are simply outside of our staff’s expertise. And, unfortunately, there will be proposals that are distractions at best and harmful at worst.

But when we get to the end of the legislative session, the answers we have to these six questions will tell us a lot about whether the Legislature got the job done for kids and families. Stay tuned and follow us on social media for updates on the Legislature’s progress and ways you can voice your views during the session.

We’re looking forward to working with you to make sure state leaders rise to the occasion and pass good policies that will help more Texas kids thrive.