Thank you to all the legislators, staffers, and partners who joined our webinar on Friday to talk about children’s priorities in the first drafts of the state budget released by the Texas House and Texas Senate.
The slides from the webinar are available here and a video recording of the webinar is available here.
Here’s a quick rundown of just a few of the key points that we shared. Note that this summary and the webinar do not cover every part of the budget that is important for children and families. But as legislators work on the budget this session, they should fully fund all services that are critical to the success of children and families.
Big Picture
We appreciate that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dade Phelan, Chair Jane Nelson, and Chair Giovanni Capriglione crafted these first drafts in a way that mostly recognizes that during the pandemic Texans need legislators to fully fund education, health care, and other services.
Yet we’re concerned about proposed funding cuts to Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) for toddlers with disabilities, child abuse investigations under MedCARES, and HHSC’s capacity to enroll kids and pregnant women in programs like Medicaid. And the budget will need to go further to address student learning loss and the student mental health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.
While the proposed budgets exceed the Comptroller’s revenue estimate, we believe the Legislature can close that gap by using the Economic Stabilization Fund, leveraging COVID-19 relief funds, using accounting maneuvers such as delaying the last Foundation School Program payment into the following biennium, and accepting federal Medicaid expansion funding.
It’s still early in the budget process, so we’re looking forward to working with lawmakers on these and other budget issues throughout the legislative session.
Education
We’re grateful the budget drafts maintain the Legislature’s education funding commitment from last session. However, the Legislature will need to go beyond the current budget proposals to address the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has directly disrupted student learning and indirectly undermined learning by hurting students’ mental health.
We’re concerned the budget proposals do NOT currently fund TEA's single “exceptional item” request for funding for instructional materials, the recruitment of diverse educators, and support for targeted outreach and interventions for students most at risk of learning loss
We’re also concerned the current budget proposals do NOT address learning loss related to social-emotional concerns caused by the pandemic. For example, the budget bills do NOT include resources to help districts implement the good school mental health bills passed in 2019.
To address the impact of the pandemic, we encourage the Legislature to funds those two priorities; take additional steps to support students hit hardest by the pandemic, including English Learners in pre-k and other early grades; and ensure school districts continue to receive their full funding for the second half of the current school year even as the pandemic continues to depress enrollment.
Child Protection
When it comes to child protection, we’re pleased to see level funding for CPS and child abuse prevention (PEI).
But we’re concerned that the current draft budgets for DSHS eliminate funding for MedCARES. It’s an important program that Senator Jane Nelson and then-Senator Dan Patrick created in 2019 to saves kids' lives — and help parents who are mistakenly accused of abuse — by deploying trained doctors to make child abuse investigations more accurate.
And budget-writers should also try to maximize the child abuse prevention funding the state draws down when the 2018 Family First Act takes effect this year and try to mitigate the loss of federal funding for foster homes that don’t yet meet the new federal standards required by the Act.
Child and Maternal Health
We’re pleased to see full funding for DSHS initiatives to prevent maternal deaths.
But we’re concerned that the proposed budgets cut HHSC’s eligibility and enrollment capacity, potentially creating delays for Texans enrolling in Medicaid for Pregnant women, Children’s Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP food assistance, and other services.
Additionally, after the Legislature took an important step last session to start restoring ECI funding for infants and toddlers, the Legislature should continue to get closer to traditional ECI funding levels to ensure eligible children are able to enroll. But the House proposal simply maintains current funding per child, and the Senate proposal cuts ECI funding, both as a total appropriation and per child. (Read more.)
