In last week’s blog post, we visited a recent revision to the Texas educator discipline provisions found in Chapter 249 of the Texas Administrative Code providing that the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) can consider whether an educator violated a prior w...

Since the passage of Senate Bill 7 by the 85th Texas Legislature in 2017, the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) has been very busy writing administrative regulations (i.e., rules) to implement the provisions of SB 7 and to otherwise strengthen rules governi...

In a case now in its fourth year, The Texas Appellate Court of the Ninth Circuit in Beaumont ruled in favor of the plaintiff cheerleaders in the highly-publicized Kountze ISD Cheerleaders “Run-through Banners” case. In this case, after receiving a 2012 complaint from t...

Mr. Chairman and members of the Texas House Public Education Committee: Thank you for the invitation and opportunity to testify before you today and for your selfless service and advocacy on behalf of the schoolchildren of Texas. Chairman Aycock, a special thank you fo...

In 2011, The Austin Bulldog, an online news site, filed a number of open records requests pursuant to the Texas Public Information Act to gain access to email communications among a host of Austin city officials. The City ultimately complied with these requests, but fo...

In January 2016, the Texas Supreme Court issued the latest decision in the ongoing Kountze ISD cheerleader banner case, holding that a Kountze ISD board of education resolution did not render the case moot.  The case began in fall 2012, when the school district informe...

Shortly after a Texas school district in 2009 hired a dance instructor for one of its high schools, the instructor engaged in a continuous sexual relationship with one of her female dance team students.  Apparently before the student’s mother knew about the relationshi...

In an intensely fact-laden case, the 5th Circuit considered an African-American family’s claim of race discrimination against a Texas school district for its alleged lack of proper response to years of racial harassment/bullying suffered by the family’s three daughters...

Toward the end of the 2012-2013 school year, a Section 504 committee met to determine that an elementary student who qualified for § 504 services should be accommodated on the Texas high-stakes test via oral administration of the test. During the summer of 2013, the di...

Mr. Chairman and members of the Texas Senate Education Committee: Thank you for the invitation and opportunity to testify before you today and for your selfless service and advocacy on behalf of the schoolchildren of Texas.

My name is David Thompson, and I am currently...