Legislative Reference Library of Texas

Week in Review, June 13th

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:15:00 -0500

In this weekly post, we feature online articles and policy reports published recently, and other helpful research tools.

Consider jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math that may not require a four-year college degree. (Brookings, June 10, 2013)
See the latest figures on the Medicaid expansion. (Stateline, June 12, 2013)
Track economic growth in 2012. (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, June 6, 2013)
Gauge public opinion on the National Security Agency's telephone records tracking program. (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, June 10, 2013)
Examine nationwide infrastructure needs for providing safe drinking water. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, June 10, 2013)

Bills Signed, Vetoed, Or Filed Without Signature, June 10

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:57:00 -0500

Below are bill statistics as of 10:00 a.m. on June 10. Sunday, June 16 is the deadline for the Governor to sign or veto bills. For additional information on what happens to legislation filed during the 83rd Regular Session, please see our FAQ page.

Week in Review, June 6th

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:15:00 -0500

In this weekly post, we feature online articles and policy reports published recently, and other helpful research tools.

Explore civic and political engagement in Texas. (National Conference on Citizenship / Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, June 2013)
Examine the important developments and trends in U.S. education in 2013. (National Center for Education Statistics, May 2013)
Find out where Texas ranks among state rankings for senior health. (United Health Foundation, May 2013)
See how gun homicide rates have dropped since their peak in the 1990s. (Pew Research, May 7, 2013)

Week in Review, May 30th

Thu, 30 May 2013 15:15:00 -0500

In this weekly post, we feature online articles and policy reports published recently, and other helpful research tools.

Examine the American electorate. (U.S. Census Bureau, May 2013)
Consider how school accountability policies may not always improve academic performance. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, May 2013)
Check out the Annual Energy Outlook 2013. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 15 - May 2, 2013)
Track state-by-state details of where individuals enter Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University, May 20, 2013)

What's Next? Post-Regular Session FAQs

Tue, 28 May 2013 09:21:00 -0500

After 140 days, the regular session of the 83rd Legislature adjourned sine die on May 27, 2013. What's next for the thousands of pieces of legislation considered during the regular session?

How many bills were filed? How many passed?

The legislative statistics report from Texas Legislature Online shows 5,868 House and Senate bills were filed during the regular session of the 83rd Legislature; 1,437 bills passed.

See our bill statistics page for more historical statistics.

If the Legislature passes a bill, does it become a law right away?

No. Under Article 4, Section 14 of the Texas Constitution, bills passed by the Legislature must be submitted to the Governor for approval. The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, line-item veto an appropriation, or allow a bill to become law without his signature.

How long does the Governor have to approve or veto legislation?
The Governor has twenty days after final adjournment to consider bills received in the final ten days (not counting Sundays) of the session. Sunday, June 16 is the last day the Governor can sign or veto legislation.

If the Governor approves a bill, when will it take effect?

The text of a bill may include effective date provisions requiring the bill to take effect immediately, to take effect on a specified day, or there may be no mention of an effective date. Different sections of a bill may have different effective dates.

According to Article III, Section 39 of the Texas Constitution, a bill cannot become effective until at least 90 days after the session ends unless the bill passes both chambers with a favorable vote by two-thirds of the members.

Monday, August 26, 2013 is the 91st day following final adjournment; bills that do not specify an effective date and those that did not have the two-thirds vote necessary to take effect earlier will take effect on August 26.

If a bill received the votes necessary to become effective immediately, it will take effect on the date of the last action necessary for it to become law. This could be when the Governor signs it, when the Governor files it with the Secretary of State without approving or vetoing it, or when the time for the Governor to act expires, if the bill has not been approved or vetoed during that time.

Use Texas Legislature Online to track the status of bills.

What happens to bills that did not pass?

Bills that did not make it completely through the legislative process die with the end of the session and are not automatically reintroduced during the next session.

What about other types of legislation?

Joint resolutions that propose amendments to the Texas Constitution do not require the approval of the Governor, and are filed with the Secretary of State. Proposed constitutional amendments are sent to the voters for approval or disapproval.

The 83rd Legislature passed 6 joint resolutions proposing constitutional amendments. These proposed amendments will be on the ballot on November 5, 2013.

Most concurrent resolutions must be sent to the Governor for approval. The Governor must approve a concurrent resolution for it to take effect.

Simple resolutions are passed by only one chamber of the Legislature, and do not require the Governor's approval.

Bill Statistics, May 26th

Mon, 27 May 2013 09:56:00 -0500

As we approach the end of the 83rd Regular Session, the library will be compiling daily bill statistics.

Bill Statistics, May 23rd

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:30:00 -0500

As we approach the end of the 83rd Regular Session, the library will be compiling daily bill statistics.

Week in Review, May 23rd

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:15:00 -0500

In this weekly post, we feature online articles and policy reports published recently, and other helpful research tools.

See where federal judicial districts in Texas rank in new immigration prosecutions for the first six months of fiscal year 2013. (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University, May 10, 2013)
Examine the regulation of agricultural fertilizers. (Congressional Research Service, May 9, 2013)
Track state-by-state figures of seniors living in poverty. (Kaiser Family Foundation, May 20, 2013)
Explore recommendations for reducing alcohol-impaired driving crashes. (National Transportation Safety Board, May 14, 2013)
Consider the impact of short-term small dollar loans, such as payday loans. (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, April 24, 2013)

Bill Statistics, May 22nd

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:11:00 -0500

As we approach the end of the 83rd Regular Session, the library will be compiling daily bill statistics.

Bill Statistics, May 21st

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:21:00 -0500

As we approach the end of the 83rd Regular Session, the library will be compiling daily bill statistics.

Education in Texas in 1913

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:30:00 -0500

Schoolchildren at
Henrietta Public School in 1913.
Photo from the Portal to Texas History

Lower Grape Creek Schoolhouse,
near Fredericksburg, was built in 1901.
Photo taken in 2011.
Photo by Flickr user jimmywayne

McCallum Arts Center, built in 2011,
at McCallum High School in Austin.
Photo by Addy Sonder

The final entry in a series of posts about the 33rd Legislature, held 100 years ago. Read the previous posts on the general atmosphere, veterans, women’s rights, and drought.

One hundred years ago, the majority of Texas schoolchildren, like the majority of Texans, lived in rural areas (White, p. 18). The schools in these areas were mostly one-teacher schools (75%), and the school term lasted less than three months for more than 2,000 of the schools, with 46% average absentee rates (TEA, p. 53). Texas was one of just six states that did not have a compulsory attendance law (White, p. 20).

The school buildings themselves were often in terrible condition (TEA, p. 53), and it was this particular problem that lawmakers addressed during the 33rd regular session. Governor Colquitt emphasized the Democratic Party's position on school buildings during his state of the state address:

"Our platform promises for better educational facilities and a better system of public education is the most comprehensive utterance ever made by a political party in Texas on that subject."

The Legislature passed HB 24, which, for the first time, set out requirements for school building standards. Across the country, new standards regarding heating, ventilation, and lighting were being implemented (Baker, p. 6). HB 24, for example, states that "thirty cubic feet of fresh, warm air shall be supplied to each pupil in such a manner as not to place any pupil in a disagreeable draft." This measurement of thirty cubic feet had begun in Massachusetts and was, in 1913, becoming a nation-wide standard (Baker, p. 6).

The law also recommended that the windows be placed to the left of students (so that their arms and hands would not block the sunlight when writing, presumably, right-handed (Baker, p. 6)), and that decorative "fluting, turning, or carving" be kept to a minimum so as to not attract "dust and microbes."

School Building Standards Today

The Texas Administrative Code (19 TAC §61.1036) lays out guidelines for school facility construction. Notably, since 1913, the code now includes specifications for computer classrooms and acknowledges that regular classrooms may have technology in them (computers on carts, for example) that necessitates extra space. This webpage on the TEA’s website includes information on design standards, facilities funding, and other relevant information.

You can view current legislation about school facilities by searching with the subject “Education--Primary & Secondary--Facilities (I0241)” using the Texas Legislature Online or, for older bills, the library’s Legislative Archive System.

Texas Education Rankings, among U.S. States, in 1913 and Present

	1913 Rank¹	Present Rank	1913 Value²	Present Value
Annual expenditure per child	39	49⁴	$7	$8,767
Average annual teacher salary	30	34⁵	$415	$48,638
Length of school year	39	Among majority (59%) of states with 180 day year⁶	133 days³ (approx. average)	180 days

NB: See end of blog post for footnotes.

Learn More about Education in the Early 20th Century

See a map of all the ISDs created during the 1913 session.
Read this report on the history of school building standards.
Some schools of the early 1900s are still around today; come to the library and page through Early Texas Schools: A Photographic History to see these historical buildings.
A Study of Rural Schools in Texas, published in 1914 by the University of Texas, reviews the plight of rural school communities in Texas; this report is available as part of the library’s collection of higher education documents.

Table Footnotes

¹Source for 1913 rankings and dollar amounts for teacher salary and expenditure per child: White, 1914.

²Dollar amounts are unadjusted for inflation.

³United States, Bureau of Education, 1917.

^{4 and 5}NEA Research, 2012.

⁶Bush, Ryan and Rose, 2011.

Sources

Baker, L. (2012). A History of School Design and its Indoor Environmental Standards, 1900 to Today. Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. Available at http://www.ncef.org/pubs/greenschoolshistory.pdf
Bush, M., Ryan, M., & Rose, S. (2011, August). Number of Instructional Days/Hours in the School Year. Denver, Colo.: Education Commission of the States. Available at http://www.cga.ct.gov/ed/AchGap/Documents/2012/9505.pdf
NEA Research (2012). Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 2012 and Estimates of School Statistics 2013. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association. Available at http://www.nea.org/assets/img/content/NEA_Rankings_And_Estimates-2013_(2).pdf
Texas Public Schools Sesquicentennial Handbook. Austin, Tex.: Texas Education Agency.
United States, Bureau of Education (1917). Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year Ended June 30 1916. Volume II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Available at http://books.google.com/books?id=iGMWAAAAIAAJ
White, E.V. and Davis, E.E. (1914, October 10). “A Study of Rural Schools in Texas.” Bulletin of the University of Texas, No. 364 (Extension Series No. 62). Available at http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/scanned/SIRSI/A%20Study%20of%20Rural%20Schools%20in%20Texas.pdf

Bill Statistics and Deadlines, Week of May 20th

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:45:00 -0500

The Texas Legislature meets in regular session for 140 days every other year. To keep the legislative process moving smoothly, the House and Senate rules include a series of end-of-session deadlines. Deadlines that take effect in the next week are:

May 21: Last day for the House to consider second reading Senate bills or joint resolutions on the Daily or Supplemental Calendar.

May 22: Last day for the House to consider local and consent Senate bills on second and third reading, and all third reading Senate bills and joint resolutions on the Supplemental Calendar. Last day for the Senate to consider bills or joint resolutions on second or third reading.

May 23: Senate amendments must be distributed in the House before midnight.

May 24: Last day for the House to act on Senate amendments. Before midnight, Senate copies of conference committee reports on tax, general appropriations, and reapportionment bills must be printed and distributed.

May 25: Before midnight, copies of all conference committee reports must be distributed.

May 26: Last day to adopt conference committee reports or concur on amendments.

May 27: Last day of session. Corrections only.

As we approach the end of the 83rd Regular Session, the library will be compiling daily bill statistics.

Bill Statistics, May 19th

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:49:00 -0500

As we approach the end of the 83rd Regular Session, the library will be compiling daily bill statistics.

Bill statistics, May 16th

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:40:00 -0500

As we approach the end of the 83rd Regular Session, the library will be compiling daily bill statistics.

Week in Review, May 16th

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:15:00 -0500

In this weekly post, we feature online articles and policy reports published recently, and other helpful research tools.

Examine state tax revenues from sales taxes. (Council of State Governments, May 7, 2013)
Track state decisions on health insurance exchanges. (Kaiser Family Foundation, May 10, 2013)
Consider the increasing rate of college enrollment for Hispanic students. (Pew Research Hispanic Center, May 9, 2013)
Explore student loan affordability. (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, May 8, 2013)
See timelapse satellite imagery from all over the world. (Time / Google, May 2013. May not work in older versions of IE.)