Resources

OPENING PARAGRAPHS: We appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on the State of Texas Plan for Disaster Recovery: Hurricane Harvey – Round 1, covering $5.024 billion in Community Development Block Grand for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds allocated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by Federal Register Notice, 83 F.R. 5844, February 9, 2018. Texas Appleseed is a public interest justice center that works to change unjust laws and policies that prevent Texans from realizing their full potential. Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Texas Appleseed has worked with a network of organizations in Texas, including housing advocates, policy experts, and grassroots community groups, to ensure that all Texas families are able to recover in the wake of a natural disaster, that communities are rebuilt to be more resilient, and that all families have the opportunity to live in safe, decent neighborhoods with equal access to educational and economic opportunity.

Senate Education Committee. Written Testimony of Morgan Craven, Texas Appleseed. OPENING EXCERPT: A major concern that many students, parents, educators, researchers, and advocates have with Chapter 37 of the Education Code, which covers “Discipline, Law and Order” in schools, is that it is heavily focused on exclusionary and criminal responses to misbehaviors in schools, including in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, alternative school placements, expulsions, corporal punishment, restraints, complaints, arrests, and court referrals.