Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

Austin American-Statesman. Jan. 5, 2018.

The Texas Education Agency’s abrupt decision to walk away last month from a special education data-mining project - after defending it for months despite legal and transparency questions - was the right thing to do. Now, the agency, which has been under long-standing pressure to improve special education services, must ensure it does right by students, parents and advocates.

The now-scrapped $4.4 million, no-bid contract was among the latest point of concerns among parents of special education students and advocacy groups. Though no investigative body has determined any laws or rules were broken, a federal investigators are looking into the contract. Meanwhile, the agency’s procurement policies are under internal review.

“Quite simply, on this project we failed to live up to the standards our students deserve, and I take full responsibility for that,” Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath said in a statement to this board. Morath said he canceled the contract and the project, ordered a review of contracting processes, and will work to “ensure these kinds of administrative missteps” aren’t repeated.

“In order to regain the trust of our students, we’re stepping up our planning efforts with special education stakeholders to chart a better path forward to improve special education in Texas,” Morath said. The agency will begin holding monthly meetings with parents in addition to the quarterly meetings it already has with advocacy groups, officials told us.

More transparency is needed if the Texas Education Agency is to rebuild trust. Giving parents and advocacy groups a seat at the table will go also a long way in successfully serving special education students.

Parents of students with special needs know the intricacies of special education. They and their advocates live it every day as they champion the voices of students who often are easily dismissed and marginalized. As such, they also are closer to solutions and have plenty to say.

Yet, parents and special education advocates were kept in the dark when the Texas Education Agency decided to initiate its Individualized Education Program Analysis Project, the American-Statesman’s Andrea Ball reported. The project was meant to look for patterns in students’ individualized special education plans, which detail the services provided to children in special education.

Collecting such data from student records, agency leaders said, would be used to improve services for student with special needs. Though well-intentioned, the project was marred with controversy of the agency’s own doing.

Advocates and parents raised legitimate concerns over the agency’s move to award two no-bid contracts for a total of $4.4 million to SPEDx, a Georgia analytic company with a limited track record in special education analysis. The no-bid designation - legally permitted if an agency can prove that the services provided by the sole bidder can’t be found elsewhere - was debatable, at best.

When TEA began negotiations with SPEDx, the company had worked on only one yet-to-be-completed special education analysis project in Louisiana. The Texas contract, however, called for far more detailed state- and district-level analyses, records show.

Draft copies of the Louisiana report show that SPEDx recommended the state curtail special education services as a solution. That recommendation raised concerns. Texas, after all, is failing to provide proper special education services to thousands of Texas children.

A 2016 investigation by the Houston Chronicle found the Texas Education Agency had quietly put in place a policy that encouraged school districts to cap their special education enrollment at no more than 8.5 percent of the total student population. Based on that arbitrary number, children were denied services. Though federal law is supposed to protect children with disabilities, the cap existed under the leadership of five Texas education commissioners, including Morath.

Parents and advocates demanded change and were instrumental in getting legislation in 2017 that now lifts the caps.

As a result, special education enrollment has increased to 8.9 percent, according to the latest Texas Education Agency data. During the 2016-17 school year, there were 477,281 students who received special education services. That’s 14,000 more students than the previous year. Still, more work is needed. Texas still lags the national average, where 13 percent of public school students received special education services in 2016.

The quick, determined reaction by parents and advocates prompted a change in how Texas Education Agency addresses the needs of special education students. Progress, however, may come even faster if these groups are engaged from the start of any new agency initiatives. It’s up to the agency to provide that seat at the table.

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The Monitor. Jan. 7, 2018.

In 2017, President Donald Trump took office and pledged to the American people that U.S. immigration policies would be substantially reformed and illegal entries into the United States would stop under his administration. Most importantly, he pledged to American workers that they would get their jobs back from those who were here illegally and drawing paychecks, and that he would build a wall on the Southwest border - right through the Rio Grande Valley - to deter further illegal immigrants.

His brash tone and divisive rhetoric played to the political right and working-class Americans who had felt alienated and abandoned under Barack Obama’s administration. But it has also alienated Mexico, one of our most important trading partners. To date, renegotiations with the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada remain stalled and greatly threaten the economic stability of our region.

But there is no mistaking that Trump has delivered on his word to deter illegal immigration in the United States. Whether because of fear of arrest or deportation, the number of arrests of immigrants decreased dramatically in fiscal 2017, during Trump’s first year in office.

The Department of Homeland Security in December announced fiscal 2017 arrests by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were 310,531 nationwide, 303,916 of which were along the Southwest border. This is down 31 percent from 450,954 total nationwide arrests by Border Patrol in fiscal 2016. Arrests on the Southwest border were down a quarter, or 26 percent, from 408,870 in fiscal 2016 under Obama’s last year in office.

Despite this drop, DHS reported an uptick beginning in May in illegal entry arrests by unaccompanied minors and families. And by year’s end, 48,681 children had crossed alone and were under the care of federal authorities, just 18 percent below the 59,757 unaccompanied children detained in fiscal 2016.

The future of children who came to this country illegally was probably the most sensitive immigration-related issue faced by our country in 2017. Polls also showed that a majority of Americans felt that those who were brought here as children - otherwise known as Dreamers - should be afforded the ability to stay in this country as long as they remained in school, attained good jobs or served in our military. And so when President Trump suddenly announced in September that he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program beginning this year, it tugged at enough American heartstrings that it even spurred action on Capitol Hill among lawmakers who have been woefully slow to take up immigration policies.

Trump’s apparent concern for these youth and his stated willingness to help them - in exchange for other actions, like construction of a border wall, and funds cut to sanctuary cities - is expected to play out fully in 2018 and will no doubt provide for much drama in Washington that will directly impact the RGV.

Since 2014, the Monitor’s Editorial Board has chronicled our nation’s immigration crisis through a series of editorials, columns and graphics. We have made dozens of policy suggestions over the years on how to reform immigration, a subject that will have an impact on everyone in the Rio Grande Valley. Some of our suggestions have been put into laws; some have been filed as laws not yet passed; and some have been outright ignored.

As we continue to follow this complex issue in 2018, we will continue to offer recommendations, and we encourage readers to send us their thoughts in the form of letters or guest columns. Most importantly, we call upon citizens to be actively engaged in this process by remaining abreast of issues, holding lawmakers accountable and by utilizing their right to vote.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Jan. 8, 2018.

Bikes are everywhere in Dallas. One would think this is a positive development.

No fewer than five companies - VBikes, Ofo, Spin, LimeBike and MoBikes - are offering bike-share services in the city.

But those bikes used by well-intentioned riders are not being returned properly. In fact, The Dallas Morning News reports Highland Park has decided rent-a-bikes abandoned on public property overnight will be impounded.

City leaders don’t want Fort Worth to become overrun with bikes, like our neighbors to the east.

Our 46 BCycle stations, which are home to 250 bikes, saw 59,280 trips (up from about 56,000 in 2016) and fewer overall miles, at 266,648 (down from 286,000 in 2016).

Meanwhile, a recent city report here in Fort Worth demonstrates our bike usage rates are holding steady from 2016 to 2017.

Modest growth is a good thing.

But we think there’s opportunity here, to continue a thoughtful discussion about the kinds and patterns of cycling on our streets.

But we also need to think about alternative modes of transportation as we look to attract a creative class to our city that will diversify our economic base.

The city’s recent economic study highlighted a need to incentivize new types of business and business owners - to bring more high-paying jobs to the region. The city’s study calls for nearly 10,000 housing units within 1 mile of downtown and 25,000 within 2 miles.

Wouldn’t it be great if those folks living in and near downtown felt comfortable riding their bikes to and from work? And for others, who live farther away, to do the same?

Each new city street that is laid down is striped for bike lanes. This is a constructive step in the right direction, as evidenced by the fact that bike lanes serve more of the city than they ever have.

But, some bike lanes and sidewalks in newer neighborhoods seem to start and stop with some degree of inconsistency.

And what about existing streets?

Signs that encourage cyclists to use the full lane may make sense for the expert rider, but those looking to battle rush hour traffic that’s in our downtown are less comfortable in the saddle, so to speak.

Crossing East 7th Street in downtown is a nightmare for anyone. Then there are those lanes, like on 10th Street, where bikes travel in two directions in the same lane.

Clearly delineated, safe lanes for cyclists have been incorporated into cities as large as New York. We can make it happen here.

The city’s taken a positive step recently, in partnering with Strava, which is a web-based platform that charts riders’ routes. It could use the data to prioritize where bike lanes should be added.

And then it can commit to a plan that makes it easier for us all to get around town on two wheels instead of four, if we are so inclined.

Just keep in mind, that more bike systems doesn’t necessarily equal a more bike-friendly city. We need to make sure what happened in Dallas doesn’t happen here.

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The Dallas Morning News. Jan. 8, 2018.

Texas has a problem: Deaths of women linked to pregnancy and childbirth are increasing.

How bad is the problem? We don’t know. That’s another problem.

A new study in the medical journal Birth suggests that the reporting and data collection system in Texas is so shoddy that it’s impossible to develop a clear picture of how many women are dying of childbirth-related complications.

Bottom line: The increase may not be as bad as officials believed, but they don’t know exactly how bad it is.

There has been justifiable alarm over a spike in the last several years in maternal deaths, along with a growing debate over its underlying cause. The medical community, advocacy groups and boards like this one have made strong calls for legislative action to reverse this trend.

But how can the state tackle a problem it can’t even define? As reported by the Texas Tribune, a careful analysis of Texas statistics on maternal mortality likely includes an unknown number of “false positives,” particularly in data recorded in the last five years.

This is no cause for celebration. Researchers are not questioning an increase in pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths to Texas women. Like many other U.S. states - and unlike other developed nations - we’re seeing evidence of a trend that many fear is linked to worsening access to health care for women of childbearing age.

After analyzing Texas’ vital records, “I was surprised how bad the data was,” said one of the study’s co-authors, adding that some trends identified by the state’s statistics are “biologically implausible.”

Under current legislation, a state task force is gathering information on why maternal death rates are on the rise, and forming recommendations to reduce those numbers. The mission for the state’s Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Morbidity is urgent, and it must remain so.

“When we’re really able to present a complete picture … the rate will be too high,” said Lisa Hollier, medical director for the Houston-based Center for Women and Children, who chairs the task force. Other indicators, Hollier told the Tribune, confirm the increase in maternal deaths.

But improvements in Texas’ vital statistics collection system need to be a priority. Without reliable facts, we cannot produce lasting solutions.

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Houston Chronicle. Jan. 8, 2018.

Pot supposedly makes people lazy. But Congress doesn’t need any help. No other governmental body has been as slow to act on changing drug laws than our national legislators. It’s time for our representatives to finally get off their derrieres and get to work.

The detente between states and the federal government over the treatment of medical and recreational marijuana turned back into a hot war last week. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III rescinded an Obama-era memo instructing the Department of Justice not to interfere with state-level regulations. Business owners and local law enforcement are left unsure about their paths forward.

This ongoing conflict is a waste of time and resources and frankly is unsustainable in a representative republic.

A majority of Americans over 18 have tried marijuana at some point in their lives, according to a 2017 Marist poll. Nearly half of those who tried it once still indulge today.

Sessions recently said that federal tolerance for marijuana undermines “rule of law,” but something is clearly wrong with a legal regime that would drag half of our nation before a criminal judge.

Police and prosecutors enforce these laws under the pretense of keeping people safe from themselves. Whatever dangers marijuana poses - and the drug does inflict a litany of harms - the threat of a trip through our criminal justice system poses a far greater threat to one’s life and livelihood.

The criminal justice system is ill equipped to handle drug use, and most Americans know that it is time, after 40 years, to end the war on drugs.

Seven in 10 Americans think that the federal government should allow states to set their own rules for marijuana use, according to a 2017 CBS poll. More than 60 percent of the nation thinks that marijuana should simply be legalized. Here in Texas, a poll by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune last year found that only 17 percent of the state supports continued prohibition on marijuana.

At a time of startling political division, you’d be hard pressed to find any issue that unites the nation like the push to change our drug laws. You’ve got to wonder what inspires Congress to act if it can’t follow through on something this popular.

The fight between federal agencies and state lawmakers has gone on for too long. Too many people have ended up in jail. Too many public dollars have been wasted on a war on drugs that’s failed to reduce drug use.

Congress needs to do its job and change the law. If the current members don’t have what it takes, then voters should find new representatives.