 Okay, we're about ready to start again. As we do every year, we have a panel of some of our Bear County delegation. These are our representatives, or Senator in one case, but our representatives for us, for children, for families in Austin. And this is particularly important right now with our legislative session due to start in January. So we have with us Senator Jose Menendez, State Representative Diego Bernal, and State Representative Laura Thompson. And the moderator is Ana-East Miracle from the Children's Shelter. Thank you, Kathy. Good morning and welcome, Senator Menendez, Representative Bernal and Representative Thompson. Members of the audience, what we're going to do is we're going to facilitate a really interactive dialogue and probably for about 30 minutes. And then afterwards we'll go ahead and take some Q&A from the audience. How does that sound? Pretty good? Awesome. All right. Okay, so we're now in the interim session. Can everybody hear me? Okay. We're now in the 84th interim session. We've had multiple hearings. And just to kind of give a primer, obviously our legislators know and obviously our advocates know that also the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the House, have articulated kind of the main charges for this next 85th legislative session, which will start Second Tuesday in January, January 10th. And so those top priorities and please, Senator and Representative, please chime in here. Child Protective Services, obviously, Child Welfare is a very critical top charge by the Governor and also Speaker of the House, Joe Strauss, Public School Funding, Access, Heritage, Education, Mental Health. Our Speaker of the House yesterday at the Dallas Chamber of Commerce did talk about the access to mental health services and we'll talk about that a little bit later. And then obviously the economy and border security. Have you heard, Senator Representative, if anything else related to those priorities that we can anticipate this next legislative session? Well, I'm going to pull this off and then hand it to, okay, good. So I think rather than us, especially you where you're sitting and the positions that you're sitting in, the organizations that you represent, rather than you waiting to hear what their priorities are, I'd rather you sort of push your priority because every elected official has their own priorities. We were just talking, Diego and I was just talking, he was talking about these bills that he's somewhat fallen in love with and I told him it's not, that's a dangerous position to get into. But the irony of it is, look, I open up my talking points and I've got my bills that we're looking at. So every elected has that and just recently Lieutenant Governor asked the Democratic Caucus to have a breakfast and then wanted to know what our priorities were. And so we discussed, you know, public education, we discussed the foster care system. I discussed some of the things I've been working on this interim were potentially an announcement for foster care system that's independent of, you know, doesn't sit underneath the system, doesn't report directly to the commissioner. Having the foster care money follow the child, therefore, if grandparents are raising the children because they're on a fixed income. So we all have our own independent ideas and thoughts on what we need to fix. But you are the experts and therefore I think it's important for you all to make your voices strongly heard. These are the problems. This is what needs to be fixed. This is how you need, this is how it would work best. Because sometimes elected officials feel that if they write a, they push for some mental health and it's all out of great motivation, they think they've accomplished something. But sometimes we all know that if you don't actually do the right thing, complete the fix, it half a fix is not any good. It doesn't help. So, you know, next session, one of the big issues that I think most of us on this dais, I don't want to speak for anybody, but I think based on the comments I've heard in the past are going to be, I'm very frustrated. I've already reached out to TEA why they have some sort of artificial number for special education in our schools. How do you decide for your population and how convenient that it's like 5% lower than the national average? The number of special education children in our school should be whatever the number is. You don't predetermine that. So, we have a lot to work on. Obviously, some of you are familiar with the fact we're working on the bullying situation in our school and we're going to continue to work on that. I had met with Matt Voskis' dad, Leo Voskis, because Matt was suffering leukemia and was being bullied by a cyber bully who was anonymous. And we had a meeting with representative, I mean, Hottis knew them. She brought him to my attention. The principal of their school and a police officer and the police officer said, even though his tormentors were telling him that he needed to commit suicide and he was giving them various ways that he should commit suicide and that he would help him and he would help watch him die, that wasn't enough. There wasn't enough on the books legally to issue a subpoena for the IP addresses. What we want to do is have a conversation because many times, many bullies have been the bullied in many cases. It's a learned behavior and therefore we need to find who these people are and in many cases, this is not about creating a school to jail pipeline but it's about getting people help. So those are the kind of things that I just recommend because we all have our own agendas that you all need to say, this is what really has the most grave importance now. And so maybe prioritize those things too. We all know money is going to be tight but we have to, if the speaker of the house is saying that there's going to be money for certain things, say, well, you know, you're talking about mental health, here's where we think it could go to the best use. And so that would be helpful. All right. I don't want to, I don't restate what he just said because I agree. So let me offer to some degree the photo negative of that. And that is that we've been having the conversation about these issues for a long time, right? Certainly way before you were ever in office, certainly before I was in office. We've been talking about school finance and mental health for a very long time. So the question then for us is, what is, why is it that we can't seem to make any real progress or close the significant gap? And I think, at least for me, and I'm a little bit cynical these days. I think for me is that there's really no serious political will to do anything about it. There is political will, especially in leadership, especially after there's a big explosion of headlines to talk about it and to have the pageantry of a hearing or a special committee that's formed. But then the next part is, is there real political will to get it done? And I would say in the past, there's been some but not much. So then the question becomes, and this goes directly to what the senator was saying, where does that political will come from? That's where you guys come in, right? You may, and we could have another session about the best way to interact and for you guys to lobby Austin. But I think if you start with the premise that except for a few, hopefully, and certainly the ones on this panel, the most precious thing to an elected person, unfortunately, is their seat. And most of the decisions they make are run through that filter first. Well, for you, it might have worn off, but you're a good guy. And so political will comes from, I think, two places. One is their own personal, emotional, ethical constitution. And the other is from politics, is from the threat of and the pressure of the people that put them in office saying, unless you actually do our bidding, we may reconsider. And so that that's sort of the extra piece that add to this is that when he says, your role is important, it is not just to be the subject matter experts that we need to do the job, because those that assumes that there are people who actually want to know what you think. And we do. But the other part of it is that remember that as constituents of whomever you have the ability to force them to do what you want them to do at their own peril. And so I think that's an important extra point. Thompson. Yes. Good afternoon. I'm representative Thompson. I'm your newest representative. I've been in office for about 60 days. But I'm not new to a lot of the issues that you face as organizations and our kids face. Since 95, I've been developing nontraditional programs and made my presence in schools on purpose, just to see how things function. And so I'm well aware of of some of the the obstacles that you might have as an organization, because I've seen firsthand some of the things that some of the changes that need to be made. And so I ran for the seat. And my highest priority is children's advocacy. And it is education. And I ran because of my frustration with seeing things that weren't quite right as it relates to children in our schools and in our communities and our in our child protective services system. And a lot of things that I couldn't change then, although I've seen some some results. But a lot of things that I couldn't change then I made the decision to run for a political office. And I always tell people that whether you know, you know, I would love to get reelected and all of that. But my advocacy for children still remains whether or not I'm in the office or out of the office. But it gives me an opportunity as a public official to see the other side of it and to see how it works and to see how we can work with you as constituents, and also with other legislators that have the same beliefs. And believe me, it does. There's a lot of people that I think if if if you helped us to come forward and let your voice be heard in Boston and in the state of Texas, that it would help support us as as public officials to help you to to get things done. Let's start out with the topic of education, since we really kind of dove and dived really deep in that one. So representative and I'll you and District 123 conducted something you called a listening to work. Can you talk a little bit about those schools that you've been saying what themes you heard about? Sure, I'll give you the Cliff Notes version. So before I was in elected office, I was a Maldiff attorney and I litigated school finance and we've been having the school finance conversation for a long time. I didn't necessarily have a lot of hope that the Supreme Court of Texas would come down and say, the way you fund your public schools is completely wrong. You've got to redo it, especially in an elected year in an election year with a partisan elected judiciary. I just didn't think we'd get it. And even if we did get something, it wouldn't be much. So I wanted to find out practically, pragmatically in a not in a bipartisan way, but in a nonpartisan way, what could we do on a policy level that would make the experience of our educators better and the outcomes from our students better? So I decided the only way to do that was to sort of bypass the folks that normally interact with us, school board members and superintendents who are great by the way, but to go to the campus level and talk with principals and teachers about those very things. And so in my Texas house district, there are 55 public schools. And we visited each one of those campuses and sat with a good collection of their educators to tease out what really would be helpful and to be clear, maybe on the first two visits, I showed up and they had the kids there and with the mariachis and they had cake and welcome Diego. We're so happy you're here. And I had to sort of say, that's not exactly the purpose of the visit. So thank you guys very much. You're very cute. Go back to class. You and I are going to go in that room and talk. And I will tell you that the one thing I didn't hear was we need more money. They do need more money, but no one ever said it like that. They never said, if you just write us a larger check, everything will be fine. They were very specific on the things that they thought if those resources were allocated in a very deliberate, dedicated way would make a difference. So one of the big themes was time. My understanding is that to a public school educator, instructional time is the most precious thing they have. And we continue to ask them to do more than actually teach. They're spending their time on paperwork. They're spending their time on administration. We're eating up their planning period. And the other side of that is that a lot of students come to class with challenges that exist outside of school. They bring them to school. If as a state, we're going to set standards that we expect them all to meet, we have to provide them with the resources to get there. And so I'm a firm believer, and also I'm an MSW, some word for this, but I'm a firm believer that services, human services, social workers, counselors, to help those students, if you provide that, then what you're left with is a student who's ready to learn and an instructor, a teacher who can spend their time focusing on academics. But overall classroom time was the primary, the most, they never said it that way. They would say, you're asking me to do too much. I wish I had more help. I really wish I had another social worker. We just got a trauma counselor. I wish I could have two more trauma counselors. But when you pull back what they're saying is I wish I could have or give my teachers more time to teach. That was the biggest thing. Other things that we learn, one is that there is a much deeper and broader issue with hunger in our public schools than I ever realized. And the solution to that or the proposed solutions that we have aren't really working. So that's something we're interested in. But also in the public school setting, there are certain mechanisms or occurrences that don't make any sense. And I'll give you one example and then I'll pass it on. So, and I'll use a sports analogy too. So imagine you've got a school that's been designated IR, improvement required. This is a school that has not met standard and is struggling. At that same school, the very next school year, you'll find this huge percentage of brand new teachers. And so it doesn't make sense to me that you would have, that you would have a place with the most need and then you compound that with an experience. I'm not saying they're bad teachers. I'm not saying they're not going to grow into amazing teachers. You're just not playing the odds. And the sports analogy is if you go, let's say, to the NBA and you look at the teams that have the lowest winning percentage and then you do the average age of the player. Usually it's really, really young as well. The way you construct a good team is you get good young players, world players and veterans. You put them together. They work together as a team and you get results. And so that's also something I learned. I can go on forever. The report is online. It's also like 32 pages long, so that's why I'm keeping it short. But you're welcome to read it and give me feedback. Senator Menendez, anything to add to that related to public education? Sure. Let's dig a little deeper on the special ed situation. Let's look at, if I gave you guys the special ed percentages for Edgewood ISD, San Antonio ISD, Northeast, Northside and Judson, we looked at those because those are my district. In the 0506 years, their percent of special ed account was 13% in Edgewood, 12.12% at San Antonio ISD, 13% at Northeast and 13.1% at Northside and 10.82%. If you look at them today, Edgewood's down to 9%, 9.6%, SAISD is down to 10.2%, Northeast is down to 9.78%. Northside has actually been the one that maintained its closest at 11.3%. So the question that I had is how is it or why is it that there was this goal that it appears a TA was sort of coercing some of these school districts to adopt? And so one of the things that I want to do and maybe you'll like to work with us is we're going to file a bill to eliminate any kind of sort of any standard that they're coming up with, that they're going to, they shouldn't be a standard. It should be the normal number. You know, initially they said we had these goals so that we wouldn't over target or label people special ed, but now it seems that they're trying to do it to keep the numbers, the financial numbers down. So we're looking also legislation to create a bill of rights for special education children. And so we think that that's important. Last session we had some interest in that sort of thing and we've got to do better and this Houston Chronicle report is something that's very good. And then finally would be the, in talking about the sport kinship arrangements, currently if you're a grandparent and you adopt, if let's say mom and dad are out of the picture for whatever reason, the state would give you a thousand dollars for one year for the first child and if they're siblings you get four ninety five and that's it, one time payment. But if they go into the foster care system they get paid, you know, continuously. On top of that they have problems with TANF, with, you know, receiving the temporary assistance for needy families. The liquid asset requirement is so low that they end the vehicle value limit is so low. It's set currently at four thousand six hundred and fifty. So what we're going to try to see if we can raise that to seven thousand and the liquid assets to five thousand. I mean you shouldn't have to be destitute to be able to get the TANF and so especially when you're taking care of your grandchildren and so, I mean the sad thing is that for not, if the grandparents weren't there, they would be wards of the state. And the interesting thing when you're a child that goes into the foster care system then you guarantee that the state's going to be on the hook for higher ed as well. And so we should not be creating an incentive to not have children remain with hopefully the people who love them and know them the best. Absolutely and to go to that point currently DFPS shared that about 42 percent of the children of foster care in kinship homes that equates to about 11,000 children right now in Texas that are in a kinship arrangement. And so imagine we already had a foster care crisis and so if you were to take all those children out of kinship families and place them in a foster care home where would they go? Right? Exactly and so very very interesting going in let's go into child protective services because we know that the speaker and the governor has said let's go ahead and really target this area. Commissioner Whitman came in. He's a former executive chief of the Texas Rangers. He shared he's not going to come in and do law and order policing but he did in July 5th he provided a 10-point plan for child protective services and a lot of them related to high needs of these children. Going back to your point of special education a lot of these children who are in foster care have those higher needs and are going to need a special education and that might not even be articulated in those numbers and so there could be some deficiencies in that. Being able to ramp up foster care capacity across our state here in Bear County. Anything related to that senator representatives that you all like to talk about you know recommendations you'd like to make related to child welfare? Well in reference to the child care protective services agency in San Antonio because that's all I know and in reference to foster care I think that kids need stability you know they need to be in a place where they feel loved and and they're nurtured and developed so that they can even function in everyday life and in school but but sometimes and just from personal observation and from experience with maybe some family members being approached by child protective services I think that there is a need to kind of upgrade the level of services that are provided through the child protective services agency. I think that they probably need more people because they continue to take in more kids as a result of child abuse and domestic violence and so I think that some of the staff and administration at child protective services probably may need to have some kind of ongoing training some some sensitivity training. I've seen kids that that I believe in families almost and I hate to say it but maybe criminalized or they're the victims but but sometimes they're treated in a manner that is not respectable by by one of our state agencies and I think that we have to look at that and I've also had grandparents to call and say piggy back on piggybacking on what Senator Menendez said that you know they don't they don't get the full benefits when something happens to family members you know the kids just automatically go to a family member but if they don't have power of return you or if they if their certain things are not in place then they don't get the funding for it and it's still not good for for the children and so I think that I'm a community minded person and so I think that everybody in the whole system has a a social responsibility to to give our kids the best care possible and I want to commend the agencies that are here because without you we we wouldn't have some of the support that we need and we know that you all need support as well and as as legislators I think it is our goal and our responsibility to ensure that everybody gets the support that they need. I think that's right but one of the things that we have to do and I'm I'm only going to get partisan for a second just to give you a window into the calculus of what it what it looks like. In the house right now there are 50 D's and 100 Rs which means that anything you want to do you need at least 26 Republican friends right and so I also think that the senator is right is that a lot of us scramble to respond to something with bills of our own because we want to we want to respond we want to own it but at the same time I think it's important to figure out where in the body you're in you have the the clearest path to daylight to get something done and so I've actually been working closely with one of our our representatives named representative Wu out of Houston because he's the Gene Wu. Representative Wu is the only person in the entire delegation that's worked both sides of this both as a prosecutor and as an advocate so he's taking the lead on developing the CPS bills and and they're great but I want to say this about CPS one is remember that we're only having this conversation because people outside of government sued the government for because of how bad it was and when people talk about budgets and they're not big enough enough money that creates this this idea that the budget is sort of like a pool of water and everyone's getting the same sip and at a certain point the water runs out that's also a fallacy a budget is a list of priorities and what's happened is CPS has not been a real priority not a priority like guns not a priority like bathrooms so so I think that that part of what we're doing now is taking advantage of this moment and making sure that not only is it funded properly but after that it works well because here's what also happens and then you can you can solve for me up after this what happens is something happens in the news everyone scrambles to fix it there's a bill that's passed in the session that bill is not a great bill it's probably milk toast lukewarm doesn't do a whole lot and then once we've done it people can say hey we did that last term we're good and so what's really important this is where you guys are especially especially powerful is to make sure that whatever we do and we will do something that whatever we do is meaningful that it lasts and that it works the way it's supposed to work when everyone stops paying attention right and that's why we have to play to our strengths as opposed to doing something just so we can have our name on it right but that's that's what I'll add senator I think you're right on target so here's an area where you can let me point to an easy place where I'm not sure whose priorities are getting funded on this one but you probably read about this in the paper already we last session the budget appropriated 800 million dollars for border security 800 million dollars and so what initially so a lot of us asked well what are we getting for that 800 million dollars and what a lot of people who live down there said well there's a dps officer every quarter mile and they write a lot of tickets yeah they're all getting pulled over and and and sure you know now we're hearing oh you know what crimes are at all time lows well that's great so now the state's paying for a private security for the border I think personally that 800 million dollars and especially now that they're back asking for another 300 million is an insult to the rest of us I mean we should not be subsidizing the border security I think that's the job of the federal government I think proof is in the putting that you know the crossings are down deportations are up all of that stuff you know we should have a normal response that we normally do on the border but we don't need to be doing something just because it's politically expedient and that's I think a perfect example of a priority to somebody that gets that gets funded where a you know 800 million what could we have done with that 800 million and so many other places and so I know we could have done a better job with universal pre-k I know we could have done a job with these kinship arrangements I know we could have done so much more and public ed and so we have to step up and say you know I've looked at the budget and here are some of the places where I think you could refocus some of this money you know and and you know kind of be fully aware write your letters and say you expect to hear a response you know I'd like to know what your your stance is on this I mean so many times we'll shoot off an email or a letter and and frustration and anger and we don't put on there you know we'd like to know what your responses and and you need to get to know who your legislators are you know we hope you know probably most of y'all have a bear county legislator most of the bear county legislative delegation is is is on target and they know what's going on and they're they're supportive of the of many of the things we've discussed here today but they all need to hear from you and if you know and have friends throughout the state we've got to soften up 26 you know at least 26 targets in the house to make things happen possibly that make more sense to those of us who care for a broader agenda for a more socially aware agenda and unfortunately then we have the Senate and the Senate's a whole nother ball of wax you know and in that same meeting I asked you know I I don't understand the priority for the issue with the bathrooms because I literally said you know every one of us at this table has transgendered bathrooms in our homes and and I got a quizzical looks I go what do your bathrooms at home say men or women's you know do you check people's genitalia search it birth certificates as a state how do you enforce these ridiculous laws so what do you do are you saying that you're going to allow for someone in a school to go be the bathroom police person think about that I find it ironic that for coming from some of the people who are the most you know get government out of my life to to come into having bathroom police who's going to check birth certificates or whether or not that's a boy or girl it's just doesn't it's it's inconceivable and the other thing too I want to ask law enforcement to join us in this because I believe that there are already laws on the books for someone to were to walk in if any of us went into a restroom and we did something that wasn't right we upset someone we offended someone we there are laws on the books to deal with us and how many times have we heard from so many of our friends in the legislature why are you doing that we already have that bill we don't need that every time I talk about not texting and driving we already have distracted driving you know so so when it's convenient we already have that law but when it's something that they want it's it's got to be the best thing so we have to all be a part of this of this situation in terms of being active voices and being louder voices and it's hard because you know you know sometimes it feels like we're asking you to do something extra some more homework and the only reason we do it is because we are so outnumbered and so obviously not until we get better numbers in the legislature that we can have a a serious vetting of all ideas and debates then we can't we're going to be in the situation for a while we'll wrap up our conversation with one last topic related to mental health we know that mental health had gotten some much more support and investment last legislative session what are in your districts or what in your office are you working on to address let's say the mental health shortage workforce in addition to you know working to ensure that there's accessible mental health services for children relate to education related to special education etc etc all right well on the education fund I mean that is a place where school finance is very important we also think that a lot of times when schools or districts are getting extra services they're looking at combat which means poor children they're looking at ELL English language learners and mental health is sort of left out of it it's it's assumed it's scooped up into these other categories but it's not and so I think we need to break that out and make sure that it's funded and again funded in a in a thoughtful deliberate way not just a larger check because that often doesn't work on that so that's the education front I'm going to admit to you that I'm working and trying to work through something that I haven't arrived at an answer yet I live close to downtown right by the Cove and in that area that area has become a a place where other cities round up their homeless and send them with a one-way ticket to the center city of San Antonio and then they often make their way around Haven for Hope and that area near Cyprus and San Pedro and a lot of them suffer from mental health issues so you want to find a humane way of of dealing with them and treating them and then if you make and of course in the neighborhoods folks are obviously concerned some of the the the behavior is very aggressive they're knocking on your car window they're going up to you at the gas station sometimes you find them sleeping on your front porch and you still want to find a way to be humane and fair of course everyone else is saying call the cops call the cops arrest them let's say we do that you then go to the municipal court judge and he'll say you can't arrest away this problem and and and let's say I do get someone in the municipal jail or the county jail what I what I hold them for okay so let's say you go and you find them you've got someone who's got 50 60 70 citations and what could be done there so I think that part of it is that there's an intersectionality of dealing with issues that were not that we're not dealing with right a lot of times in politics people sort of stick to their lane you're the cities you do the streets and sidewalks I'm not going to talk about it I'm the legislature I'm doing public ed you county you stay out of it you're the county you're dealing with flooding and the river and so we're going to stay out of it and I believe that there are some issues in fact maybe all issues require us to work and and mental health is absolutely ground zero for that we have not figured it out but I think that after we've all tried different things that haven't worked that well I think that's what it's going to require I think that because we normally deal with about 6,000 bills and what happens because we're dealing with the statewide issues in such a diverse state such a large population that typically what I see leadership when I say leadership it could be the governor's office is the lieutenant governor of the speaker's office and they try to assign subject matter experts to certain things and so they'll say like you like Diego just mentioned you know you're you're the dot you're the you're the public health person you're this you're that and typically that person gets to sort of drive the agenda because you're the subject matter experts and so many of the things we've discussed today it's important that you find out who which committee which chair is going to be heading those things so that you can get your voice in at the ground floor this is the time right now is the time we've sent out letters many of you received them back in what was it may June July I can't remember now we sent out about 2,000 letters asking for input on the legislative session and on what you'd like to see us do and work on because we wanted to get a broad cross-section of what issues needed to be addressed we understand that we have a limited amount of time but we also know that we're not the experts in any of this stuff so we need to know from you how to we address these because sometimes it's you know the one area where you can you can find agreement and it and it maybe it gets people to listen it's like Diego said money by itself doesn't solve the problem but money used wisely can be a good tool to start solving the problem and the one thing that we have done well in bear county by starting the diversion of a lot of those folks from going just going to this jail to the county jail we've freed up about 15 million dollars for the county the county's now giving bear county sheriff's office more money to get or get more crisis intervention people you know trained and hired they're being experts in that so we're being leaders and how do we interact with people who are having mental health issues so that we're not just warehousing them in jails because that's obviously not the place they need to be and so we we I think we know what the some of the solutions are but we just need to have the capacity to turn up the volume the key is though is we get back to how this all started having engaged experts like yourselves being part of the conversation all day every day and thinking and knowing that you know you can have certain offices and elected offices of people who will actually listen and have staffs that will work hard to try to get the best thing done the best solution done and we're not going to give up we just can't give up even though sometimes we live in a place where sometimes it feels like it it's it's never going to get better I think we've made some strides and it's good to hear that some folks in leadership in Austin are actually putting together an agenda that makes sense for a lot of Texans not an agenda that that that's based on fear I think the other thing is that you could help us if y'all could come up with all the reasons why a certain ideas won't work if you hear something that just sounds crazy could you just help us by saying well how would that you know in term I can't get my focus off the bathroom bill if you could just say this doesn't work because of this this yesterday I had a bunch of business people in my office the tourism industry is going crazy on this thing because we know the ncwa we know nfl we know mba a lot of these big events they're like we're gonna we're out of texas you do this and we're gone and that is hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of an impact to the state of texas so anyhow a lot of crazy stuff going on thank you for your time you're welcome well to round out our time I will go ahead and open up for a brief question answer to our senator and representatives yeah jim I know that money can't solve every problem but lack of money to certainly prevents us from solving quite a few and I can't think of how many decades ago it was that one tough grandma said that the new state tax system was the largest bounce check in history and it seems that as long as we have a tax structure that doesn't reflect our current economy we're going to always be artificially choked at the budgetary level and so it seems that you guys are trying to work in a completely artificial system and until there's the political will to really rebuild the tax system in a way that reflects our economy we're always going to be having these fake crises where one organization whether it's cps or dps or higher ed or k through 12 was artificially choked is there going to ever be a time when we can revisit the tax structure so just to kind of bring everybody up it sounds like George started a personal conversation with Diego but the the the issue the issue at hand is that the way we raise revenue in the state of Texas has created an a an infrastructure deficit and and it's because what he was referring to when we replaced the old franchise tax for businesses with the new margins tax now the margins tax is a name that they gave it to really our our tax system in texas is now an income tax on businesses but we have a constitutional amendment says you can't have an income tax in texas so that's why they call it the margins the margins tax was always you're absolutely right it was always calculated by people who were playing fair with the numbers that it would bring in a billion dollars less almost every year so it creates an a whole it's not a it's not an artificial hole it's a real hole we're collecting less money and so we're we're stuck now the last time they couldn't get the votes i mean they were having they were in charge and and the whole reason for redoing the thing was to give perry a tax cut so he could get on tv and say i passed the biggest tax cut in texas history how many of you remember him on tv with twenty one hundred dollars average tax cut to the home well that tax cut was gone as soon as your appraisal went up you know and so uh and it and it amounted to like 20 bucks and i mean it's it's something ridiculous but we get back to what he started with and talking about political will because they're hearing from a lot of folks whose appraisals have gone up and up and up and up every year if you ever get bored it go on zillow and and check to see the history of particular homes of if you'd like to see this this home you'd love to buy your dream home just look at the taxes that have happened in the last 10 years month of vista alone they've almost doubled appraisals doubled in the last 10 years so so all of a sudden if you could afford the mortgage payment in the interest you may not be able to afford the taxes and so that's what's happening is the all they're hearing from is those folks they're saying i can't afford to live in my house anymore so we've got to figure out a system the problem is that they replaced it with something that's that doesn't work and and we have not we don't have currently the political will to go back to the well to do that and unfortunately when bob bullock tried to do what other states do that it actually gives you a lower tax burden which is called an income tax at the state level which you can reduce from your federal income taxes when bob bullock tried to do that he got so beat up that the next year he came in with a constitutional amendment and passed it so our constitution literally says you'll never have an income tax and so that's a box that we're going to have a very difficult time coming out of and i'm not sure if ever because we're now only sales tax oil and gas and property taxes and that's it any other questions so we've been working a long time to help our moms that come in addicted to opiates while they're pregnant to get into a place where they can take care of their children the state has given money to build a place where moms can go after the baby's born and they can do their rehab there so i find out Wednesday that any mother that comes in that's positive for opiates or methamphetamines is an automatic removal so the state they won't even let us locally put these moms in these places so i'm not sure why we've spent the money to even build them so you're you're using something that we're very sort of deficient and thirsty for in the legislature and that is logic and reason so i will i will i will just agree with you that that doesn't make any sense but maybe maybe after this we can get your information to learn more about it okay yeah good question to ask is where public dollars used in the building of that facility there's a lady in the red over here has a question go ahead sorry go ahead go ahead paradigm shift needs to be and what are you all willing to what steps we're going to take to focus on smaller projects highlights that really made a difference to improving that so when we talk about mental health and eternal well-being and our speaker who spoke about it for us any mother that is well-informed oh thank you any mother that's well-informed as well as has a good mental health state she's going to be a better parent for her child with disability for her child with autism not to mention any other kiddo so we've gotten away from we've got big outcomes and big objectives where are where are you willing to focus that energy on smaller pilots that can make that big difference well i'm a i'm a big advocate for pilot type programs or non-traditional programs to help um and i've been pretty successful at it um and i think that um education plays a role in and absolutely everything and there are a lot of parents that could potentially be um great parents if they had some type of intervention or some type of of training so um i would be open i'm going to provide you with some information and i will be open to uh discussing you know what you had in mind further and and possibly putting some type of proposal together to to um present to see you know how far we could go with it but i think pilot programs are are critical because you have to have a baseline on you know whether something could potentially be successful and i think that uh some type of pilot program for our parents or essential to the success of the the development of a healthy family and a child uh because that's the the the foundation part and if you if you mess up the foundation and the core uh from the beginning it's difficult to for the kid to you know actually adjust to make a comeback and be successful in life so i will be happy to to to speak to you more about that let me just say this we all have our slivers of mild expertise on things that the state does but the the swath of issues is broader than that if if anyone leaves it up to us on our own to solve these issues we will completely screw it up and and so when you're talking about an initiative or a pilot or something looks something really weird happens when you get elected and that is people think that you have less time you're really busy i didn't want to call you i didn't want to email you maybe you can come to the grand opening or ribbon cutting but i don't know if you have a whole hour to spare so i can talk to you about x y and z and it really should be the opposite so if there's something that you think we need to know if there's a best practice that you think is out there that the state should implement if there is a a program that you believe should be replicated it won't happen unless we know so then you have to be very aggressive about getting us there very aggressive and i us i mean any elected person very aggressive about getting us every aggressive about making sure we understand it very aggressive about saying okay we've just talked about this do you understand what we're doing and i'm willing to be a resource i think what you're talking about sounds fascinating i don't know much about it i want to and so the next step has to be to get us informed so we can make intelligent informed decisions as opposed to figuring out on our own which i guarantee is how we ended up in a lot of this mess in the first place we we've had good pilot we've had good pilot programs in bear county before bear cares is an example of that the best thing is to try to see where do other states do things better and if you have proven outcomes that you can share and then experts then what i'd say is that look put together a little group that says look here's the issue we'd like to try this the state gets in the way here if you'd let us do this and was try with with the bear county pilot and and this is how we've addressed it center for health health care services some of the judges it's good to see judge saka in the back but some of the judges in the past have been very helpful in helping us pass legislation in terms they come forward and they'll say we'll we'll testify on this piece of it and we put a little coalition and we always i mean typically if it's something that's somewhat innovative we'll go to them and say we'd like to do a bear county pilot and they let us do it bear county's got a great reputation in austin in terms of how we're dealing with mental health issues in our kids and and uh and typically we have to go back and take off the the restraints and sometimes there are a couple of years you know come report back see what happened uh and talking about what you're talking about bear care is that people don't know was sort of a comprehensive wrap around letting law enforcement in schools and mental health community talking together about like early intervention where the child first has its first incidents in school we're having a student perfect example doing real well and all of a sudden having issues went to talk to the student found out mom lost her job she couldn't get her medicines she was off her meds she was having mental health issues they found out got mom help mom got another job and mom went and testified and said that this this pilot program saved her life and let her be a mom for her children and so yeah there are possible good outcomes but i mean the reason it why it works here in bear county is because everybody works together that we don't we we don't look to be in our own little silos we all collaborate and and we we have a great working relationship with our judiciary with our with our bear county law enforcement whether it's sapd or bear county and so that's why it works and and and i hope to god that we can continue making it work that way and everybody supporting everything that y'all are doing and find ways to collaborate san diego county was the leader in california on how they addressed early issues of early intervention and prevention on their juvenile crime they reduced the recidivism rate they reduced their juvenile crime rates and and they they created funding mechanisms where if you collaborated you got more of the the share of the pie so they forced other or other cities and counties to tear down those walls where everybody was just worried about their little piece of the pie i think we tried should try to be innovative that way and try to do the same thing here in texas we have we have time for one more question we have a lady back there thank you good morning um i'm actually an early childhood educator and i actually instruct um other early childhood educators i basically teach teachers and so one of the things um that we talk about is for instance behavioral issues in the classroom and um representative deal you mentioned about working with uh or talking about hunger and the children that come into our schools with hunger and that is sometimes a contributor to those behavioral issues that come in they're hungry they're cranky so i'm sure you've heard recently of the in pennsylvania where the school cafeteria worker was was told to throw away a hot meal because a child's parents could not pay for for their their fines for lunch or their lunch menu and so what funding is going towards that here in san antonio because recently i've just discovered that some of our districts here in san antonio have those same types of policies they they they do um remember early on in our conversation how the senator said that there are some bills that some of us get personally attached to this is one of them let me let me tell you what we've cooked up and that i would like your help on and and of course your help and your help so one of the things i discovered at the schools again i'd mentioned that there were hungry students but i've also learned that one there are students going hungry during the day and there are students going hungry from friday to monday because they don't have good food over the weekend and some schools have programs with their stuffing food in the kids backpack friday to monday but there's nothing there's nothing uniform so this school is doing it with h e b this was doing it with the food bank you're doing it with the salvation army you're doing with walmart so on and so forth and at those same schools where they have an ad hoc program to feed kids friday to monday those same schools cafeterias are throwing away hundreds of pounds of food if not thousands of pounds of food every week and it's 2016 and you're asking yourself how could this possibly be how can we fix this there's a variety of reasons most of it really is a lack of understanding of the law and fear and so here's here's my proposed solution or attempt at a solution to this problem I mean first by the start-up by saying I'm using a word in the legislature we describe those and this is permissive meaning that districts can do it if they want to in whatever way they want to we're not mandating that they do it that's important to getting to that that 26 right there is a federal law called the Good Samaritan Act which allows schools to give leftover cafeteria food to a non-profit let's say in this case it'll be the food bank but the way that works the food bank can go to the school pick the food up and then take it back to the food bank and redistribute it to whoever but that doesn't do a whole lot for the kids who are still hungry it actually doesn't do anything for the child that's being humiliated or belittled right there because their meal is taken away from them that's right so so what the bill would do is it has three prongs one is it allows a district employee a teacher a counselor a custodian to be a designee of a non-profit so they can put on their food bank hat right but it doesn't have to be a food bank it could be any non-profit the second part is that allows the schools to store and house food on campus they can spend three hundred million three hundred thousand dollars and buy new coolers or they can just collect apples oranges and bottled water it's up to them and then the last part is that they can then use the school itself as the distribution area to redistribute the food to those kids and that way you create a cycle where the food doesn't get wasted that should if at full throttle we'll be able to eliminate both the problem you're talking about and the afterschool problem and the Friday to Monday problem now let's say this that doesn't preclude them then from partnering with the non-profits or partnering with now it's just more food for more kids side note sidebar off in the distance just to give you a heads up if you looked at the packs of food that some of these kids are getting now it's essentially a diabetes starter kit so there is a nutrition part too but this is this is a bill that that we're prepared to file that even as a sort of quasi freshman quasi sophomore Democrat I think I can carry but when the time comes we could really use your help because this is not a blue or red D or R thing it is very issue specific and honestly districts are asking us to help solve this problem because the good natured ethical moral people in the schools are watching the hungry kids and seeing the food being thrown away and it's driving them nuts so that's that's my pitch that's my pitch he just cut I will close in remarks because we got I've got a 12 o'clock meeting but I think Diego covered it 100 percent but the thing is you know as I'm sitting here thinking how do we pass it obviously I was thinking about you know the chair of public education would be a great joint author for you and therefore you know that would be positive the other thing I was thinking about it would solve the problem of the specific child that couldn't afford some of our schools are already 90 95% free reduced lunch what if we just said because some schools do this already what if you said okay lunch is included I mean we're already paying for it so every time just come through and if you don't want to eat lunch then you get you get the bag you bring your bag lunch and if you what if there's food left over you send it home so I think maybe you should think about adding that as part of it I would love to see lunch included in everybody's meal thank you thank you guys very much senator thank you very much thank you for senator menendez represent banal represent tomsen for your time and for your insight thank you all right speaking of uh speaking of lunch let's see if we can try to do this in an orderly fashion we're gonna go through those due to that can't even talk through those double doors right here and assembly line grab your lunch come back out