Resources for Members of the 87th Legislature

Founded in 1980, ATPE is the leading educators’ association in Texas with approximately 100,000 members statewide. With its strong collaborative philosophy, ATPE speaks for classroom teachers, administrators, and future, retired, and para-educators and works to create better opportunities for Texas’ five million public school students. ATPE is an independent, nonunion association.

Click here to access "ATPE's Comprehensive Review of Education Bills in the 87th Legislature." The report written by the ATPE lobby team details public education-related bills that were debated by state lawmakers in 2021, shares our organization's positions on the legislation, and highlights significant debates or procedural developments along the way. The document covers legislative activity through September 2021 and will be updated once the third special session concludes.

Legislative Priorities

Our priorities for the 87th Legislature are:

1. Prioritize public education funding.

ATPE supports prioritizing public education funding to ensure school districts have the necessary resources to address the many ongoing challenges of COVID-19, preserve funding gains and equity achieved through last session’s House Bill 3, and continue efforts to raise the prestige of the education profession through meaningful compensation.

2. Alleviate burdensome testing and accountability requirements.

ATPE supports measures to alleviate the burden of standardized testing and accountability requirements in order to allocate time and resources to pressing critical needs brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as prevent high-stakes decisions from being based on flawed or unreliable data and reduce the pressure testing places on students, educators, and parents.

3. Give all students access to optimal public school learning environments.

ATPE supports initiatives to ensure all Texas students have access to optimal public school learning environments that are safe, supplied with current technology, and adaptable to changing needs, while preventing the diversion of the state’s limited resources to unregulated private, home, or for-profit virtual schools.

4. Prioritize mental health support for the school community.

ATPE supports efforts to provide greater resources for the mental health and social and emotional needs of public school students and staff.

5. Address school working conditions.

ATPE supports measures to reduce staff turnover by addressing public school employee concerns about working conditions, including health and safety issues, increased workloads, and burdensome reporting requirements exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

6. Protect educators’ advocacy rights.

ATPE supports laws and policies that protect the rights of educators to become more involved in advocacy and elections at all levels of government and encourage them to set an example of engaged citizenship and civility for future generations of Texans.

Download a copy of ATPE’s legislative priorities with additional background information here.

Meet the ATPE Lobby Team