BILL ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 507

By: White

Juvenile Justice & Family Issues

Committee Report (Substituted)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

There have been calls for the state to do more to ensure that parents are engaged with their children, given that parents are often their child's first and best teachers. C.S.H.B. 507 seeks to answer these calls by establishing the task force on parent engagement and education programs to coordinate and make recommendations on parent engagement and evidence-based parent education programs provided by state agencies.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly create a criminal offense, increase the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or change the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 507 amends the Government Code to establish the 13-member task force on parent engagement and education programs to enhance coordination of parent engagement and evidence-based parent education programs across state agencies and develop comprehensive, statewide best practices for engaging parents as their children's first and best teachers. The bill sets out the task force's composition, requires the executive commissioner of the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to serve as the task force's presiding officer, and requires the governor and the executive commissioner to appoint specified members of the task force in accordance with the bill's provisions. The bill provides for the filling of a vacancy on the task force, prohibits task force members from being compensated or reimbursed, and requires the task force to meet at least quarterly at the call of the presiding officer and at other times as determined by the presiding officer.

C.S.H.B. 507 requires the task force to do the following:

·         receive reports and testimony from individuals, state and local governmental agencies, community-based organizations, and other public and private organizations regarding parent engagement and evidence-based parent education programs;

·         identify such programs that are being implemented in Texas and describe opportunities for improved coordination among those programs to maximize program effectiveness and funding and align program outcomes;

·         develop policy and other recommendations regarding access to and best practice guidelines for such programs and methods for using existing data to identify and target program services to appropriate parents, communities, and families; and

·         prepare a report including a description of its activities, findings, recommendations, and proposed legislation or other relevant recommendations or information and submit the report not later than December 1, 2020, to specified state and legislative officers.

The bill requires HHSC to provide reasonably necessary administrative and technical support to the task force and authorizes HHSC to accept on the task force's behalf a gift, grant, or donation from any source to carry out the bill's provisions. The bill exempts the task force from statutory provisions relating to state agency advisory committees. The task force is abolished and the bill's provisions expire September 1, 2021.

EFFECTIVE DATE

On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2019.

COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE

While C.S.H.B. 507 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following summarizes the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.

The substitute increases the membership of the task force from 11 to 13 by adding to the task force two persons who are parents of or persons standing in parental relation to a school-age child.