News Briefs


Adopted TEA Rule
Making “significant” changes to student attendance rules and to the related Student Attendance Accounting Handbook for the 2021-22 school year, which determines state funding based on student attendance factors. Several changes were made on final adoption. Effective March 3. (more info)

Cybersecurity Alert
Gov. Abbott (Feb. 25) cited the enhanced potential for Russian cyberattacks on U.S. businesses and governments in response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government as his reason for ordering the Texas DPS and the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) to “use every available resource to safeguard the state’s critical infrastructure and to assist local governments and school districts in Texas with their needs.”

The DIR responded with a lengthy web posting that advised state and local agencies to be advised of guidance provided by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

UT News
The UT System announced (Feb. 24) the establishment of a $300 million endowment to help more undergraduate students (based on family income levels) to qualify for free tuition and fees at: 1) UT Arlington, 2) UT Dallas, 3) UT El Paso, 4) UT Permian Basin, 5) UT Rio Grande Valley, 6) UT San Antonio and 7) UT Tyler.

In 2019, the system’s regents created a $167 million endowment to provide a significant increase in tuition support for students at UT Austin.

Foster Care Teen Parent/Pregnancies
A new Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) report for the 2021 state fiscal year shows that 380 Texas youth in foster care were pregnant and 267 youth in foster care were parents of their own children. The report also reflects that 39 children born to youth parents while they were in DFPS conservatorship were themselves placed under DFPS conservatorship.

A Texans Care for Children analysis of the data concluded that Texas youth in foster care were more likely to be pregnant in Fiscal Year 2021 when compared to any of the previous four years.

Recovered Funds
The D/FW CBS TV station reported (March 2) that Crowley ISD has thus far recovered about $813,000 of the $1.9 million that the district was scammed out of in an email phishing scheme that occurred in 2018.

A Florida resident, Donald Conkright, is serving a five-year prison sentence following his conviction on federal charges related to the scheme. Conkright claimed at trial that it was he who had been scammed by con artists into unwittingly participating in the scam against CISD.