Here's your weekly wrap-up of education news from ATPE Governmental Relations:

• New teacher survey available from TEA
• Governor Abbott signs school safety bills into law
• Check our ATPE’s updated session recap 
• ATPE state officers to visit Washington, D.C. 

If you are a new teacher who participated in an Educator Preparation Program (EPP) and completed your first year of teaching on a standard teaching certificate, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) would like to hear from you. This survey for first year teachers is a part of the Accountability System for Educator Preparation. An email containing the survey link was sent to all eligible teachers on April 3. Be sure to complete your survey by Monday, June 17. For more information check out this blog post by ATPE Lobbyist Andrea Chevalier.  

On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a number of bills related to school safety. Chief among them, SB 11 by Sen. Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood) was the omnibus school safety bill passed as a response to the deadly school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. A full breakdown of SB 11 can be found in this post by ATPE Lobbyist Mark Wiggins.

The governor also signed HB 11 by Rep. Four Price (R-Amarillo), which increases mental health training requirements for school employees, as well as HB 1387 by Rep. Cole Hefner (R-Mt. Pleasant), which removes the cap on the number of school marshals that can work at a single campus. The governor’s press release on Thursday’s signings can be found here.

The "86th Legislative Session Highlights from ATPE" is a high level overview of the major bills impacting public education passed during the recently adjourned legislative session. This post has now been updated to include more information on bills passed this session. Continue to follow TeachtheVote.org for the most up to date information regarding public education.

ATPE State President Byron Hildebrand and State Vice President Tonja Grey will be traveling to the nation’s capital next week. While there they will meet with members of the Texas congressional delegation and U.S. Department of Education officials. Their meetings will feature discussions  about issues including Social Security offsets like the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP)  and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), as well as ATPE’s stance on federal voucher proposals. Byron and Tonja will be accompanied by ATPE Executive Director Shannon Holmes and ATPE Senior Lobbyist Monty Exter.

David Pore, ATPE’s Washington-based lobbyist, will be on hand to assist and coordinate. We’ll provide updates from Washington, DC next week on Teach the Vote.