Sen. Brandon Creighton has filed bills that would ban diversity, equity and inclusion policies related to hiring and programming, while creating ways for parents to complain about violations to the DEI ban.

A Texas Senate bill filed on Tuesday would provide long-term pay raises to teachers based on years of experience, expand a state program that offers raises to instructors based on student performance and allow educators to enroll their children in pre-K free of charge.

The proposal comes as public school teachers in Texas are leaving the profession in droves and many districts are trying to make up budget shortfalls.

SB 26 expands the Teacher Inventive Allotment (TIA), a merit-based pay program that gives bonuses to top-performing teachers based on academic growth. Under SB 26, 50% of teachers in a district can participate in the teacher incentive program, compared to the current cap of 33%.

A Texas Senate committee gave unanimous approval to across-the-board pay raises for public school teachers, sending the nill to the full Senate for a

Among a litany of education-related bills filed this year, elected officials in the state have made raising teacher pay a priority for the legislative session.

Read more For the first time since Gov. Greg Abbott declared raising teacher pay an emergency item, the Senate laid out exactly what new teacher pay guidelines would look like.