Texas Rural Reporter Weekly Update 4/14
We bring you the rural Texas stories you need to read this week.
TEXAS LEGISLATURE
Editor’s note: In addition to our weekly news clippings, as things heat up in the legislature over the next few weeks, we will be doing a separate weekly update about the legislation moving in Austin that will have rural impact. Our legislative updates are for subscribers only, so please be sure to sign up!
BUSINESS
Poll: Texas Business Needs Survey
From a list of six challenges included on the survey, the challenge the highest proportion of businesses in Texas said they faced was a lack of skilled or reliable workforce; 8 in 10 businesses in more rural areas said this was a major or moderate challenge, while about 7 in 10 businesses in less rural areas cited this as a major or moderate challenge. The next most frequent challenge was access to capital, considered a major challenge by about 1 in 4 businesses and a moderate challenge by an additional 1 in 4 businesses. About half of the businesses in more rural and less rural areas felt this was a major or moderate challenge.
SCHOOL CHOICE
Opinion: Salter - Busting Anti-School Choice Myths
The battle for school choice in Texas has entered a pivotal stage. Last week, Senate Bill 8, which establishes education savings accounts, cleared the Committee on Education and awaits a floor vote. Teachers’ unions and education bureaucrats wailed predictably, terrified that empowered parents will upturn the government-school monopoly.
New York Times: A Well of Conservative Support for Public Schools in Rural Texas
A national movement to give parents public vouchers to spend on private schools has run up against the deep loyalty Texas has always had for its public schools.
NEW HOME, Texas — Bright yellow uprights tower over what was recently a flat expanse of cotton fields, now transformed into football turf. Nearby, cranes pull up the walls of what will soon be a new elementary school.
KERA: School choice’: An education argument from 30 years ago returns to Texas
Political pitches for school vouchers, or “education savings accounts,” cite “school choice” and “education freedom." The same arguments helped sell public charter schools in the 1990s. As school vouchers gain momentum in the Texas Legislature, Gov. Greg Abbott has been pitching a plan at stops in private, Christian schools all over Texas. One recent stop took him to Conroe and the Covenant Christian school. “Parents deserve education freedom,” Abbott said to the packed crowd of supporters. “And the way to do it is with school choice through state funded education savings accounts.” Abbott’s preferred bill, Senate Bill 8, would use taxpayer money for private and home schooling through those voucher-like ESAs. But to former Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, terms like “school choice” and “education freedom” have a nostalgic ring to them.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Texas Farm Bureau: Right to farm protections pass Texas House, move to Senate
The Texas House of Representatives passed a proposed right to farm constitutional amendment and two right to farm bills. All three pieces of legislation—HJR 126, HB 1750 and HB 2308—are supported by Texas Farm Bureau (TFB).
KETK: Rural school leaders criticize business incentive bill
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Superintendents of rural Texas schools on Monday criticized legislation that would incentivize corporate investment with property tax privileges, citing concerns the bill’s exclusion of renewable energy projects would hurt their areas.
Progressive Farmer: Massive Texas Dairy Explosion Kills More Than 18,000 Cows
An estimated 18,000 dairy cows were in a holding area for milking at Southfork Dairy Farm, in Dimmitt, Texas, on the evening of April 10, when a massive explosion and fire killed most of them and severely injured one worker in the building.
The Frontier: International clean energy company eyes Oklahoma as lawmakers weigh incentives
The international clean energy company Enel wants to build a solar panel manufacturing facility in Oklahoma and Gov. Kevin Stitt is asking state lawmakers to support an undisclosed incentive package to seal the deal.
Plainview Herald: Texas county roiled by book ban considered closing libraries
Leaders in a rural Texas county held a special meeting Thursday but drew back from the drastic option of shutting their public library system rather than heeding a federal judge's order to return books to the shelves on themes ranging from teen sexuality and gender to bigotry and race.
NPR: How rural communities without grocery stores are innovating
Rural communities often grapple with food access. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says 76 counties in the U.S. don’t have a grocery store. But some communities are coming up with innovative solutions.
HEALTHCARE
Does Country Living Make Folks Happier? Maybe Not
It might seem like a move to rural living could bring calm and even happiness, but new research suggests that isn't always so.
A study from the University of Houston found that those living in the country were not more satisfied with their lives than people who lived in urban areas. Rural U.S. residents didn't feel like their lives were more meaningful, and they also tended to be more anxious, depressed and neurotic.
KXAN: Texas Senate approves bill to expand mental health care services
Bain: “It’s not that Rural People have more issues, it’s that rural people have less resources.”
How Medicaid redeterminations will affect a rural Texas hospital
Melanie Richburg, the CEO of Tahoka, Texas-based Lynn County Healthcare System, said about 15 percent of its patients are expected to lose Medicaid coverage during the redetermination process, NBC affiliate KCBD reported April 10.
In Texas farm country, hospitals face dilemma to keep doors open
A patient who showed up at the hospital in the small farming town of Anson a few weeks ago with pneumonia or a bad infection could count on a bed for a couple days to allow them to recover. But late last month Anson General Hospital, about 200 miles west of Dallas, converted to what is in effect an emergency only facility, designed to either treat patients and send them on their way or, in more serious cases, stabilize them and send them 30 miles down the road to Abilene. If there’s no space there, patients are forced to travel more than 200 miles to Lubbock.