Child Protective Services

     The post Will our Child Protective Services get better? by my colleague Selena Herrera is well-explained, and stated her strong point of view. She starts off with general information and tied it down to how money should be used for children in need. As we all have known that Legislature is willing to fund more money for CPS to help abused and neglected children to receive adequate cares. However, this money is also used for hiring more staffs due to the shortage of staffs. Selena expressed her opinion that this funding can only be used for children care only, and not for increasing staff salaries or hiring more staffs. Her thesis is strong and well developed with her supporting; some readers may be convinced with her thought. However, I am not quite strong to agree with her on this issue; I understand that children cares are more important, but the staffs’ families are also important to them. Their families would expect them to go to work and earn money, but it turns out to be an unexpected income. How can children approach their needs with the shortage of staffs? I believe that this funding is just the start to reform the program. It starts to hire more staffs and train them to work as best as they can, and start to approach children in needs. All of this funding will focus not only for hiring staffs but also for caring facilities. So this is still a promising start to help abused children and children in need.

     In sum, this post is an interesting commentary expressing local issue that we may need to know. Overall, this still a good post with my colleague opinion and supporting on the issue. 

Legislative Priorities

  As the 85^th Legislature session is approaching, many legislators had planned for many hopeful bills in making them into laws in 2017. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick also published his personal list of top ten legislative priorities. Couples of the issues on the list are considered to be prioritized, and some are solution seeking problems. This list is categorized into two groups by some journalists as pressing concerns and issues have been seen before.

     For the press concerns, those issues are mainly about inappropriate teacher-student relationship, property tax reform, budget proposal and spending cap; on the other hand, some other issues that have seen before are hailstorm lawsuit reform, sanctuary cities, school choice, photo voter ID, women’s privacy act, and fetal tissue or partial birth abortion. Many demands ask for more focuses on Texas child protective services and state budget spending.

    My opinion is on both sides for these two categories; I support not only children protective services, state budget spending but also school choice and women’s privacy act. Texas continues to increase in the numbers of teachers engaging in abusive and inappropriate relationship with students, and the cause of this issue is the weakness of methods of reporting and tracking teachers with history of misconduct. This is not only Texas’ issue but also nationwide issue; therefore, legislation is needed to strengthen the reporting and training requirements or even appropriate penalties.  Texas also pays one of highest property taxes in the nation, and Patrick had created a new senate committee to hope to find a statewide solution in order to assist business growth and decrease tax rates. Everyone is looking for this change as well. Furthermore, women’s privacy also needs to be prioritized because women and girls should have their privacy and safety in public restroom. Although there is not any reported case that transgender sneaking to public restroom and attacking women, it is still a yes or no question on this issue. Of course, there are many more different issues, but these ten priorities are considered to be prioritized according to Dan Patrick.

     In sum, there are lots of issues to look forward when the legislation session begin on January next year. Whatever issues that need immediate attention should be prioritized, especially children and women rights.