North Texas teachers to rally at Capitol on Saturday

Hundreds of teachers from North Texas are making preparations to travel to Austin for a huge march and noon rally at the Texas Capitol on Saturday.

As many as 10,000 educators, parents, students and other supporters are expected at the Save Texas Schools event.

“The proposed legislative cuts to public education funding are unacceptable. Texas – we deserve better,” the group says on its website.

Before the rally, student groups, including a drumline and a “student-led positive hip hop group,” are scheduled to perform for the crowd, the agenda says.

Scheduled rally speakers include Connor Brantley, a Fort Worth school district student, Bobby Rigues, vice president of the Aledo school board and Michael Hinojosa, Dallas schools superintendent.

The march is at 11:00 a.m., starting from 12th and Trinity streets. That’s one block east of the Capitol grounds.

The rally is from noon to 2 p.m. on the south steps of the Texas Capitol, at Congress Ave. and 11th Street.

UPDATE: United Educators Association, based in Fort Worth, reports they are sending four buses of teachers and parents from Tarrant, Denton and Johnson counties -- that's 224 people. And they expect that another 300 to 400 more people will be carpooling and caravaning, said Executive Director Larry Shaw.

Jessamy Brown

Comments

[Peaches290]

Great idea in principal, but where is this money supposed to come from exactly? Texas is facing a 27 billion dollar budget shortfall as it is. And it was the education financing plan that started the problem in the first place.

[PropertyTaxGuy]

This is the thing-- it seems as if a majority of Texans don't want education to get cut, so now the dialogue has to move to how to find the money. Rather than passing a statewide property tax increase, Texas should look at alternative means of trimming the existing budget such as reassessment of $10MM+ contracts to private companies already in place to evaluate how efficiently the state's money is being spent.