Increase state funding for public schools to reduce recapture, lower property taxes, and increase educational outcomes for students while providing needed relief to teachers and administrators
Raise teacher salaries across the board until they are competitive nationwide, provide more time for planning and less on administrative tasks, and increase mentorship for new teachers
Provide a cost-of-living adjustment for retired educators and improve TRS-Care
Reduce overreliance on standardized tests, punitive A-F ratings, and other school ratings tactics that do nothing to measure the actual learning going on in the classroom
Eliminate loopholes to best practices around class size and similar
Expand Medicaid to provide 1.5 million Texans access to care, bring $110B of our tax dollars home to help shore up healthcare infrastructure, lower uncompensated care costs, reduce all of our premiums, and save lives
Focus on maternal mortality, including implementing a full year postpartum Medicaid access and increasing cultural competency so that health concerns of women of color are taken seriously
Increase parity for mental health with respect to insurance coverage and offer more mental health services in schools, as well as training for educators and education/awareness for parents
Protect abortion access, add funding for the indigent, and restore Planned Parenthood to Title X funds
Increase access to contraceptives, improve family planning services, and teach sex-ed
End spending on wasteful partisan priorities such as fake clinics and border walls and prioritize Texans basic needs
Create new revenue streams such as through the legalization, regulation, and taxation of cannabis
Close corporate tax loopholes and franchise tax exemptions and raise the margins tax
Move away from an unfair system based on property taxes and consumption taxes toward a more equitable system
Use the Rainy Day Fund to meet acute needs such as learning loss due to COVID-19, loss of healthcare access in underserved areas, and foster care, before they become untenable
Resist attempts to undermine organizing/attempts at banning payroll deduction
Stop attacks on the gains we’ve made especially in urban areas
State workers need an across the board pay raise, cost of living adjustment for retirees, return pensions to defined benefit plan after move toward cash balance
Expand voting access, end voter purges, and ban partisan intimidation by poll watchers
Implement online voter registration for any Texan as well as automatic and same-day registration
Broaden voting by mail to any qualified voter, with no excuse needed or age restriction
Make Texas college, government, and tribal IDs eligible for use as a Voter ID
Work with local officials to purchase more voting machines, hire more poll workers, increase polling locations, and expand voting hours to the maximum allowed by law
Require a duty to intervene when another officer is potentially using excessive force, and require a duty to render aid to those being detained or arrested or otherwise
Eliminate no-knock warrants
End qualified immunity
Collect better data in terms of interactions with law enforcement and traffic stops
Legalize, regulate, and tax cannabis to address mass incarceration and fund key needs
Release and expunge records of those with drug simple possession charges
Lower penalties for non-violent offenses, resist escalations leading to severe sentencing
Oppose mandatory cash bail, similar punitive measures touted as reforms
Focus on diversion programs; treatment, education, job skills, counseling while incarcerated, and throughout incarceration and not just at end; re-entry programs
Invest in alternative energy and green/clean energy jobs, including re-training programs
Oppose environmental hazards in or near minority or low-income neighborhoods
Stop attacks on local environmental ordinances, including trees, endangered species, and water
Resist efforts to defund TERP or other programs designed to improve environmental equity
Support a regulatory scheme that helps residents defend themselves from environmental hazards, and has actual punishments and teeth for polluters and abusers
Increase funding for staff, supplies, PPE, and sanitation to address complications to childcare brought on and exacerbated by COVID-19 and prevail on Congress to grant relief
Eradicate the funding gap for CPS and Foster Care so that there are adequate resources to take care of Texas children as opposed to sleeping in office buildings or sending to unsafe placements out of state
Reverse the disastrous privatization efforts in the child welfare system