Teacher salaries, hate crimes and LGBTQ rights are on lawmakers agenda this week. Author: Julia Kauffman (WLTX) Updated: 7:59 PM EST March 8, 2021
COLUMBIA, S.C. State lawmakers are discussing several important topics this week including teacher salaries, hate crimes and LGBTQ rights. Below are three bills to keep an eye on.
First, House Bill 3609 aims to unfreeze teacher salary step increases. Supporters are hoping this bill hits the Governor’s desk this week.
It resumes teachers’ regular salary bumps that were put on hold last year due to the pandemic. Teachers have been pushing to reinstate the pay raises, saying it’s unfair to take away their promised money during this strenuous time.
Hundreds of charges have been levied against dozens of defendants in South Carolina’s largest indictment for a single drug conspiracy investigation, the state attorney general announced.
Texas prisons are named after slave owners. This is 2021, right?
Texas prisons carry the legacy of slavery. They shouldn’t.
An inmate works outdoors on the hoe quad outside a modern-day Texas prison unit in Huntsville, Texas on Thursday, June 25, 2015. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)(Staff Photographer)
In the midst of the nation’s reckoning with social justice issues and Confederate statues, it is time that corrections facilities in Texas no longer bear the names of people celebrated for their participation in slavery and Jim Crow politics.
This isn’t a new idea but one that state Rep. James White, R-Woodville, is the latest to put on the table. Recently, he asked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to rename the Darrington, Goree and Eastham prisons in southeast Texas to honor those who have made positive contributions to criminal justice, such as judges, chaplains, and fallen correctional officers. We urge the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to rename t