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By Mitch Borden

Take from the rich and give to the poor. That’s the idea behind “recapture” — the state’s education funding strategy that’s more commonly known as the “Robin Hood” plan. The plan redistributes a portion of property tax revenue from school districts with high property values and transfers that money to districts with low home values.

But critics say “Robin Hood” takes resources from struggling schools in areas with high property values, like towns in the Permian Basin and the Big Bend. That’s why Rep. Brooks Landgraf, a republican from Odessa, wants to get rid of recapture. He said the decades-old funding plan hurts more than helps public schools.

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By Emma Platoff, Texas Tribune

A federal appeals court has lifted a lower court order that blocked Texas from booting Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid, potentially imperiling the health care provider’s participation in the federal-state health insurance program.

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By Sally Beauvais

A team of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade girls at Marfa Elementary School is gearing up to send a microgravity experiment to outer space.

First, the group won their school-wide competition. Then, in late 2018, their proposal was chosen by scientists in DC to be tested aboard the International Space Station, or ISS. It’s 1 of 41 projects from across the US accepted by the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program this school year.
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By Julián Aguilar, Texas Tribune

EL PASO — As the government shutdown approached its fifth week and Washington Democrats and President Donald Trump showed no signs of coming to an agreement on how to end the stalemate Tuesday, U.S. Border Patrol vehicles could be seen patrolling just north of the Rio Grande near El Paso’s Paso del Norte bridge.

Farther west along Paisano street and across Interstate 10 from the University of Texas-El Paso, more green-and-white vans sat parked just south of the fencing that has dotted this part of the border for more than a decade.

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By Mitch Borden and Carlos Morales

As the partial government shutdown — now the longest in U.S. history — continues, employees at Big Bend National Park in far West Texas are in their fourth week of unemployment.

While many bathrooms, trails, and campgrounds closed when the shutdown began in late 2018, today, officials with the 800,000-acre park in Brewster County announced they’ll “resume routine basic custodial services and trash removal.”

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By Travis Bubenik, Houston Public Media

If you want to cook up a battle over private property rights in Texas, here’s the recipe:

Take a handful of sprawling cities and growing populations that are expanding into once-rural areas, add a booming oil and gas industry with a desperate need for new pipelines to move record-high volumes of hydrocarbons, and sprinkle in the new electric lines needed to power both of those trends.

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By Mitch Borden

Funky smelling fumes, dimmer skies, and increased health concerns have all been reported by residents in the Southwest corner of the Permian Basin as the oil and gas industry expands. Growth has been happening north of the Davis Mountains over the last two years.  

Concerns about greenhouse gasses and toxic emissions have spurred some citizens —like Sharon Wilson— to try to keep oil companies accountable themselves, one rig at a time.

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