The top local stories this evening from KERA News:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is ready to announce a school safety plan aimed at preventing more mass shootings like the one that killed eight students and two substitute teachers at a high school near Houston.
Abbott scheduled announcements for Wednesday in Dallas and San Marcos. The governor held three days of Capitol meetings last week and heard from law enforcement, educators, mental health experts and students survivors of the shooting at Santa Fe High School.
Other stories this evening:
- In the Waco school district, five schools are struggling to avoid missing state standards for the fifth year in a row. Schools earning failing grades for five years or more could face a shutdown or a state takeover of their district. As KWBU’s Will Burney reports, Waco ISD has been working on boosting those schools, and the district’s developing a plan in case the schools miss the mark.
- About every five years, Congress reconsiders the farm bill. The package deals with most affairs regulated by the Department of Agriculture. The bill also funds the supplemental nutritional assistance program or SNAP -- It used to be called “food stamps.” Millions of Texans depend on SNAP to help buy food. Recent attempts by the House to change the program did not work because the bill lacked enough votes. The Senate is expected to release its own version of a Farm Bill next month. Rachel Cooper is a senior policy analyst with the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin and spoke with KERA’s Justin Martin.
You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:22 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.
