00:00I want to emphasize what I've been conveying as I crisscrossed the state of Texas over the past couple of
00:06weeks.
00:06I've been talking about something no governor has ever talked about before,
00:10and that is strategies that will put Texas on the pathway to ranking number one in educating our children.
00:18Texas has already taken steps toward achieving that goal.
00:21Last session, we passed a budget that provided record funding for public education.
00:26We added more than $8 billion more to fund public education.
00:31Importantly, we know that the most important element of an education is the quality of a teacher in a classroom.
00:37To hire and retain teachers at a higher rate, we added more than $4 billion for teacher pay raises.
00:46Now our funding per student is at an all-time high.
00:51In addition to that, we provided $1.8 billion for the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment.
01:01It now provides funding for more than 65,000 teachers across the state, including more than 800 school districts across
01:09the state.
01:10The Teacher Incentive Allotment is a way of providing pay for teachers where they will be able to earn a
01:17six-figure salary.
01:18There are thousands of teachers in Texas who are earning more than $100,000 right now because of that Teacher
01:25Incentive Allotment.
01:26The Teacher Incentive Allotment helps us to retain the best teachers, hire the best teachers, and in turn lead to
01:34better student outcomes.
01:36Let me give you an example of an applied case of how this works.
01:41I want to mention two school districts.
01:43One is the Far San Juan Alamo School District.
01:46This comprises three communities on the border.
01:50You've got the community of Far, you've got the community of San Juan, you've got the community of Alamo, and
01:55they have one ISD.
01:57This ISD, 82% of their teachers participate in the Teacher Incentive Allotment.
02:05By contrast, in Austin School District, only about 15% of their teachers participate in the Teacher Incentive Allotment.
02:13In Far San Juan Alamo, they have more than 60% of their schools rated A.
02:21In Austin, by contrast, less than a quarter of their schools are rated A.
02:28In Far San Juan Alamo, they have zero F-rated schools.
02:33In fact, they have zero schools that are rated C, D, or F.
02:38In Austin ISD, they have about 20 campuses that rate F.
02:44So what does Far San Juan Alamo have that Austin ISD doesn't have?
02:50Well, it's not money.
02:51It's not a wealthy community.
02:54What they have is a commitment to excellence.
02:58And by the way, even though they're only about a third of the size of AISD,
03:02they have more than 1,000 more teachers who are participating in the Teacher Incentive Allotment.
03:11So it's just one of multiple strategies that will put us on the pathway to having the best teachers in
03:17our classroom
03:18to ensure their children are learning what they need to learn at the level they need to learn it at
03:23to put Texas in that number one ranking.
03:27I've announced a couple of other strategies that will improve student outcomes.
03:30One is reducing screen time in classroom.
03:34If you recall last session, I signed a law reducing or really prohibiting the use of cell phones in schools.
03:40And the results have been very positive.
03:43Grades have gone up.
03:45Student attention and behavior have improved.
03:48Bullying has gone down because of it.
03:50Now what we want to do is to expand upon that and limit the time that screens of any kind
03:57are used in a classroom.
03:59The reason for that, we find that results are better when students are personally interacting with our high-quality teachers
04:06who are capable of providing a great education for those students.
04:09We want to increase the teacher-student time together as well as the time that students spend with their fellow
04:16classmates.
04:17That's far superior than this one-on-one learning where they're not interacting with other students
04:22and they're not building the skill sets that they need to be able to communicate with others and collaborate with
04:28others.
04:28In addition to that, I rolled out yesterday our focus on ensuring that our students are mastering reading and math.
04:38And obviously, reading and math, learning that is core to being able to be a high-achieving student,
04:45but also core to being an effective adult here in the state of Texas.
04:50Well, after teaching our students how to read, we also want to begin focusing on what they read, what they're
04:59learning,
04:59how they are influenced in school.
05:01Minds of our students are shaped by influences that they are exposed to in our public schools.
05:09Those minds should be shaped by policies that are approved by state lawmakers.
05:15To be clear, I've already signed laws expanding civics education in Texas.
05:22They require a focus on our foundational documents in the United States of America.
05:27I'll also sign laws that require education about the failures of communism.
05:33Our obligation is to educate students upon how and why 13 colonies were able to come together,
05:42form a union, and go on to become the most successful and greatest country in the history of the world,
05:48and what must be done going forward to ensure the United States of America remains the premier country in the
05:54entire world.
05:55Those standards of what we are teaching our children, they're being compromised by foreign influence.
06:04Just one example.
06:06Austin Independent School District accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Qatar
06:10to support Arabic language and culture instruction.
06:14Other school districts created Confucius classroom programs affiliated with the Chinese government-backed entities.
06:21We cannot condone the quiet indoctrination of our children in the classroom.
06:29In addition to that, I am proposing legislation to prohibit public schools from accepting gifts or money or property from
06:38foreign sources
06:38or entering into partnerships or financial agreements with a foreign source.
06:44And while we're at it, I'm also calling for legislation that will also put a total ban on H-1B
06:53workers in Texas public schools.
06:56Exactly zero Texas public school employees should be here on H-1B visas.
07:02This expands on my prior directive freezing new H-1B visa petitions in all state agencies and all state universities.
07:11Bottom line is this, foreign influence of any kind has no place in our classrooms.
07:18We will achieve that goal.
07:20To explain more about that, I'm now going to have Kate Barley tell you what she has developed herself.
07:28Thank you, Governor.
07:30The pattern is extremely clear when looking at foreign influence in Texas education.
07:35For example, in the higher education realm, it's way easier to track the dollars and where the research is going.
07:41K-12, it's a little bit of a different story because there's different reporting.
07:45There's not as many reporting mechanisms in place.
07:48However, the pattern is extremely clear.
07:51Our adversaries, they target our K-12 schools through soft power through our language and culture programs.
08:01And it's essentially a black box right now.
08:03We don't know the extent of foreign influence other than the occasional news stories that pop up
08:08or the series of public information requests that we will send out or other policy organizations will send out as
08:14well.
08:15So going to Austin ISD as one example.
08:19Again, there are many examples of different ISDs partnering with Qatar Foundation International for these language and culture programs.
08:27This always comes with strings attached.
08:29When talking about language, they promote Arabic language.
08:34Not to mention, our kids, they need to learn how to read on grade level in the first place.
08:39There's a lot of work that we need to do here.
08:42So there's one part of that.
08:44But the culture program, the more benign forms of culture are things that you would think like sports or entertainment
08:50or food.
08:51This is not what we're talking about.
08:52And this is not what's taking place in public school classrooms in Texas.
08:57We sent a series of public information requests along with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
09:02and have uncovered some very alarming extremist information that is going on in Texas public classrooms.
09:10For example, in a second grade classroom in Austin ISD, they had a greeting card activity where students,
09:17they were required to make a greeting card and publicly praise the Prophet Muhammad.
09:23And students were instructed to attach a cutout of Kaaba, which is Islam's holiest site, to the card.
09:31Now, I forgot to mention earlier, this is an important piece, that through these public information requests,
09:37Austin ISD came back and said this would cost $50,000 to hire a translator for this.
09:44There was so much Arabic material that they couldn't even translate it themselves.
09:48So this is one example.
09:50There's other charter school network that is part of the Salafi network that my colleague Sam Westrop will touch on.
09:57And this also is infested with this radical Islamist ideologies that these kids are being taught.
10:06Photos that were published by that charter school's parent-teacher organization had included Palestinian flags that the children had written.
10:15In the Palestinian heart, at least, there is no Israel.
10:19And then also, there's a teacher at this same charter school who had provided warnings against interfaith dialogues with Jews.
10:28So, there is no circumstance in which it is acceptable that Texas children should be indoctrinated with radical Islamist ideologies
10:36in Texas schools.
10:37We're a creedal nation.
10:39And there are ideas that we share and principles that we share.
10:45And we're not united by blood and soil, but by those principles.
10:48And when we have radical Islamists coming in to subvert those principles, we need to take action.
10:53And thank you to Governor Abbott for taking a huge step on this.
10:58Thank you, Kate.
10:59And now, Sam Westrop.
11:01Thank you very much.
11:03I'm a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and I also run the counter-Islamist program at the
11:08Middle East Forum.
11:09The recent designation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood at the federal level and the state level of the Muslim Brotherhood
11:16was an important step.
11:18Groups tied to this movement have been working to influence both public education bodies in Texas for the past many
11:25years, while also setting up private educational infrastructure as well.
11:30One group, closely linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, openly provides scholarships for students of both K-12
11:36and higher education spaces with the explicit purpose, and I quote the founder,
11:40to replace the people in power, to get kids into a position where they can replace the people in government,
11:44replace the people in the universities, replace the people in the schools.
11:48These are extremist networks.
11:50But the Muslim Brotherhood is just one of seven Islamist networks operating across Texas today.
11:56I'm glad there's been a focus on the Brotherhood, but we also should look at how these other networks are
12:00also working to exploit, to infiltrate, to sabotage and miseducate a new generation of young Texans.
12:07Groups like Jamaati Islami, heavily based down in Houston, linked to a South Asian movement responsible for acts of mass
12:13killing during the 1971 Bangladesh war,
12:15and today involved in terrorism across Kashmir and Pakistan.
12:18The Salafi movement, headquartered in Texas, is building schools, setting up charter schools such as the Menara Academy, and involved
12:26with all sorts of radicalization initiatives.
12:30The Deobandis, important South Asian movement, linked to the Taliban.
12:34They have madrasses down in Sugar Land.
12:36The Borelwis, they offset a group called Dawati Islami, whose members have carried out terror attacks in Paris, Pakistan and
12:43the UK,
12:43openly operates its US headquarters here in Texas, and again is involved in the education space.
12:48Foreign states, such as the Iranian regime, they have their groups like the al-Al-Bait student associations, openly involved
12:55in the anti-Israel pro-Hamas encampments in 2024.
12:59An Iranian regime controlled mosque, the Islamic Education Center of Houston, openly working to influence local education while running their
13:07own schools as well.
13:08And of course, my colleague has already touched on the case of Qatar.
13:11There are distinct, tangible, radical networks operating in this state.
13:16And for whatever the discussion may be about Islam or Islamism, the fact is that Islamist networks,
13:22linked to these foreign violent ideological movements, are operating in the state and seeking to exploit our public infrastructure.
13:31We welcome all the attention that can be placed on these networks.
13:35We particularly encourage any effort to inhibit the efforts of these radical networks to radicalize and miseducate the next generation
13:44of Texans.
13:46Thank you very much.
13:46Thank you for exposing all of that information that gives a roadmap to the Texas legislature about where we need
13:53to focus our attention to.
13:54For one, make sure that we are keeping our state safe.
13:57For another, to make sure we are keeping our schools a place where children are learning actually what we are
14:03designated that they must be learning as opposed to being indoctrinated by some of these very dangerous, radical ideas.
14:10We'll be happy to answer a few questions.
14:13Yeah, Governor.
14:14A number of these teachers were hired because school districts said they had trouble finding bilingual teachers.
14:18What do you say to districts who are now going to have to, I guess, find replacements for these people
14:24who may not be able to?
14:26I'm assuming you're talking about under the umbrella of H-1B visas.
14:29That's right.
14:29Listen, bottom line is this, and that is the H-1B visa program, which, by the way, is a federal
14:35program that the state has to deal with.
14:39And we're tired of the federal government not putting limits on who can come in under H-1Bs, and because
14:45of the federal government's failure to control H-1B visas, Texas is having to put our foot down.
14:50And that means making some tough decisions.
14:53But the tough decision I'm making right now is no H-1B visa applicants in our Texas public schools.
14:59We need to find Texans or Americans who can educate our students, period.
15:05Just a point of clarification, is this also applying to colleges and universities, or is the freeze the limit for
15:13that?
15:13Two things.
15:14One, the freeze that I've already directed remains in place.
15:18Today, our focus is on K-12.
15:20They'll come a time later on in the next week or two when we talk about higher ed.
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