Tex. Conferees To Wrangle Over Governance Bills

By Lonnie Harp

Texas legislators last week began working six-day weeks to produce a final bill that would overhaul the laws governing public schools in the nation's second-largest state school system.

The House recently approved its own rewrite of the state education code on a 108-to-37 vote, passing a plan that followed some of the themes of a Senate bill approved about a month ago but also staking out ground of its own.

The House bill takes aim at the same target as its Senate counterpart: It seeks more policymaking authority and management say-so for the more than 1,000 school...