By Shaun White
Texas has launched the state’s first-ever HBCU Legislative Caucus, a bipartisan coalition dedicated to strengthening and advancing the nine Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the Lone Star State. Led by Representative Ron Reynolds, this historic initiative emerges as HBCUs face unprecedented attacks on diversity initiatives, public education, and academic freedom.
The formation comes at a critical moment as the Department of Education shutdown threatens institutions already receiving disproportionately less funding, resources, and support. These challenges directly impact Texas HBCUs, which generate an estimated $1.5 billion in economic impact annually while achieving remarkable graduate retention rates exceeding 70%.
The caucus will focus on advancing practical policy recommendations, including establishing per-student funding parity, protecting unique educational methodologies, developing innovation funds, implementing capital improvement programs, establishing collaborative research opportunities, and creating enhanced tax benefits for businesses supporting private Texas HBCUs.
The formation comes at a critical moment as the Department of Education shutdown threatens institutions already receiving disproportionately less funding, resources, and support. These challenges directly impact Texas HBCUs, which generate an estimated $1.5 billion in economic impact annually while achieving remarkable graduate retention rates exceeding 70%.
The caucus will focus on advancing practical policy recommendations, including establishing per-student funding parity, protecting unique educational methodologies, developing innovation funds, implementing capital improvement programs, establishing collaborative research opportunities, and creating enhanced tax benefits for businesses supporting private Texas BCUs.
As the caucus establishes its foundation, Texas HBCUs are preparing for the fourth annual Texas Historically Black Colleges and Universities Democracy Schools Conference Series. This year’s conference will take place at Huston-Tillotson University as part of its 150-year sesquicentennial celebration.
Organized by the Democracy Schools Alliance of Texas HBCUs, the conference brings together stakeholders committed to promoting expansive cultural practices and understandings of democracy and citizenship—principles at the heart of HBCUs’ historic mission during this time of “shrunken, legalistic and narrow ideas of democracy and citizenship, and extremism and polarization.”
The conference offers a full slate of events focusing on reclaiming the “citizen tradition” embedded in America’s founding documents and nurtured at HBCUs for generations. This tradition, critical in our polarized political climate, understands democracy as “the work of everyone” and citizenship as “an inclusive, responsive, and egalitarian way of life rooted in community traditions and institutions.”
