The top local stories this evening from KERA News:
The clock is ticking on the state's special legislative session, only nine days remain. House Speaker Joe Straus and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who leads the State Senate, had a meeting Monday. It's the first time they met in person in six months.
Patrick and Straus have been at odds for quite some time now. One of the big sticking points? Patrick has pushed for a "bathroom bill" that would restrict transgender access to public restrooms. Straus opposes the measure. The bathroom legislation is one of 20 items on the special session agenda set by Governor Greg Abbott. So far, no bills related to the 20 special session agenda items have cleared both the State House and Senate.
Other stories this evening:
'Deferred Action' is going on tour. It's a political drama about the children brought to the U.S. by undocumented immigrant parents. They're called DREAMers. The Dallas Theater Center premiered the play last year as a co-production with Cara Mia Theatre. This fall, thanks to SMU's Ignite Arts/Dallas initiative and the Latino Center for Leadership Development, the play will head to SMU, Denton, the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas and then Houston and Los Angeles.
In public schools across the U.S., Native American students are disciplined twice as often as their white peers. Today on Think, Krys Boyd talked with Investigate West journalist Rebecca Clarren about how suspensions and expulsions contribute to high dropout rates.
- On Tuesdays, KERA's One Crisis Away project looks at life on the financial edge. Today, what teen pregnancy costs a young mom, and the community she lives in. New research breaks it down for Dallas County, from money spent on Medicaid for prenatal care to what it takes to investigate child abuse and neglect. As Courtney Collins reports, a North Texas teen pregnancy prevention program teamed up with UT-Southwestern to calculate the costs.
You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:22 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.
