Texas parents, teachers and school districts have eight more days to tell the state what they think of a rule that would require a school to call a parent within one school day when a student discloses certain things — a second chance that exists because the Texas Education Agency published the wrong web address the first time.
In a notice printed Aug. 14 in the Texas Register, the state’s official record of agency rulemaking, the agency said the link it gave for its own proposed-rules page was wrong in the introductions to two proposals. “As a result, TEA is scheduling an additional public comment period on the proposals,” the notice says. “The additional public comment period will be from August 14-28, 2026.”
The proposed new rule is carrying out Senate Bill 12, the parental rights law the Legislature passed in 2025. It sets out what a school must tell a parent about health-related and health-care services offered on campus, and how fast.
Under the proposal, a district must give the parent of every enrolled student written notice “before the first instructional day of each school year” of each health-related and health-care service offered at that student’s campus, marking which services a parent has to opt into and which a parent may opt out of. A change to those services — or to the monitoring of an individual student — has to reach the parent “within three school days” when advance notice is not possible.
School personnel must notify a parent “within one school day or as soon as feasible” when a student discloses something representing “an adverse change” in the student’s well-being. The rule names what it has in mind: disclosures “related to any sexual behaviors, behaviors involving unlawful use of substances, behaviors related to tattoos or permanent physical or body modifications, violence or suicidal ideation.”
The proposal also requires affirmative parental consent — an opt-in, not an opt-out — before a school may give a student a psychological or psychiatric examination, provide health-care services outside an emergency, or administer “a well-being questionnaire or health screening form.” It defines a psychological examination broadly enough to capture anything “presented or characterized as a survey, check-in, or screening or is embedded in an academic lesson,” which would reach the short classroom check-ins many campuses now use.
A school does not have to notify when “a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure is likely to result in the student suffering abuse or neglect,” and the notification duties do not displace the behavioral threat assessment process schools already run. District procedures, the rule adds, must not “encourage or have the effect of encouraging a student to withhold information from their parent.”
Jennifer Alexander, TEA’s associate commissioner, determined that for the rule’s first five years “there are no additional costs to state or local government, including school districts and open-enrollment charter schools,” and that the proposal would not require a principal or classroom teacher to complete a written report or other paperwork. The rule nonetheless attaches a one-school-day clock to a defined category of student disclosures and a three-school-day clock to changes in an individual student’s monitoring, obligations that fall on counselors, nurses and front-office staff.
The second proposal is a set of amendments to the state’s open-enrollment charter school rules, printed in the July 3 issue of the Register. The parental notification rule was printed June 26.
Comments close Aug. 28. TEA has set a proposed effective date of Oct. 18 for the parental notification rule and Oct. 25 for the charter amendments, and it is taking comment through an online form linked from its proposed-rules page — the page whose address started the problem.
A comment period reopened over a bad link is a small administrative event. What it buys is eight more days for the people who will have to make the calls to say what they think of the clock, before the commissioner signs it.