Texas Social Work Board to Weigh Filling Its Empty Seat on Rulemaking Council Sept. 11

The Texas State Board of Social Worker Examiners will meet Sept. 11 to consider picking one of its own licensees for the state council that actually writes the rules governing social work — a seat that sits empty on the council’s posted roster.

The board cannot adopt a rule on its own. Under a 2019 law that folded four behavioral health boards into a single agency, this board proposes and the nine-member Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council adopts. Each of the four boards sends one licensee and one member of the public; the ninth member is a public appointee the governor names to preside. On the council’s current roster, both the social work licensee seat and the marriage and family therapy licensee seat are unfilled, leaving two of the four regulated professions without a practitioner of their own voting on the scope-of-practice, ethics and sanctions rules that bind them. The council can still meet; a majority of the nine is a quorum under state law. Whoever takes the seat serves only the unexpired term, which ends Feb. 1, 2027. The board’s own ninth seat is also vacant.

Enforcement takes up much of the rest. The board will consider four contested cases from the State Office of Administrative Hearings, naming Rashonda Lowe, Shalise Schnitz, Rachel Presley and Marcus Wade. Nothing about those four has been made public beyond their docket numbers: the agency does not publish the underlying allegations or the hearing records, the Dispatch could not obtain them before publication, and no findings against any of them are on the record. Separately, Courtney Hassler, formerly Courtney Pataray, is asking to renegotiate an agreed order she reached with the agency on a 2024 complaint; the terms of that order are not published either. A third item is an appeal by Lisa Lynette Graves of a license application decision.

The caseload behind those items is growing fast. Complaints filed against all four professions the council regulates rose from roughly 600 a year through fiscal 2024 to 803 in fiscal 2025, and the agency told budget writers it expects about 1,100 this year, in its request for the next two-year budget. Cases still open at the end of May stood at 878 across all four professions. The spring quarter’s numbers look like a backlog clearing rather than a crackdown: of 362 complaints closed, 348 were dismissals and 14 ended in a disciplinary order.

Also on the agenda: possible changes to the jurisprudence exam every Texas social work applicant must pass, and a report from the exam vendor. Watch whether the board fills the council seat or leaves it open again.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Jason L. Bernal — presiding member; New Braunfels; health care development executive.
• Katie Andrade — vice chair; Mt. Pleasant; master social worker.
• Korina Delapeña — Jonestown; public member.
• David T. Marsden — Weatherford; clinical social worker-supervisor.
• Quida J. Pryor — Sugar Land; public member.
• Jennifer Swords — Bedford; baccalaureate social worker.
• Lea Ann Tatum — Palestine; baccalaureate social worker.
• Marco A. Trevino — Edinburg; clinical social worker-supervisor.

Roster from the agency’s board page, cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases, including Bernal named chair May 5, 2026 and Trevino appointed September 22, 2025. The agency page lists eight of the nine statutory members; the seat last held by Brian Brumley, who chaired the board’s ethics committee as recently as its April 2026 meeting, is not filled on the posted roster. The agency page and the governor’s release give different cities for Jennifer Swords, Fort Worth against Bedford; the governor’s release is used here. The two sources also describe Jason Bernal’s current employer differently. Board administrator: Sarah Faszholz.