Texas Bills Explained

2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

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2025 · Regular session · Senate bill

SB57

SB57 strengthens school emergency planning for students and staff with disabilities or impairments.

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Official caption: Relating to provisions and plans by public schools to ensure the safety of individuals with disabilities or impairments during a mandatory school drill or a disaster or emergency situation.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists Senate author(s): Zaffirini. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.

Bill highlights

Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.

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What does it do?

SB57 strengthens school emergency planning for students and staff with disabilities or impairments. Signed June 20, 2025, it took effect that day. It builds on existing school-safety duties rather than creating emergency plans from scratch. Official history; final law.

The education commissioner must adopt recommendations for mandatory-drill accommodations for students with an individualized education program (IEP) or a Section 504 disability-accommodation plan. The commissioner must also establish guidelines covering documentation in emergency plans, communication between campus administrators and staff, and communication with the district’s safety committee. Districts must follow those guidelines when adopting and carrying out their emergency plans. The commissioner must consult the Texas School Safety Center, regional service centers, relevant educators and administrators, and disability advocacy groups.

School safety committees must include at least two superintendent designees—one classroom teacher and one special-education administrator—subject to the law’s “greatest extent practicable” qualification. Their planning must address recommended student accommodations. The law retains regular meeting requirements and adds meetings as necessary for accommodation-related updates. Discussions of information about a student’s IEP or Section 504 plan must occur in a closed executive session; the committee otherwise remains subject to open-meetings law and public notice requirements.

The bill set June 1, 2026 as the rule-adoption deadline. A later Texas Register adoption notice identifies an implementing amendment to the mandatory-school-drill rule, effective July 26, 2026. That rule applies to school districts and open-enrollment charter schools and requires students with access and functional needs to participate in required drills with equal access to safety. It requires review of plans, local documentation and sharing of accommodations, and emergency-plan updates that avoid personally identifying student information. These are later rule details, not wording added to the bill. Adopted rule and effective date.

What changed along the way?

The introduced bill proposed a new Section 29.0052 requiring student IEP/Section 504 teams to consider drill needs and recommend accommodations. The Senate substitute changed “recommend” to “specify the required” accommodations, required commissioner rulemaking, and moved the deadline from December 1, 2025 to June 1, 2026. The engrossed and House committee operative texts retained that approach. Text versions.

The one indexed floor amendment, adopted in the House May 26, removed proposed Section 29.0052 and its 2026–27 school-year start. It replaced that approach with commissioner recommendations and documentation/communication guidelines, and added the safety-committee membership, planning, meeting and closed-session changes. The Senate concurred May 30. The proposed requirement to specify accommodations within the student-plan process is therefore not an enacted SB57 requirement. This does not erase duties imposed by other disability laws or later rules. Amendment index; Full adopted amendment; Enrolled text.

For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.

Official bill versions

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?

The final-linked fiscal note, dated May 28, 2025 and labeled “As Passed 2nd House,” anticipates no significant state fiscal impact and assumes costs can be absorbed using existing resources. It warns that local education agencies may need to reevaluate accommodations and identify safety gaps and needs. The earlier notes reach the same broad conclusions; none supplies a dollar estimate for local implementation. Final-linked fiscal note.

Students and staff may benefit from planning that identifies assistance needs before a drill or emergency and puts the information in the hands of responsible staff. Schools face documentation, coordination, training and planning work; closed student-plan discussions protect privacy while requiring careful meeting procedures. The adopted rule also addresses accessible staging sites, evacuation routes, supplies and input from people in close contact with students. Neither the bill nor the fiscal notes measures injuries prevented or guarantees that every campus has implemented effective accommodations. Statutory requirements; Later implementation requirements.

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.