SB646

SB646 broadens mental-health professional student-loan repayment and raises the statutory assistance limits, subject to available funding and service requirements. It adds licensed master social workers, professional counselor associates, marriage and family therapist associates, and certified school counselors with at least a counseling-related master’s degree from a public or accredited private institution. It also adds service to Texas public-school students to the alternative eligibility route alongside state-hospital and local mental-health-authority services. Applicants must apply and complete qualifying consecutive service; a professional title alone does not guarantee an award. Sections 1–2.

The regular route requires one, two or three consecutive years in a state-designated mental-health shortage area serving Medicaid, CHIP or the specified juvenile/adult correctional populations. The alternative route requires one, two or three consecutive years of the listed Texas services, without that shortage-area condition. The act retains 33.33% of the applicable base amount for each of the first three eligible years. Sections 2 and 4.

The base limits rise from $160,000 to $180,000 for physicians with the specified psychiatric residency or board certification; $80,000 to $100,000 for psychologists and specified doctoral-level clinical social workers, professional counselors and marriage/family therapists; $60,000 to $80,000 for advanced practice registered nurses with nationally recognized psychiatric or mental-health nursing board certification; and $40,000 to $60,000 for the other specified licensed clinicians and school-psychology practitioners. The newly added professions also fall in the $60,000 tier. Chemical-dependency counselors have a new $50,000 tier if their license and most recent qualifying degree were received within the same 12-month period; otherwise the qualifying associate-degree-or-higher tier rises from $10,000 to $15,000. These are base program limits, not annual salaries or universal annual awards. Section 61.607(b).

Additional assistance is specified as $5,000 once for fluency in a locally needed language determined by the board, $10,000 once for practice in a county of 150,000 people or fewer, and $15,000 for each fourth and fifth consecutive qualifying service year. But all base and additional assistance combined is capped at 110% of the profession’s base limit. Thus a $60,000-tier participant’s overall statutory ceiling is $66,000—not $60,000 plus every advertised bonus. Available funds and qualifying loans also constrain payment. Sections 61.607(b-1)–(b-2); Retained funding limits.

Signed June 22, 2025, the act took effect September 1. Its eligibility and amount changes apply to people first establishing eligibility on an application submitted on or after that date; people whose first eligibility rests on an earlier application remain under the former law. Allocation changes start with the fiscal year beginning September 1, 2025. Sections 7–8; History.