State Agencies Undergo Sunset Review Process – Windham School District Within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Over the last few months, I have been outlining Texas’ sunset review process. The agencies I have covered include the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, the Texas Pension Review Board, Correctional Managed Health Care Committee, the Department of Information Resources and numerous others. As a reminder, in order to identify and eliminate government waste, duplication and general inefficiencies in state agencies, the Texas Legislature established the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission in 1977. The sunset review process is designed to review each of these agencies every twelve years. This review is done by taking up a certain number of the state agencies each session when the Texas Legislature convenes.
In last week’s article covering the sunset process, we examined the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs which is tasked with helping Texans to attain an enhanced quality of life by the development of better communities. One of the ways the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs works towards achieving its goals, is by acting as a conduit for Texas residents when it comes to accessing federal grant funds, which have been established for the purpose of housing and community services. In this week’s article we are going to look at the Windham School District which is within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The Windham School District is currently undergoing a partial Sunset review after the 82nd Texas Legislature placed it under a special purpose Sunset review to look at their structure, management and operations. The Windham School District was established in 1969 by the Texas Legislature for the purpose of providing educational, vocational and life skills programs to eligible offenders within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The school district was named after James M. Windham who served on the Texas Board of Corrections for twenty-four years. The Windham School District was the first of its scope to be established within a statewide prison system.
The Windham School District’s statutory goals are to:
- reduce recidivism;
- reduce the cost of confinement or imprisonment;
- increase the success of former offenders in obtaining and maintaining employment; and
- provide incentives to offenders to behave in positive ways during imprisonment
The Windham School District is overseen by the Texas Board of Criminal Justice which serves as the Windham Board of Trustees. The Windham Board of Trustees is a nine-member board which is appointed by the Texas Governor and is responsible for the general oversight of the school district and in charge of hiring the Windham superintendent. The superintendent serves as the chief executive officer and handles the management and supervision of the day to day operations to include the hiring of principals and teachers.
If you are interested in learning more about the Windham School District, you can go to their website at https://www.windhamschooldistrict.org/.
Some of the other agencies we will review in the upcoming weeks include the Public Utilities Commission, and the Procurement and Support Services Division of the Comptroller of Public Accounts which are also currently going through a partial sunset review process.
If you would like to learn more on your own about the Sunset Advisory Commission or other agencies undergoing the sunset review process, you can go to www.sunset.state.tx.us .
