Texas lawmakers have decided that if you’re a homeless child, your trauma is now a suspendable offense.
House Bill 6 overturns protections that kept homeless students in school unless they posed a serious danger. Now? You can be kicked out for “disruption” — which, when you’re homeless, might mean:
Being late because you don’t have a stable ride.
Falling asleep in class because you slept in a shelter.
Having an emotional meltdown because life is chaos.
This isn’t discipline. It’s punishment for poverty.
From a Franciscan Clarean lens, this is the opposite of the Gospel. Jesus didn’t expel the broken from the table — He drew them closer. Texas is doing the opposite: If your suffering makes us uncomfortable, we’ll push you out of sight.
Let’s call this what it is: state-sanctioned cruelty that will shove more kids into the dropout-to-prison pipeline. We need to fight for restorative justice, trauma-informed teaching, and policies that protect — not punish — the most vulnerable.
Sister Abigail Hester 
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