It's an election year. The best way to ensure sound policy-making in your state's upcoming legislature is to have a say in who the policy makers are. 

In Texas, early voting for primary elections ends tomorrow, Feb. 25. Election Day is Tuesday, March 1. In a state like Texas, the primary election is sometimes even more important than the November general election, but voter turnout is critically low. 

Other states in Fellowship Southwest's region have primary elections in the summer. California and New Mexico are June 7, Oklahoma is June 28, and Arizona is August 2.

Whenever your primary occurs, whether it's right now, or later this year, we encourage you to consider the issue of public education when you vote. We've all seen how politicized public education issues have become in the past two years. COVID closures, student enrollment drops and learning loss are a few of the important challenges our public schools face. But there are also the culture war issues that dominate many conversations and school board meetings. We believe that voting for candidates who are committed to the business of delivering high quality public education will help our schools and communities overcome many real challenges.

For a great conversation about this, listen to WFAA (the ABC affiliate in Dallas) podcast "Y'all-itics." The hosts recently interviewed Rev. Charlie Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, and Mark Wingfield, executive director of Baptist News Global. The episode is called "The Playbook to Take Down Texas Public Schools."

Pastors for Texas Children has a webpage with great resources available to you for getting you ready to vote.