A Texas House interim report shines a light on teacher workforce problems in Texas ahead of a possible October special session in Austin on education issues. “Texas has seen a growing overall attrition rate–now at an all-time high,” wrote members of the select committee on Educational Opportunity and Enrichment. Last year, Governor Abbott convened a task force to look for ways to keep and train teachers. The select-committee members wrote their recommendations have not been heeded by state lawmakers. For years Amber Shields worked as an elementary school teacher in Dallas, eventually becoming a campus principal. She saw many colleagues leave and believes one reason is the number of hours they had to spend preparing work materials on their personal time. “Teacher burnout and the amount of time they’re required to spend working on their profession after they leave for the day,” Shields said. Shields is now a director of Early Matters Dallas, a coalition aiming to boost the outcomes of young students in North Texas. “If we could reduce the amount of time teachers are spending finding the resources, creating resources, that can help people to stay in the profession,” Shield said. Lawmakers passed…

A late-night appeal from the Texas Attorney General’s office has paused an injunction that exempted people with medically complicated pregnancies from the state’s abortion ban. The state appealed directly to the Texas Supreme Court to stop “an activist Austin judge’s attempt to override Texas abortion laws,” First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster said in a statement. The stay of the injunction will remain in effect until the Texas Supreme Court makes a decision on the appeal. Travis County Judge Jessica Mangrum issued the short-lived injunction Friday evening, exempting Texans from the state abortion ban if they have medical conditions that complicate pregnancy or if their fetus has a condition that makes it unlikely to survive after birth. Two weeks prior, four Texas women testified in Austin about abortions they were denied or forced to delay under the state’s ban on the procedure. Texas’ abortion trigger ban, which went into effect last August, outlaws abortions in all cases except for those that threaten the life of a pregnant patient. But the original exemption for medical emergencies created uncertainty among physicians about whether and when they could provide abortion care, Mangrum said in the ruling. Doctors who perform abortions can face up to life in prison, a $100,000…

If you’ve got writer’s block, UT Austin has the program for you. The University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center for Writers has unveiled the Steinbeck Writers Retreat, an opportunity for writers to live and write at Nobel and Pulitzer-prize-winning author John Steinbeck’s former residence. Steinbeck is famous for a number of iconic works, most notably “Of Mice and Men,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Tortilla Flat,” and “East of Eden.” Sitting on the East Coast in Sag Harbor, New York, the home is where Steinbeck wrote his two final books and where he learned he’d won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat will allow writers the breathing room to unlock their creativity in one of the most inspiring settings on the East Coast as they walk in the steps of one of time’s greatest authors, John Steinbeck.UT President Jay Hartzell, in a statement While writers stay and write at the residence, they will also deliver public readings, workshops and work with Michener Center students. The residencies will be available to writers of fiction, poetry, plays, and scripts that are at different stages of their careers. They will also be offered to alumni of the UT Austin…