Missouri City staff is looking to either close or renovate its animal shelter to address run-down conditions. 

What you need to know: At an Oct. 19 meeting, Missouri City City Council reviewed two options to provide temporary solutions to immediate needs of the shelter including ventilation and flooring issues, Director of Neighborhood Services Jerrell Horace said.

Officials will also consider building a new shelter as a more permanent solution in the near future, Horace said.

The options: Through option A, the city would close the shelter and transfer all its current animals to the outsourced animal shelter. Missouri City staff would still respond to calls and pick up animals.

Option B proposed an at least $215,00 remodel of the current shelter to address HVAC and flooring issues, Horace said. Staff would transport the animals to an outsourced shelter temporarily during the three-to-six-month remodeling process.

Looking ahead: City staff expects to hold a community engagement session in November to inform residents on the potential transition, Horace said.

Fort Bend ISD is in the early stages of adjusting the amount and purpose of technology usage in school.

In a nutshell: At an Oct. 26 meeting, Chief Academic Officer Matt Warford presented an overview of how technology is used in classrooms and discussed ways staff can improve its usage and limit non-instructional use.

The details: During the 2026-27 school year, district staff will focus on establishing new technology expectations through: 

• Reviewing guidelines and expectations to ensure people know when to use technology

• Refining practices and strengthening implementation while reducing passive or non-instructional use

• Researching surrounding districts

• Developing short- and long-term plans 

• Communicating progress and next steps to families

In the coming months, the district will also roll out a parent portal that shows parents the top content visited on their children’s devices and allows parents to report restricted use to the district, Warford said. 

Looking ahead: District staff will continue the planning process for the rest of the school year and will provide updates throughout the year.

The University of Houston will train teachers to ease a special needs teacher shortage and improve reading proficiency in students.

The big picture: UH’s Project BRIDGE will fully fund teachers’ master's programs in special education along with structured literacy certificates through an online program, according to an Oct. 22 news release.

Project BRIDGE, or Building Reading Instruction and Dyslexia Guidance Expertise, is funded by a $1.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs.

The details: The program lasts five semesters for each cohort, and UH plans to accept 42 participants through multiple cohorts in a five-year span, a UH spokesperson said.

Why this matters: Texas is one of 45 states dealing with a special education teacher shortage, which is the most common teaching field shortage among states, according to the Learning Policy Institute, an education research organization.

The program will also train teachers on the science of reading to improve student literacy as some Texas students are not reading at grade level by third grade, per the news release.