[Excerpt]

San Antonio ISD officials during a Tuesday night meeting struggled to answer basic questions from concerned parents about curricula, sports and transportation options for students at three campuses the district recently handed over to an out-of-state charter operator.

Hosted by the watchdog group COPS/Metro, the forum was arranged so SAISD could address parents’ concerns that the district is privatizing public campuses. However, some attending the gathering said they left with more questions than answers…

As the San Antonio ISD (SAISD) and Edgewood ISD Boards consider relinquishing four neighborhood campuses to Colorado-based charter operator Third Future Schools, COPS/Metro leaders and members showed up in force to testify at SAISD—uncovering the power dynamics at play, raising urgent concerns, and putting forward clear demands to protect families.

Once again, Valley Interfaith leaders and allies organized to stop a multi-million dollar tax break for Texas LNG, a billion-dollar company seeking to build a natural gas facility at the Port of Brownsville. 

After the company applied for a $160 million tax abatement from Port Isabel ISD, leaders met with trustees, educated community members, and testified at the school board meeting. Following the testimony, the board unanimously rejected the application.

SAISD voted unanimously to close Carvajal Elementary, a 76-year old West Side school serving families in one of San Antonio’s poorest zip codes. While the closure disrupts hundreds of families, COPS/Metro leveraged SAISD’s commitment of $28.6 million in bond funds to build a new, modern K–8 school on the West Side.

The Metropolitan Organization of Houston (TMO) is mobilizing communities across Harris County to win what voters already approved: a critical expansion of Ben Taub Hospital that would add 100 new patient rooms and relieve dangerous overcrowding at one of Houston’s most essential emergency care facilities.

For generations, residents on San Antonio’s Southeast Side have grappled with robberies, shootings, and acts of violence in their neighborhoods and in front of institutions like St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church. After years of organizing, COPS/Metro celebrates a major victory - the groundbreaking of the new South Flores Police Substation to serve the Southeast Side community. This new facility will be the first police substation built in San Antonio in 30 years.

Despite the City of Austin's goal of having a park within a 10-minute walk of every resident, there’s a stark difference between the trails and outdoor space enjoyed by wealthy residents and the unmarked lots in under-resourced neighborhoods. This divide became tragically clear during the pandemic, when East and South Side residents faced higher COVID-19 death rates and lacked local outdoor infrastructure for safe social distancing and community building.

To tackle this persistent issue, Central Texas Interfaith (CTI) launched a city-wide listening campaign in 2022. This was part of the first national funding initiative in the U.S. dedicated to supporting community-based power-building to reverse green space inequities.

Credited by the San Antonio Express-News as "the loudest and most organized opposition" to a publicly-funded luxury arena on the ballot, COPS/Metro boosted voter turnout to historic levels and built leverage to negotiate project accountability and labor protections by holding the measure to a slim electoral margin.

In a recent Texas Public Radio discussion featuring prominent local reporters, journalists credited COPS/Metro with earning public trust and making a huge impact on the arena campaign—despite operating with a fraction of the resources available to pro-Prop B forces.

Texas Public Radio host and senior reporter David Martin Davies highlighted the scale of the financial mismatch:

“With very little money, they took on the Spurs… The Spurs spent well over $7 million for their star-studded saturation campaign, and they went toe-to-toe with them.”

Responding to pressure from The Metropolitan Organization (TMO), the City of Houston has issued demolition orders for two long-vacant buildings, one of which is a strip mall that has been abandoned for over 30 years.

In response to changes in immigration law enforcement and the upsurge in ICE detentions and deportations, Dallas Area Interfaith (DAI) is developing a legal representation strategy for people in detention.