Sarah Serpas joined Every Texan in 2024 as a Senior Research & Data Analyst. She brings over a decade of experience in participatory urban planning, demographic research, and community engagement. She holds a deep belief that if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Sarah grew up in dusty Midland, TX, and living in such a “boom and bust” town sparked her interest in population dynamics. She left the state to live and work in New York City, where she completed her undergraduate degree at New York University and earned a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute. She returned to Texas in 2018 and is currently pursuing a PhD in Applied Demography from the University of Texas at San Antonio where she teaches occasional classes. Two of her favorite courses to teach are GIS for Urban Studies and Social Demography for Public Policy. Sarah lives in San Antonio where she enjoys making jewelry, cooking, and tackling home projects with her wife (with very little help from their cats).
Song of the year: Joyride by Ke$ha
My surprising hobby: Jewelry making and metalsmithing
It’s been about a month since a state district judge ruled that the Texas school finance system is unconstitutional, saying it’s inadequate, inefficient and inequitable. The ruling came as no
Like taking your temperature, reporting the annual poverty rate is a broad measure of how economically healthy Texas families are. This week’s U.S. Census release showed a small but significant
Nearly 3,500 high-poverty Texas schools now have an opportunity to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students without having to collect cumbersome school meal applications thanks to a new
I know that I share with every parent a sense of hope for their child’s future. And with one of every 11 U.S. kids living in Texas, the opportunities we
A new report from the National KIDS COUNT Project shows that Texas is one of the toughest places to be a kid. The conclusion comes from crunching the numbers in
The Center for Public Policy Priorities is deeply saddened by reports of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children crossing into the United States, many detained by border security and then left to languish in
By Jeanie Donovan Nearly 3,500 high poverty Texas schools now have an opportunity to provide free meals–breakfast and lunch–to all students without having to collect school meal applications through a
Tuesday, millions of Americans dutifully filed their federal tax returns, but very few of us contemplate the connection to essential public supports that we take for granted in our everyday
We are thrilled to announce that Oliver Bernstein will be joining the Center for Public Policy Priorities in mid-April as Communications Director. A fluent Spanish speaker who has lived and
On December 13th, the Texas Finance Commission announced eight grantees for the Texas Financial Education Endowment (TFEE)’s inaugural round of grants totaling $250,000. TFEE, the first state-administered funding source for broad
