An Austin child care attorney has filed a report with the Texas Department of Family Protection Services after Judge Lina Hidalgo brought dozens of children to an August Commissioners Court meeting to advocate for early child care initiatives.
Lindsey Dionne, a family attorney and former employee of DFPS, said she reported two day care centers involved in the Aug. 7 debacle, which saw Hidalgo goad children into pressuring commissioners to approve a tax hike proposal for a tranche of early childhood programs. Dionne said that she was concerned some of the children were in foster care and that parents might not have been fully aware of the high-intensity political environment their kids were being thrust into.
“I just imagine that those kids, at least some of them, were in foster care, and that made me really concerned for how they were brought into this kind of situation,” Dionne said. ”I didn’t see parents. I just saw teachers with these groups of kids, and it didn’t seem appropriate for a field trip or anything like that. It just seemed like a chaotic political stunt.”…