The Legislature must address real issues affecting young Texans.

The Legislature must address real issues affecting young Texans and not waste time.

What happens to a society that ignores its obligation to nurture and educate its children? A recent Brookings Institution study suggests that those same children run the risk of growing up to be a lost generation — a generation without skills, without hope, without a bright future. Conducted by Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the study found a shocking rise in the proportion of working-class white Americans dying in middle age. White men with less than a high school degree, with few skills and even fewer job opportunities, are succumbing to deaths by drugs, alcohol and suicide. The authors call this disturbing phenomenon “deaths of despair.”

At first glance it may seem something of a stretch to link so-called deaths of despair to the choices Texas lawmakers are making as the legislative session approaches its home stretch, and yet the Lone Star State is home to a number of disturbing characteristics we ignore at our peril. For example, more impoverished children live in Texas than almost any other state. We’re also home to a huge percentage of children for whom English is a second language. These two elements alone offer challenges we have to address if we’re serious about building a bright and prosperous future.

As we suggested earlier this year, this legislative session could be labeled “the year of the child” given the number of issues lawmakers face that directly affect younger Texans. While Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, and other ideologues waste the Legislature’s time and energy on bathroom bills, a number of their colleagues, most notably House Speaker Joe Straus, are trying to maintain focus on the real issues affecting this state. At the moment, they’re still falling short on a number of issues, including school-finance reform and overhauling Child Protective Services, particularly its dangerously deficient foster-care system.

CPS is in crisis, and yet House and Senate budget writers, so far, have agreed only to pay for emergency pay raises and new hires. As Robert Garrett of the Dallas Morning News has pointed out, that’s only about a quarter of the new money that the Department of Family and Protective Services — the CPS parent agency — has said it needs in the next budget cycle to protect vulnerable children from abuse, as well as to provide care to elderly Texans.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Zerwas, R-Richmond, assured the Morning News that “we’re far from finished.” Let’s hope so, in light of the fact that Texas spends less than half the U.S. average on child protection and foster-care services.

In addition to school-finance reform, a challenge so complex it deserves a special session, lawmakers need to provide funding for Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature pre-K program. Revising their budgets last week, both the Senate and the House eliminated money for the initiative. The state is currently spending $118 million for the program in the 2016-17 school year, an amount that the governor wants doubled for the two-year budget that starts Sept. 1. After the miffed governor visited with state Sen. Jane Nelson, the Senate’s chief budget writer, her committee restored $65 million.

Child-related bills still pending include legislation sponsored by two Houston Republicans, state Sen. Joan Huffman and state Rep. Sarah Davis, that would increase access to maternal depression screening. State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, and state Rep. Rick Miller, RSugar Land, have introduced legislation designed to improve nutrition and activeplay standards in child-care centers. In addition, Watson and state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, have introduced legislation strengthening peer-support services for families of children with mental health challenges. These are the nitty-gritty types of bills that don’t get the attention of Patrick-empowered bathroom bills, but they are prime examples of lawmakers doing their jobs, of lawmakers representing their constituents.

Despite talk of tight budgets, we are not West Virginia or Kentucky or Mississippi. We are a state richly blessed with resources, including a rainy day fund that now contains $10 billion. The second largest such fund in the nation, its balance will grow to almost $12 billion by the end of the 2018-19 budget cycle. By using a small portion — as Straus has proposed — we can fix CPS, address mental health needs and pay for public education without reneging on other obligations.

Health. Hope. Skills. Education. Those objectives represent the backdrop of the work going on under the Capitol dome this session. For lawmakers willing to invest in the future, there’s still much work to do.