Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

AUSTIN - Jeff Garrison-Tate, who advocates consolidating and eventually closing the state institutions for the mentally disabled, called it "the Super Thursday of state schools."

But Susan Payne, who wants all the state schools for the mentally disabled to remain open, called Thursday an "attack a state school day."

Garrison-Tate, Payne and dozens of people who either want to reduce the number of state-funded institutions for the mentally disabled - known as state schools - or keep all of them open were at the Texas Capitol on Thursday because two legislative committees were considering several bills that could decide the fate of the institutions.

All the bills are pending, with the exception of one bill that was expected to be approved in the evening, and the separate debates in the House Human Services Committee and the Senate Health & Human Services Committee left no doubt that tackling the numerous problems the state schools have faced in recent years is going to be a major challenge for the 81st Legislature.

"We have 1,200 or so very fragile, medically needy Texans in institutions," said Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, who sits on the Senate Health & Human Services Committee and whose senatorial district includes a state school.

"We have another 3,000 individuals who might thrive in community based settings," Shapleigh said. "How do we transition Texans to this era of reform is what these bills need to address."

Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs, who chairs the House Human Services Committee, said his and the Senate's committee are taking a good look at all the bills filed, including two of his own, for a variety of reasons, including the recent U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the facilities.

The DOJ report, which Gov. Rick Perry received in December, said that 12 of the 13 state schools offered substandard care for its residents. A separate report for the Lubbock school two years earlier reached the same conclusion.

"We never adequately planned for where and how we provide services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities," Rose said. "In my opinion, we over institutionalize today's population."

Moreover, "doing that comes with a cost," he explained. "It comes with a cost because there isn't adequate choice in the system today."

Like Shapleigh and other lawmakers, Rose said his position on the schools has "evolved" in recent years because "of the dollars and cents and the common sense behind the idea of having a system that is well balanced that allows for adequate planning."

That pleased Garrison-Tate, president of a San Antonio-based group called Community Now! and father of a 19-year-old mentally disabled daughter who is not institutionalized.

Two or three years ago no legislator was paying attention to those who advocate consolidating the state schools in favor of smaller settings known as community-based homes, Garrison-Tate said.

"This is a very historic moment in terms of positive legislation that is going to call for a very serious long-term look at how we can rebalance the system and close some of the facilities we don't need," Garrison-Tate said.

But Payne and the members of her group Parent Association for the Retarded of Texas, or PART, said they were uneasy about all the bills under consideration.

"I feel like we are under attack by things on a lot of different bills," she said. "We are the minority."

However, lawmakers such as Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, are on Payne's side.

Jones said Thursday that if a bill to consolidate the state schools goes to the House floor, he will fight to defeat it.

Rose and Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, who chairs the Senate Health & Human Services Committee, said their panels would vote on the pending bills in future hearings.