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A little more than half of Texas public school students are Hispanic (Austin American-Statesman photo, Jay Janner).
In a press release extolling a court decision, state Rep. Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas, said it’s a fact that Latinos "now make up the majority population in Texas."
He later conceded that as of July 2013, about 38 percent of the population was Hispanic. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of the state’s nearly 26.5 million residents at that time, 40 percent were white, 12.4 percent were black or African American and 4.3 percent were Asian.
Still, Latinos are approaching majority status. To our query, the state demographer, Lloyd Potter, said the majority of Texas residents will be Hispanic as soon as 2036 (if migration into Texas from 2000 to 2010 continues at the same pace going forward) or as late as 2049 (if population changes are due solely to in-state births and deaths).
As oft reported, Hispanic residents already comprise the majority of public school students. According to a March 2014 report from the Texas Education Agency, some 2.6 million Hispanic students accounted for 51 percent of the state’s more than 5 million students in 2012-13--and Hispanic students have been the majority in Texas schools since 2010-11, a chart shows. In 2012-13, white students made up 30 percent of public school enrollment, the report said, with African American students making up nearly 13 percent and Asians nearly 4 percent.
Read this fact check and others related to Austin and Texas getting bigger to the right.
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