While the state’s 89th Legislature is in session, The Texas Newsroom will be helping you get to know the people behind the politics. This story is a part of an ongoing series profiling Texas’ lawmakers in their own words.
A Texan her whole life, Rep. Lauren Simmons grew up in Houston’s Third Ward.
“That’s where I spent most of my life,” Simmons said. “I attended schools in the neighborhood. So, I always tell people I’m a very, very proud Jack Yates lion.”
She’s talking about Jack Yates High School, named after an African-American minister and community leader who was born enslaved in Virginia. He lived in Houston for the last three decades of his life.
Simmons says the majority of her family on her mother’s side are “very proud alums from that high school, and my son is actually a senior there now.”
While she was at Yates High, she participated in several extracurricular activities, including marching band.
“I played the piccolo and the flute, which I enjoyed so much,” Simmons said. “I taught myself how to so I could be in the band.”
Simmons also played soccer – she says she wasn’t quite an Olympic athlete but she was one of the top in her area, making the second team all-district one season.
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Outside of school she worked at Target, where she met her future husband.
“It’s a very, very silly story. He has a twin brother,” Simmons said. “His twin brother worked the day shift, and he worked overnight. I met his twin brother first. He said something that kind of offended me and then just walked away.”
At the time she didn’t realize the boy who’d upset her had a twin.
“When I saw the twin at night, I went up to him and I kind of chewed him out, and he said, ‘girl, I don’t even know who you are,’” Simmons said.
Eventually the two properly introduced themselves and began dating. Fast-forward to senior year: Simmons had chosen to go to the University of Texas at Austin. At first she thought they’d just break up. But he decided to move to Austin with her and find a job in town.
That was when her life took a huge transition.
“My freshman year of college, I got pregnant with my son, who’s 17 now,” Simmons said. “I had to grow up really fast.”
During that time she continued to go to college.
“I would bring him to class. I would pump at night so I could have milk in the daytime,” Simmons said. “We were not able to really afford daycare, so we had to be very intentional about our schedule. He worked overnight; I went to class during the day. It was really rough.”
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After graduation, she and her husband moved back to Houston, where she found a job working as a resident service director.
“I really, really enjoyed it. One, because I love interacting and engaging with people, but I would run into families that reminded me a lot of the situation I was in when I had my son,” Simmons said.
During that time Simmons welcomed her second child, her daughter, who’s now 10.
Simmons credits working in social services — and her job with the Texas State Employees Union as a union organizer — for opening her eyes to government. After learning more, she decided to speak out about what she was seeing.
“I went to a community meeting about the takeover that was happening in our school district, and I had a video that went viral just by accident,” Simmons said.
In that 2023 video, she criticizes the state for replacing Houston ISD’s superintendent and elected board of trustees with a new superintendent and board appointed by the Texas education commissioner. One post of that viral video has nearly 9 million views. While what she said that day didn’t change the outcome for Houston ISD, it did change the trajectory of her life.
“That took us on a whole different journey because we were getting interviewed all the time and we just went from being like these little, just a random kind of family that nobody knows or cares about to like every time my kid would get on like social media, he would see like an interview that he had done or that video would pop up,” Simmons said.
Now, she’s in the Texas House and says she’s making her kids proud.
“I remember my daughter, she was talking to her cousin, and she was like, ‘you know, my mom is like a boss,’” Simmons said. “‘She has staff, she has like an office and her name, it’s like outside on the wall.’”
When Simmons isn’t at the Capitol, she’s spending time with her family back in Houston’s Third Ward. Her son is graduating from Jack Yates High this year and headed to his mom’s alma mater, UT Austin, something she says she didn’t force on him.
“I want him to be happy, so I was really hands-off in the process but you know I don’t necessarily hate the idea that my big baby will be in Austin,” Simmons said.
So, if she wins her reelection, the pair could cross paths during Texas’ next legislative session in 2027.
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