Statehouse Express: Season 4, Episode 8

With two weeks left in the 2023 legislative session, catch up on what's happening at the Statehouse. We need our non-pub community to stay engaged!!

Transcript

Statehouse Express S4, E8

Folks, we are heading for the homestretch of the 2023 legislative session. In this episode, I’ll give you a general update on bills heard by the Senate and House Education Committees. In addition, this Thursday the Senate Appropriations Committee will release their version of the budget as well as hearing a variety of other education bills. I find it Interesting that the chairman held about 9 education bills until the last committee meeting of the session We’ll see how that plays out on Thursday. Word on the street is not to expect much from a choice perspective in the Senate budget. We’ll know for sure on Thursday. The hope for our choice expansions will reside in the budget conference committee. Our hope is that our friends in the House will continue to push for the expansions proposed in the House version of the budget. Time will tell. And as I have said in prior episodes of this podcast, any hope of getting the proposed expansions over the finish line relies in great part on you. If you reached out to your House reps and Senators in the past, please do it again. If you’ve never reached out in the past, now is the time to step up.

Last week, the House education committee heard three bills.

Senate Bill 72 authored by Senator Jean Leising continued her focus on cursive writing but with a different approach. It calls for a study of how schools are approaching the teaching of cursive writing. It passed out of committee 12-0.

Senate Bill 380 deals mostly with public schools. It does slightly change the definition of graduation by including alternative diplomas.

The Senate Education committee heard 8 bills.

• HB 1002 dealing with CTE ESAs. It’s a part of the plan of reinventing high schools. It passed out of committee 8-5. 
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• HB 1635 another bill with a connection to reinventing high schools passed out of the committee 8-4. This bill calls for a number of things including a change in the graduation rate definition, a change in the A-F system, a change in how ASVAB can be used for graduation. It would require that a student intend to enlist to use the ASVAB as a pathway for graduation. The bill also allows nonpublic schools to take advantage of adjunct teaching permits in effort to assist with teacher pipeline challenges. These adjunct teaching permits equate with licensure but only can used within the school that grants them. There are stipulations in the law as to who is eligible for the permit. 
• HB 1492 dealing with changes and expansions to the school safety grant program passed out of committee 12-0.
• HB 1483 deals with bullying but it only applies to public schools.
• HB 1558 deals with the Science of Reading grants but it also does not apply to non-public schools.
• HB 1637 passed out of committee 12-0. This bill increases the scholarship amounts for certain teacher ed scholarship programs. One criteria for the scholarship is to teach for 5 years in either a public, charter or a choice school. 

As bills move through the final stages of the legislative process, here are a few more updates:

• HB 1608  deals with human sexuality instruction and the use of pronouns and names not aligned with birth sex. Non-public schools have been in and out of this bill. We are currently out of the bill at our request. The religious nature of many of our faith based non-public schools communicate through their mission and values how those schools would address the issues identified in this bill.
• HB342 deals with teacher hiring. It requires expanded criminal history background checks for employment. It also clarifies categories of crimes or behaviors that would prohibit the employment of individuals in public, charter and state accredited non-public schools.

As you can see, it’s getting pretty hectic around the Statehouse. These next two weeks will be a blur, but as I stated earlier in the podcast in the midst of all the craziness we need you to be engaged. 

How you ask? Write, call or email your Senator and House Representative! We make it easy on our legislative action center. As we move to conference committees having a loud and clear pro school choice voice will be critical to any success this session. If you want other ideas on how you can help, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Buckle your seat belts and we’ll see you back here next week on the Statehouse express.