Several
committees and subcommittees convened this today including the Senate Education
and Health committee. Pat, Stacy and I split up to ensure coverage on all of
the bills that VSBA is tracking. Below is a summary of actions from the Senate
Education and Health committee.
SB998
(Stuart) required each local school division to establish a management plan for
the implementation and compliance of its policies and procedures regarding the
identification of suspected concussions in student-athletes. The bill was
passed by indefinitely with the chairman of the committee sending a letter to
the Commission on Youth to look at this issue.
SB1063
(Obenshain), relating to charter school personnel, was passed by indefinitely. This
bill allowed public charter schools to designate in their application whether
their employees would participate in VRS. Additionally, the bill required at least 75 percent of public charter elementary school
teachers to be licensed and at least 50 percent of public charter middle and
high school teachers to be licensed and specified that all teachers otherwise
be "highly qualified," as defined by ESEA.
SB1286
(McDougle) was reported unanimously from the committee. The bill requires each local school division to
publish the annual school budget in line item form on its website. Current law
does not require the published budget to be in line item form.
SB1339
(Smith) allows the clerk of each
school board to keep volumes of meeting minutes and receipt and disbursement
records, vouchers, contracts, and other official papers electronically.
The bill was reported unanimously from the committee.
SB1354
(Reeves) was reported unanimously with a substitute from the committee. The
bill requires the Department of Education to establish a process and local
school to identify newly enrolled student who have a parent in the uniformed
services. This nonidentifiable, aggregate data will be made available to local,
state, and federal entities for the purposes of enhancing funding and the
quality of services provided to these uniformed services-connected students. This
data will only be released as permitted under FERPA and will not be used for
the purposes of student achievement, the Standards of Accreditation,
student-growth indicators, the school performance report card, or any other
school rating system.
SB1369
(Norment) creates the Virginia Science Technology Engineering and Applied
Mathematics (STEAM) Academy as a private, nonprofit organization and a
statewide, publicly accessible, special, residential high school and
establishes the governing board of directors. Initially the bill required the
school to receive the state and federal funds of the enrolled student along
with the agreed-upon local share. Through the work of VSBA and several
education stakeholder groups this language was removed from the bill. It now
required the Virginia STEAM Academy with the Board of Education, Secretary of
Education, and chairs of the eight regional superintendents study group to
study various forms of funding available and submit a report back to the
committee before November 1, 2015.
SB1293
(Martin) removes the requirement to collect federal social security numbers
from a public school or home school student (or their parent) and prohibits the
Department of Education and local school boards from requiring a student (or
their parent) to provide their federal social security number. The bill also
requires the Department of Education to develop a system of unique student
identification numbers and requires each local school board to assign such a
number to each student enrolled in a public elementary or secondary school. The bill
reported unanimously.
SB1386
(Vogel) was reported on an 11-3 vote and referred to the Senate Finance
committee. This legislation requires every person seeking initial teacher
licensure or renewal of a teaching license with an endorsement in elementary education
to receive professional development training on the screening, intervention, accommodation,
and use of technology for students with dyslexia. This evening the bill
received unanimous support from the Senate Finance Committee.
We’ll be
watching floor votes on these bills and many others for the next few days.
Also, the House and Senate budgets will be released on Sunday afternoon. Check
back later for the most up-to-date information from the General Assembly.
