Today’s meeting
was the final committee meeting of the 2016 session. They took up two bills, both
of particular interest to VSBA. Below is a summary of the bills and the
committee’s action.
SB740
(Surovell) prohibits school boards requiring the
use of any electronic textbook in any course in grades six through 12 unless
the school board adopts a plan to ensure that by July 1, 2019, each student
enrolled in such course will have actual access at school and in their
residence to at least one personal computing device not shared with another
student that contains an operating system and hardware necessary to support the
format of each electronic textbook expected to be used in such course, and the
relevant schools will be equipped with the fiber optic or wireless broadband
connections necessary to provide adequate connectivity. The bill defines adequate
connectivity as fiber optic or other technology that is capable of delivering
bandwidth of at least one megabit per second per enrolled student. There was
extensive discussion on this legislation in yesterday’s subcommittee where VSBA
expressed concerns. In today’s committee meeting the bill was passed by indefinitely
and will not be moving forward.
SB734
(Obenshain) makes several changes to the provisions for the establishment and
operation of public charter schools, including making changes and providing
greater specificity regarding (i) the applicability of various laws,
regulations, policies, and procedures to public charter schools; (ii) the
contents of charter applications; and (iii) the procedure for executing charter
contracts and the contents of such contracts. The full committee
recommended reporting the bill on a 16-6 vote.
