The House Education Committee met this morning and considered the following bills of interest:
SB 1095 (Howell) requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Commissioner of Social Services to (i) convene a stakeholder group to consider the development of a statewide unified public-private system for early childhood care and education in the Commonwealth and (ii) collaborate to develop a uniform quality rating and improvement system with required participation by publicly funded early childhood care and education programs and voluntary participation by privately funded providers. The Committee reported and referred the bill to Appropriations 20-1.
SB 1141 (Favola) requires the Board of Education, in its curriculum guidelines for family life education, to include instruction on the prevention of human trafficking. Additionally, the bill requires any high school family life education program offered in a local school division to incorporate age-appropriate elements of effective and evidence-based programs on the prevention of human trafficking. The Committee reported the bill 20-2.
SB 1159 (Black) requires any family life education curriculum to incorporate age-appropriate elements of effective and evidence-based programs on the harmful physical and emotional effects of female genital mutilation, associated criminal penalties, and the rights of the victim including any civil action. The Committee reported the bill 18-3.
SB 1561 (Lewis) directs the Department of Education to coordinate with the Department of Environmental Quality to update the "Window into a Green Virginia" curriculum developed by the Departments for sixth grade science to include a unit on the benefits, including the energy benefits, of recycling and reuse. The bill failed on a vote of 10-12.
SB 1595 (Dunnavant) requires the Department of Education to establish guidelines for individualized education program (IEP) teams to utilize when developing IEPs for children with disabilities to ensure that IEP teams consider the need for age-appropriate and developmentally-appropriate instruction related to sexual health, self-restraint, self-protection, respect for personal privacy, and personal boundaries of others. The bill requires each local school board, in developing IEPs for children with disabilities, in addition to any other requirements established by the Board, to ensure that IEP teams consider such guidelines. The bill failed on a vote of 12-10.
SB 1728 (Newman) repeals the Standards of Learning Innovation Committee. The Committee reported the bill 17-5.
SB 1278 (Barker) increases from 540 hours to 990 hours the minimum instructional hours in a school year for students in kindergarten. The bill directs the Board of Education to promulgate regulations by July 1, 2021, establishing standards for accreditation that include a requirement that the standard school day for students in kindergarten average at least 5.5 instructional hours in order to qualify for full accreditation. The bill has a delayed effective date of July 1, 2021. The Committee voted to report and refer the bill to Appropriations on a vote of 17-4.
SB 1502 (Carrico) requires the Board of Education to authorize local school boards to offer as an elective in grades nine through 12 with appropriate credits toward graduation a course on the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament of the Bible or the New Testament of the Bible or a combined course on both. The bill requires the Board of Education to develop Standards of Learning and curriculum guidelines for such courses. The bill provides that the purpose of such courses is to introduce students to biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy. The bill prohibits students from being required to use a specific translation of a religious text when taking the courses and provides that such courses shall maintain religious neutrality and shall not endorse, favor, promote, disfavor, or show hostility toward any particular religion or nonreligious perspective. The Committee voted to report and refer the bill to Appropriations on a vote of 13-9.
SB 1586 (Suetterlein) requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to identify any survey, questionnaire, inquiry, or other communication that requires a response from a school board or division superintendent and to, in collaboration with any identified requesting entity, work to consolidate, as much as practicable, all such surveys, questionnaires, inquiries, and other communications in order to reduce the administrative burden of such response. The Committee voted to report the bill 22-0.
SB 1591 (Dunnavant) directs the Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety (the Center) to convene a work group to develop guidelines and best practices for the sharing of information between a local school board or public institution of higher education and law enforcement regarding a student whose behavior may pose a threat to the safety of a school or institution or the community. Such guidelines and best practices shall seek to balance the interests of safety and student privacy and shall be consistent with the provisions of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, as applicable. The bill requires the Center to develop such guidelines and best practices, report to the Chairmen of the House Committee on Education and the Senate Committee on Education and Health, and make such guidelines available to local school boards, public institutions of higher education, law enforcement, and the public by October 1, 2019. The Committee voted to report and refer the bill to appropriations on a vote of 20-0.
SB 1629 (McPike) requires each local school board to submit its plan to test and remediate certain potable water sources and report the results of any such test to the Department of Health. The bill was reported and referred to Appropriations 20-2.
SB 1702 (Stanley) creates the Public School Assistance Fund and Program, to be administered by the Department of Education, for the purpose of providing grants to school boards to be used solely for the purpose of repairing or replacing the roofs of public elementary and secondary school buildings in the local school division. The bill permits any school board in the Commonwealth to apply for Program grants but requires the Department of Education to give priority in the award of grants to school boards that demonstrate the greatest need based on the condition of existing school building roofs and the ability to pay for the repair or replacement of such roofs. The bill was reported and referred to Appropriations 20-2.
SB 1718 (Black) requires that the first reading diagnostic test administered in the school year to a student in kindergarten through grade three include age-normed and evidence-based phonological processing measures, including phonemic awareness and rapid automatized naming. The Committee voted to report and refer the bill to Appropriations 18-4.
SB 1746 (Wagner) directs the Department of Education to encourage school boards of school divisions that have a significant number of enrolled military-connected students to partner with the National Math and Science Initiative to provide such students with the tools and resources necessary to advance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning opportunities and career readiness. The bill requires the Department to provide technical assistance to any school board seeking to enter into such a partnership, upon request. The bill was reported 22-0.
SB 1275 (Black) requires any school board that offers a Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program to make the program available to any student who receives home instruction and resides in the local school division. The bill prohibits any such school board from requiring any such student to enroll on a full or part-time basis or to meet other eligibility requirements for such a program beyond those required of public school students. The bill provides that such a student may demonstrate compliance with any academic achievement requirements for participation in such a program in any manner acceptable as evidence of progress under the home instruction provisions of the Code. The Committee rejected an amendment, proposed by Del. Helsel, to remove the prohibition on requiring the home school students to enroll and clarifying that the program must be made available to home school students on a space available basis. The Committee did adopt an amendment to exempt public military-style schools from the provisions of the bill, which was intended to exempt the Franklin Military Academy. The bill failed 10-12. At the end of the meeting, Del. Davis moved to reconsider the vote on the bill, in an attempt to bring it back. Then Del. Davis moved to amend the bill to clarifying that the program must be made available to home school students as available in the "host school." The amendment did not, however, require home school students to enroll in order to participate. The amended bill failed again on a vote of 11-11.
SB 1713 (Vogel) requires the Board of Education to include in its training program for school bus operators safety protocols for responding to adverse weather conditions, unsafe conditions during loading and unloading of students, students on the wrong bus, and other circumstances, as determined by the Board, where student safety is at risk. The bill reported 17-4.
Finally, at the very end of the meeting, Del. Collins voted to reconsider the vote by which SB 1236 (DeSteph) previously failed to report. This was the bill that would have required school boards to adopt and implement policies to ensure that employees have equal access to education employee associations. The bill failed again on a vote of 11-11.
