Subcommittee 3 met first and considered these bills of interest:
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 is particularly problematic because it 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. Because the students would not be required to enroll, the school division would receive no state or local funds for the additional students participating in the program. The bill initially failed but the subcommittee brought the bill up for reconsideration and voted to recommend reporting on a vote of 4-3.
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 subcommittee recommended reporting 8-0.
Subcommittee 2 met next and considered these bills:
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 subcommittee recommended reporting and rereferring the bill to Appropriations 8-0.
SB 1718 (Black) would require that the first reading diagnostic test administered in the school year to a student in kindergarten through grade three include a rapid automatized naming component and that local school divisions report the results of reading diagnostic tests, including subset scores, to parents. The bill also requires UVA to conduct a three-year longitudinal review to explore trends in the early detection of the risk of reading failure and subsequent reading outcomes. The subcommittee recommended reporting and rereferring the bill to Appropriations 7-3.
Subcommittee 1 also met and considered these bills:
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 subcommittee recommended reporting and rereferring the bill to Appropriations 6-1.
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 subcommittee recommended reporting the bill 8-0.
SB 1159 (Black) was amended to require that any family life education curriculum offered by a local school division include 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 pursuant to § 8.01-42.5. The subcommittee recommended reporting the bill 8-0.
SB 1218 (Newman) would have required, at a minimum, that certain SOL assessments be administered in high school. The bill has been amended several times over the course of this session. There was a motion to report a new substitute for the bill but the motion failed for lack of a second.
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 subcommittee recommended reporting the bill 4-3.
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 subcommittee recommended reporting the bill 8-0.
SB 1728 (Newman) repeals the Standards of Learning Innovation Committee. The subcommittee recommended reporting the bill 7-1.
