Statehouse Express: Season 6, Episode 8

Things in the Senate and House education committees are winding down but there is still important work to do. Learn more from INPEA's John Elcesser. 

Transcript

Statehouse Express

Season 6, Episode 8

Hi I’m John Elcesser and welcome to the Statehouse Express! Just as March Madness comes to Indy, things at the Statehouse will be moving to madness very quickly. We found out today that the Senate Ed committee only plans to meet once more this session, and the House Ed committee is considering 2 more meetings. That means we will know very soon what bills are still in play. Some of our bills still must go through the Senate Appropriations Committee, where we always face challenges. Within the next few weeks the Senate will release its version of the budget. We are hearing that they might remove the universal choice component of the budget, but we have confidence that the House will ensure that it makes it back into the final budget. Stay tuned and be ready to engage. We’ll need your voice.

The education committees met on Wednesday and on the surface, they didn’t seem to have bills that would impact our schools significantly, but we did get thrown a few curve balls.

HB 358 was amended to remove the choice appeal. Rep. Behning explained that it was because the appeal language was also in HB 1515. Our concern is that HB 1515 is currently in Senate Appropriations and we are not sure how it will fare.

HB 358 was also amended to add a requirement that schools scoring below 70% pass rate on IREAD must participate in the Literacy Cadre if local funding is available. It also requires that those principals get a Literacy endorsement.

HB 365 was amended to include a mastery based education pilot for charters and traditional pubs.. It also calls for a Transportation and Facility Study and Pilot. Non-pubs are included in the transportation planning effort. There was significant discussion and testimony on this amendment. Public school advocates expressed concerns that it was usurping power from their local school boards. The bill was held until next week.

On the Senate side, HB 1002 the deregulation or clean-up bill faced numerous amendments. The one amendment that we found ironic was an amendment that changed previous legislation around AEDs from a may provision to a shall provision, hence adding a regulation to a deregulation bill. Go figure!

HB 1326 was held. This is the bill that extended SGO funding to 3 year olds and removed the financial eligibility component. In speaking to the chair of the committee after the meeting he seemed to have some concern with both provisions. We suggested some alternatives which he considered. I guess we will find out more next week. The financial eligibility can always be included in the budget. That’s where we originally thought it should be.

HB 1660 passed out of the committee unanimously. It allows participating in FFA activities to be an excused absence. And HB 1376 which also passed 13-0 expands the definition of emergency medication, specifically a broader definition Narcan.  

On the federal front, we have been getting some questions about the federal tax credit legislation, ECCA. With a republican administration and slight republican majorities in both houses of congress, the attention on a federal tax credit program has visibly increased. There has been significant interest in blue states who don’t have school choice and may never have it. There is still some questions about how it will function n states who already have a tax credit scholarship program. We are including a one pager which provides a summary of the proposed program. Because the majorities in the House in Senate are razor thin, passage by no means is a given.