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Legislative Alert – Education Hearing on 3/2/23

By Dee Pettack | February 28, 2023

On March 2nd there will be a joint informational hearing of the Senate and Assembly Education committees on the subject of reading.  The informational hearing will take testimony from invited speakers only beginning at 10:00am at the state Capitol in room 412 East.  The notice for the informational hearing and the list of speakers is available here.  Coverage of the informational hearing will air on Wiseye.org.

The Assembly Education Committee has issued a notice that it will hold a public hearing on Assembly Bill 53 following the conclusion of the informational hearing.  The Governor previously vetoed this bill last session (2022 Senate Bill 585).  His veto message can be found here.  The Assembly Education Committee will also take public testimony on Assembly Bill 69, which was just recently introduced.

Legislative Reference Bureau Analysist of AB 53:

Beginning in the 2024-25 school year, this bill requires public high schools and private high schools participating in a parental choice program to collect statistics on violations of municipal disorderly conduct ordinances and certain crimes, including homicide, sexual assault, burglary, battery, and arson, that occur on school property or on transportation provided by the school. The high school must collect statistics about the crime or disorderly conduct only if 1) it occurred on a weekday between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.; 2) it is reported to law enforcement; and 3) a charge is filed or citation is issued. The bill further requires that the collected statistics be reported to the Department of Public Instruction and included on the annual school and school district accountability report. Finally, the bill clarifies that DPI may not consider crimes statistics reported by a school or school district for purposes of determining a school or school district’s performance on the annual school and school district accountability report.

Legislative Reference Bureau Analysis of AB 69: 

This bill requires each public school, including a charter school, to report any incident that occurs in a school building or on school grounds to local law enforcement. The bill provides that, if 100 or more incidents occur in and on public school buildings and grounds during a school semester, and at least 25 of those incidents result in an arrest, the school must, no later than the first day of the next school year, employ or contract for the employment of a law enforcement officer as an armed school resource officer (SRO) to work at the school. Under the bill, “incident” is a defined term that includes violations of state and municipal disorderly conduct laws and certain crimes, including homicide, sexual assault, burglary, battery, and arson. However, the bill provides that, for purposes of counting the number of incidents that resulted in arrest, “incident” does not include incidents related to use or possession of alcohol, cigarettes, nicotine, tobacco products, or vaping devices.

The bill also requires the Department of Public Instruction to reimburse a school board or the operator of an independent charter school that begins employing or enters into a new contract for the employment of a law enforcement officer as an armed SRO all of the following amounts: 1) 75 percent of the costs associated with the SRO for the 2023-24 school year; 2) 50 percent of the costs associated with the SRO for the 2024-25 school year; and 3) 25 percent of the costs associated with the SRO for the 2025-26 school year. Under the bill, the governor must allocate money received by the state under the federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to reimburse DPI for these payments to school boards and independent charter school operators.

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