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March 24, 2008

House Ed subcommittee on virtual schools virtually done

The House Education Subcommittee on Virtual Schools convened twice today – once at 8:00 am and again at 2:30 pm – to see if they could hammer out a proposal. They are not quite finished yet but should be by tomorrow morning.

Working from SB 669, they have made several amendments.

Under the Senate bill, virtual schools would receive 114% of base state aid per pupil (BSAPP) and nothing more. The House is making several changes.

• Virtual schools would get 103.5% of BSAPP,
• Virtual schools would get regular at-risk and non-proficient at-risk weightings for any free lunch students in the virtual school providing the virtual school has an approved at-risk program,
• A separate virtual school fund will be set up in districts with virtual schools to better account for expenditures, and
• Additional savings from the above changes would be used to pay for gifted students from small school districts (greater than 200 square miles in area and at least 260 students) that do not offer advanced placement classes to take AP classes in a virtual school.

The last bit of language isn’t finalized but should be ready to vote on tomorrow morning.

House Education sends more bills to floor

The House Education Committee amended, and then approved House Resolution 6021 on dyslexia. This resolution calls on the State Board of Education to recognize dyslexia as a disability and to seek ways to provide early screening and identification.

Next up was SB 401, the bill on funding students receiving services in psychiatric residential treatment facilities (PRTF). The committee amended the bill to include Youth Residential Center II’s (YRCII) before being passed on to the full House. This amendment will increase the cost of the bill by about $2.4 million next year then reducing the increase to $1.3 million the following year. This is because a student in a YRC is counted as in the district’s regular enrollment and, when the student is moved to being funding like a PRTF, the district would get to count the student one more year due to declining enrollment weighting.

Finally, it was House Resolution 5039, the alternative certification resolution. This resolution was crafted by a subcommittee with help from education organizations including KNEA and representatives of teacher preparation programs. This passed without amendment.

Senate Education Committee deals with college text costs

The Senate Education Committee heard testimony on SB 678 regarding textbook pricing in higher education. Most of those who testified did so in written form only. There were two proponents and seven opponents. The bill seeks to control the ever increasing costs of textbooks to students in college. It will not be worked, but will be addressed by a conference committee. A similar amendment has already passed the full House and so is available for conference committee.

Tomorrow the committee will work SB 620 (Medicaid replacement aid), 646 (distribution of special education aid), 403 (university faculty of distinction), 415 (post-secondary deferred maintenance) and HB 2611 (leave time for classified employees of higher ed institutions). Committee Chair Jean Schodorf (R-Wichita) also said that she would place an amendment on one of the bills to require a reading class be taken by all undergraduates that would assist with the current reading problems faced by classroom teachers.

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