House Passes STEM HOPE Weighting Bill
The House passed HB 801 on Wednesday. The legislation allows the weighting of challenging STEM courses in Georgia colleges and universities to discourage students enrolled in those courses from losing their HOPE scholarship.
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House Academic Innovations Moves GHSA Bill and Landon Dunson Act Forward
The House Academic Innovations Committee met on Wednesday afternoon. They did not hear HB 814, which as on the agenda, but whose sponsor was not present. The subcommittee passed two bills.
The commissioner from the GHSA who was also present at the committee meeting also explained the incident to subcommittee members and said that the student was told to remove the sweatband before the race. GHSA's rule prohibits unapproved writings, mottoes, or unapproved markings, and GHSA has no rule either specifically allowing or prohibiting student religious expression.
Ultimately, the subcommittee passed the bill, which also contains a provision allowing non-GHSA schools to conduct scrimmages and practice games with GHSA-member schools that do not count toward region standing.
HB 614 by Valencia Stovall (D-Lake City), the "Landon Dunson Act," also passed subcommittee. The legislation allows for a pilot program to put video cameras in self-contained special education classrooms. School participation in the pilot is voluntary.
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... Meanwhile Senate Ed Committee Hears
But Doesn't Vote on Bills
While the House Education Subcommittee was meeting, the Senate Education met to hear several bills but took no votes on any of the legislation discussed, including:
- SB 309 by Sen. Burt Jones (R-Jackson) is very similar to HB 870 and relates to religious expression by student athletes and allowing GHSA and non-GHSA schools to scrimmage.
- SB 310 by Sen. William Ligon (R-Brunswick), aimed at continued unhappiness over Georgia's participation in the federal Race to the Top grant program, would prohibit state agencies from implementing K-12 competitive grant programs over $20 million unless the Georgia legislature is notified of (1) the long-term projections of unfunded costs resulting from the implementation of the grant for both the state and local boards of education, with projections covering at least three years after the expiration of the grant period, and (2) the impact on state and local education policy, including any resulting line of accountability or transfer of governing control of any aspect of education from state, and (3) all compliance mandates and policy directives associated with satisfying the terms of the grant, and (4) any laws that must be passed or rescinded to comply with the terms of the grant, including budgetary considerations.
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House Ed Passes Multiple Bills
The House Education Committee met later in the day Wednesday afternoon and passed both HB 870 and HB 614, adding a five-year sunset provision to the pilot programmed outlined in the Landon Dunson Act. The committee also assigned several bills to committee and passed HB 870 and HB 614 along with two other bills to the House Rules committee which will decide when or if the legislation will hit the full House floor for a vote.
HB 739 sponsored by Rep. Tanner (R-Dawsonville) would require local school districts to establish a review and recommendation process for locally-approved student instructional materials adopted or used by local districts and to post this information online on school and district websites. The posting requirements would not apply to supplementary or ancillary material such as articles, online simulations, worksheets, novels, biographies, speeches, videos and music. When presenting his bill to the subcommittee, Rep. Tanner said that his bill allows for greater public notice and transparency regarding locally-approved student textbooks.
HB 659 by Rep. Belton (R-Buckhead), a local school budget transparency bill, requires local districts to make available school-level budgetary data to the greatest extent practicable. Some members of the committee expressed concern about the staff time and financial resources necessary to provide the school-level budget data desired. Ultimately, the committee seemed to feel that existing law requires the information targeted by HB 659 to be made publicly available, so they moved the legislation forward.
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