"Hot button" issues including transportation and food safety occupied the major portion of center stage on this thirty-second day of the 2009 session of the Georgia General Assembly, and there was no legislation of major interest to K-12 education watchers tackled by either the House or the Senate. Nothing of major interest, that is, unless one counts the FY2010 Budget, which continued its inexorable march toward approval by the full House, said approval expected on Thursday. The House Appropriations Committee gave its "thumbs up" to the total budget document (consisting of the reports approved on the previous day by all the subcommittees), and all those items listed in GSSA's "Day Thirty-one" report were still included. Still the hot topic around the Capitol (at least in education circles) were the comments made on the previous day by Chairman Ed Lindsey (R-Atlanta) in which he suggested the possibility of as many as six teacher planning days being designated as "furlough" days during the 2009-10 year; most observers took those comments as a signal that, even with the availability of federal stimulus funds, the state revenue picture continues to worsen and furloughs might just be a necessity. These are indeed strange, strange times.
Action on the committee front continued on this day, as Senate committee members considered House bills and vice-versa. It was in the Senate that the biggest surprise occurred, as Senator Dan Weber's (R-Dunwoody) Senate Education and Youth Committee voted down HB 455, the bill intended to give local school systems until May 15 to notify teachers of their employment status for the 2009-10 school year. GAE spoke in opposition to the bill, and the final 4-3 committee vote in opposition to the bill caught most by surprise. Though it is likely that the bill may be "reconsidered," delayed action means that local systems now find themselves in the position of making employment decisions much more quickly than they had hoped, thinking that this bill would pass with little or no opposition. Also discussed by the Senate Education and Youth Committee (and, receiving "do pass" recommendations) were HB 300 (requires the distribution of information on meningitis), HB 555 (requires that local school systems to make unused facilities "available" to charter schools), and HB 149 (the "Move on When Ready" Act).
On the House side, all the action was in subcommittee. The Academic Achievement Subcommittee of the House Education Committee met briefly and gave a quick "do pass" recommendation to SB 210, Senator Eric Johnson's (R-Savannah) bill seeking to make home-schooled students eligible for participation in the Governor's Honors Program. Soon thereafter, the Charter Schools Subcommittee conducted one of the most thorough and complete committee meetings of the session, as they spent over 90 minutes in discussion and question/answer with Senator Dan Weber over SR 153, his plan for "education improvement districts." In the end, no vote on this proposed resolution was taken, as the number of questions needing answers begged for more time and study.
Although the pace has slowed somewhat, legislators still seem to find the time to dream up and introduce new bills. Just introduced are:
HB 736 - would require local school systems to distribute to 6th grade girls information about the human papillomavirus
HR 642 and SR 595 - identical resolutions calling for study of RESA's
The General Assembly will meet on Thursday, March 19, for their thirty-third day of the session. |