On this fifteenth day of the 2010 session of the Georgia General Assembly, the House of Representatives gave their approval to HB 908, the much-debated bill allowing local school systems to have flexibility in the area of expenditure controls.  The version of the bill that passed the lower chamber provides the aforementioned flexibility for a period of three years, much to the consternation of House Democrats who argued that such relief should only be granted a year at a time.  In the end, though, the bill passed with the three-year provision and now goes to the Senate for their consideration.

Once again, the committee front was where most of the action of interest took place on this day.  Representative Terry England (R-Winder) called to order his K-12 Education Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to hear and vote on their recommendations re: the FY2010 Amended Budget.  There were few changes from the Governor's recommendations (though his recommended $17 million cut to the equalization grant was restored), and this subcommittee's unanimously-recommended product now goes to the full House Appropriations Committee for action on Wednesday.  It is expected that the full House of Representatives will vote on the FY2010 Amended Budget on Thursday and that the Senate may wind up its version of that key document by the end of the following week.    

Shortly afterward, Representative Tom Dickson (R-Cohutta) convened his Academic Support Subcommittee of the House Education Committee to hear testimony and act on five bills.  They were:

• HB 937 -- Representative Larry O'Neal's bill seeking to "grandfather" school board members currently in office who might otherwise be ineligible to run for another term thanks to the nepotism provisions included in last year's HB 251.  This bill was given a unanimous "do pass" recommendation by the subcommittee.
• HB 977 -- Representative Ed Rynders' bill attempting to force local boards of education to hold public hearings if they choose to give pay raises to administrators during years when teachers are furloughed.  This bill passed with two dissenting votes.
• HB 936 -- Representative Paul Battles presented his first-ever bill calling for school bus replacement funds to be used for school bus refurbishment.  His bill received a "do pass" recommendation with no dissenting votes.
• HB 925 -- Representative Tommy Benton presented this bill seeking to remove the requirement that certified mail be used when schools notify parents of their students' attendance problems (First class mail would be the choice.).  After some discussion, this bill was the recipient of a unanimous "do pass" vote.
• HB 966 -- Well, everything couldn't go smoothly, it appears, as Representative Tom Dickson presented this bill for its actual sponsor, Fran Millar.  The bill seeks to ensure that school districts do not have to count trailers as "available space" when dealing with transfer requests based on last session's HB 251.  The bill's sponsor, Alisha Thomas-Morgan, objected quite strenuously, and after considerable debate, further action on this bill was tabled.  This author predicts that the last has not been heard from this political dust-up.

Still later in the afternoon, Chairman Dan Weber (R-Dunwoody) called to order his Senate Education and Youth Committee.  The agenda for this meeting had originally called for discussion of SB 352 and action on two more bills.  Due to a series of circumstances, the "action" part had to be postponed, but there was a full discussion and testimony on SB 352, which calls for a school grading system of A, B, C, D, and F.  This bill is based largely on Florida's school grading system and, in spite of early testimony during this hearing, would not suffice as a replacement for the current system of determining adequate yearly progress.  In fact, what this bill would create is a parallel school grading system based on the aforementioned letter grades (This bill does not consider subgroups.) while adequate yearly progress would still have to be determined and announced separately (as has happened in Florida).  A strength of the bill is that it seeks a "growth model" of determining student and school progress, and most education groups have standing positions in favor of such a method of assessing student progress.  A weakness, though, is that it seeks to use the current state testing program to determine growth, and those with even a moderate level of familiarity with testing know that Georgia's testing program could not accommodate such a change easily or inexpensively.  And, as might be suspected, the devil of such a plan is always in the details, and the details of the plan in this bill (and, in its mirror bill in the House, HB 1100) are quite "devilish."  Stay tuned on this one, as its sponsor is the President Pro-tem of the Senate.

GSSA staff has had time to take a look at the Governor's legislation seeking merit pay for Georgia teachers, and that bill is SB 386.  Readers are encouraged to look at this bill, read GSSA's summary, read the bill for yourself, and decide if the intentions of this bill are clear at this point.  Most readers leave a reading of the bill with as many questions as answers, and Capitol-watchers expect that those questions will make for some interesting committee hearings when this bill comes up.

Day sixteen of the 2010 session is set for Wednesday, February 9.