As the thirty-fifth day of the 2010 session of the Georgia General Assembly began, the House Appropriations Committee gave its blessing to their version of the 2010 Budget (with no changes to the education portion which were reported on this site yesterday).  It will now move to the full House of Representatives on Wednesday (Day Thirty-Six) for certain passage before crossing over to the Senate.

The Senate met during the morning on this day, and their eleven-bill calendar contained no education-specific legislation.  Amid all the furor over whether raising taxes is good or evil, they did see fit to pass a bill (HB903) which extends certain hotel/motel taxes in the Atlanta area for the purpose of paying for a new stadium.

The House of Representatives gathered for an afternoon session, and they only addressed a calendar with three bills on it.  Included in that short list was SB 392, which requires educational institutions to verify that contract motor vehicle carriers are properly certified before using them to transport students;  the bill passed overwhelmingly.

Committee meetings were something of the order of the day, as both the House and Senate Education committees considered bills from the other chamber.  The House Education Committee met over lunch and gave "do pass" recommendations to the following from the Senate, all presented by Senate Education and Youth Committee chairman Dan Weber (R-Dunwoody):

• SB 239 -- deals with mandatory enrollment of students within a specified time frame
• SB 387 -- requires the Georgia Student Finance Commission to provide online career counseling
• SB 427 -- creates the Georgia Foundation for Public Education
• SB 457 -- creates a process whereby voters in a district could approve charter petitions
• SR 153 -- a reprise of Senator Weber's proposed constitutional amendment to create "education improvement districts"
• SB 521, which proposes a return to a higher level of reimbursement to local school systems for students who are dually enrolled with technical colleges, was the focus of much debate and discussion.  It was ultimately assigned to Rep. Tom Dickson's Academic Support Subcommittee for more work.

An afternoon Senate Education and Youth Committee meeting saw that panel give its "do pass" approval to the following House bills of interest:

• HB 1103 -- creates "clearance certificates" for educators in the public schools of the state
• HB 1307 -- suspends for five years the certificate renewal requirements for Georgia educators
• HB 400 -- this bill, which remains from the 2009 session, proposes a grant-based approach to school improvement, one where those school systems voluntarily participating would provide a variety of programs and student support aimed at getting more students to complete high school.  The bill has bounced around the General Assembly for two years now, always under a threat of a gubernatorial veto should it pass.  We shall see what its fate is this time around.

Day Thirty-Six of the session is scheduled for Wednesday, April 14.