Senate Charter School Constitutional Amendment Gone, the House Version Remains

In an interesting turn, Senator Obenshain’s Charter School Constitutional amendment was striken at his request. That end the life of the bill in the Senate, but the House version remains. Might the Senate be getting their votes lines up so they can take up the House bill once it gets to them? Who knows. We do know that there are members of the Senate who agree with local control of schools, including charters, so maybe we can stop this effort this year. If we do that, we get at least a year off from the fight as the bill won’t come up in the 2018 session.

Today we got official word that neither the House Appropriations Committee nor the Senate Finance Committee will include state support for teacher raises in their budgets. That is not good news. That will make it 8 out of 10 years that the state did not include support for a teacher salary increase. Contact your legislators now and ask them to include the state funding. Tell them your story.

Lots of action in the Senate Education Committee in the morning including action on the VEA initiated bill SB1476 on Hearing Officers. Be on the look out here for an update.