January 29, 2024
We have completed week 3 of the legislative session and last week we saw the House and Senate each release their initial budget proposals. While the chambers are similar in their K-12 education budget proposals, the differences amount to about $90million. However, the overall budget proposals are significantly different in other areas. We will have more budget information for you next week once the full proposals have been heard in each chamber’s Appropriations Committee.
Our team at GrayRobinson is once again providing us with our bill tracker. All of the bills we are tracking are listed on the report in numerical order. Bills that align to our platform are highlighted in yellow. A few of the bills to highlight:
- Rep Tomkow’s HB 1403 School Choice was heard in its last committee stop. This bill repeals the Hope Scholarship as well as attempts to streamline the process for distributing the scholarships, trying to overcome some of the difficulties families and schools have seen with the implementation of HB 1 this school year. This bill now moves to the House floor.
- HB 109 Charter Schools was heard in its first committee of reference – Choice and Innovation Subcommittee after being temporarily postponed last week. This bill would ease the requirements needed to convert a traditional public school to a charter school as well as allow a municipality to apply to convert all of the traditional public schools within its jurisdiction to charter schools. Much concern was expressed about the bill especially regarding the surplus facilities aspect of the bill. The bill passed along party lines.
