SEARCH SITE
VIRGINIA LAW PORTAL
- Code of Virginia
- Virginia Administrative Code
- Constitution of Virginia
- Charters
- Authorities
- Compacts
- Uncodified Acts
- RIS Users (account required)
SEARCHABLE DATABASES
- Bills & Resolutions
session legislation - Bill Summaries
session summaries - Reports to the General Assembly
House and Senate documents - Legislative Liaisons
State agency contacts
ACROSS SESSIONS
- Subject Index: Since 1995
- Bills & Resolutions: Since 1994
- Summaries: Since 1994
Developed and maintained by the Division of Legislative Automated Systems.
2018 SESSION
Chairman: Stephen D. Newman
Clerk: Patty Lung
Staff: Thomas Stevens
Date of Meeting: February 1, 2018
Time and Place: 8:00 AM - Senate Room A - Pocahontas Bldg.
Patron: Edwards
Language development for children who are deaf or hard of hearing; assessment resources for parents and educators; advisory committee; report. Requires the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, in coordination with the Department of Education, to (i) select, with input from an advisory committee that the bill establishes, language development milestones and include such milestones in a resource for use by parents of a child from birth to age five who is identified as deaf or hard of hearing to monitor and track their child's expressive and receptive language acquisition and developmental stages toward English literacy; (ii) disseminate such resource to such parents; (iii) select existing tools or assessments for educators for use in assessing the language and literacy development of children from birth to age five who are deaf or hard of hearing; (iv) disseminate such tools or assessments to local educational agencies and provide materials and training on their use; and (v) annually produce a report that compares the language and literacy development of children from birth to age five who are deaf or hard of hearing with the language and literacy development of their peers who are not deaf or hard of hearing and make such report available to the public on its website.
Patron: Stanley
Public schools; robotics team competition program. Prohibits a public school from becoming a member of any organization or entity whose purpose is to regulate or govern interscholastic programs unless such organization or entity has, by July 1, 2020, established a varsity level robotics team competition program that includes regional, super-regional, and state championships.
Patron: Favola
Substitute teachers; duration of teaching period. Permits temporarily employed teachers to substitute for a contracted teacher for a temporary period not to exceed 125 teaching days during the contracted teacher's absence.
Patron: Edwards
Medically or ethically inappropriate care not required. Establishes a process whereby a physician may cease to provide health care that has been determined to be medically or ethically inappropriate for a patient.
Patron: Edwards
Prescription drug price gouging prohibited. Prohibits unconscionable price increases in the price of essential off-patent or generic drugs, authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Resources to designate drugs as essential drugs, and establishes an enforcement mechanism.
Patron: Stuart
Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program; eligibility. Extends the benefits of the Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program to the spouse or child of a veteran with at least a 90 percent permanent, service-related disability. Under current law, the spouse or child would be eligible for benefits only if the veteran's disability was incurred during military operations against terrorism, on a peacekeeping mission, as a result of a terrorist act, or in any armed conflict.
Patron: Suetterlein
Standards of Quality; staffing requirements. Provides that a local school board that is required to employ two full-time librarians for any middle school or high school may meet such requirement by employing two full-time librarians, or one full-time librarian and one full-time media specialist, instructional coach, personalized learning lab facilitator, content coordinator, or instructional resource teacher. The bill also provides that a local school board that is required to employ a full-time school-based clerical person for the library for any middle school or high school may meet such requirement by employing one full-time school-based clerical person for the library, for instruction, or for assessment or career planning, or by employing one full-time classroom instructional assistant.
Patron: Barker
Public schools; kindergarten instructional time. Increases from 540 hours to 990 hours the minimum instructional hours in a school year for students in kindergarten. The bill directs the Board of Education to promulgate regulations by July 1, 2020, establishing standards for accreditation that include a requirement that the standard school day for students in kindergarten average at least 5.5 instructional hours in order to qualify for full accreditation. The bill has a delayed effective date of July 1, 2020.
Patron: McClellan
Dispensing of certain controlled substances and devices. Authorizes a prescriber to dispense controlled substances and devices without obtaining a license from the Board of Pharmacy, provided that such controlled substances and devices have been prescribed for the purposes of reproductive health and are dispensed in good faith within the course of his professional practice. The bill provides that facilities from which prescribers dispense only such controlled substances and devices are not required to obtain a permit from the Board. The bill requires the Board to establish a list of controlled substances and devices that may be so dispensed that includes controlled substances and devices used for contraception, maternal health, hormone replacement therapy, and sexually transmitted and reproductive tract infections.
Patron: Marsden
Public schools; tobacco products and nicotine vapor products. Requires each school board to (i) develop and implement a policy to prohibit the use of tobacco products and nicotine vapor products on a school bus, on school property, or at a school-sponsored activity and (ii) include in its code of student conduct a prohibition against possessing tobacco products or nicotine vapor products on a school bus, on school property, or at a school-sponsored activity.
Patron: Cosgrove
Electronic Death Registration System; implementation. Requires the Division of Vital Records and the Department of Health to work with any teaching hospital that is located in the Commonwealth and associated with a public institution of higher education or medical school to fully implement, by April 15, 2018, the Electronic Death Registration System. The bill requires such hospitals to utilize the system for all deaths occurring within any such hospital's facilities. The bill requires the Division of Vital Records to report on the implementation to the Chairmen of the House Committees on Appropriations and Health, Welfare and Institutions and the Senate Committees on Finance and Education and Health by April 15, 2018. The bill contains an emergency clause.
EMERGENCY
Patron: Peake
Statewide cancer registry; information on firefighters. Requires that the information physicians report on a patient diagnosed with cancer to the statewide cancer registry include information, with the patient's consent, regarding the patient's work history as a firefighter, if any, including (i) his status as a volunteer, paid on-call, or career firefighter; (ii) the number of years on the job; and (iii) a measure or estimate of the number and type of fire incidents attended. The bill also provides that one purpose of the statewide cancer registry is to collect data to evaluate potential links between exposure to fire incidents and cancer incidence.
Patron: McClellan
Death certificates; electronic filing required. Requires a death certificate, for each death that occurs in the Commonwealth, to be electronically filed with the State Registrar. Under current law, death certificates may be filed electronically or nonelectronically.
Patron: Spruill
School board of the City of Norfolk; salaries of appointed members. Eliminates the cap on the annual salary that the school board of the City of Norfolk may pay its appointed members. Beginning July 1, 2018, all members of the school board of City of Norfolk will be elected members. Salaries of elected school board members are subject to the same limitations as members of local governing bodies.
Patron: Stuart
School personnel; staffing ratios; school nurses. Excludes school nurse positions from requirements for student support positions and instead requires each local school board to employ at least one full-time equivalent school nurse position in each elementary school, middle school, and high school in the local school division or at least one full-time equivalent school nurse position per 550 students in grades kindergarten through 12.
Patron: Newman
Education preparation programs; reading specialists; dyslexia. Requires each education preparation program offered by a public institution of higher education or private institution of higher education that leads to a degree, concentration, or certificate for reading specialists to include coursework or other training in the identification of and the appropriate interventions, accommodations, and teaching techniques for students with dyslexia or a related disorder.
Patron: Howell
Office of the Qualified Education Loan Ombudsman. Establishes the Office of the Qualified Education Loan Ombudsman (the Office) within the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. The Office's duties include (i) receiving, reviewing, and attempting to resolve complaints from qualified education loan borrowers; (ii) compiling and analyzing data on such complaints; (iii) assisting qualified education loan borrowers to understand their rights and responsibilities under the terms of qualified education loans; (iv) providing information regarding the problems and concerns of qualified education loan borrowers; (v) analyzing and monitoring the development and implementation of applicable laws and policies; and (vi) disseminating information concerning the availability of the Office to assist qualified education loan borrowers and any other participant in qualified education loan lending, with qualified education loan servicing concerns. The Office is further required to establish and maintain a qualified education loan borrower education course by December 1, 2019.
Patron: Wexton
Virginia Student Loan Refinancing Authority; refinancing loan guaranty program. Establishes the Virginia Student Loan Refinancing Authority (the Authority), to be governed by a 10-member board, for the purpose of developing and implementing a program by which the Authority may guarantee the obligations of an individual who incurred qualified education loan debt as a Virginia student at an institution of higher education in the Commonwealth under loans that refinance such education loan debt. The Authority is authorized to issue bonds to finance its obligations under such loan guarantees.
Patron: Wexton
Office of the Student Loan Ombudsman. Establishes the Office of the Student Loan Ombudsman within the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. The Office of the Student Loan Ombudsman is required to provide timely assistance to any student loan borrower of any student education loan in the Commonwealth. The Office of the Student Loan Ombudsman is further required to establish and maintain a student loan borrower education course that shall cover key loan terms, documentation requirements, monthly payment obligations, income-based repayment options, loan forgiveness, and disclosure requirements.
Patron: Chafin
Newborn screening; lysosomal storage disorders. Clarifies that newborn screening tests performed on infants born in the Commonwealth shall include screening for Pompe disease, mucopolysaccharidosis type 1 (MPS-1), and other lysosomal storage disorders for which a screening test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration exists. The bill contains technical amendments.
Patron: Dance
Direct service providers; disclosure of information by employers. Provides that a current or former employer of a direct service provider may disclose information about the direct service provider's employment to a prospective employer of the direct service provider upon receipt of written, signed consent of the direct service provider and establishes requirements related to such written consent.
Patron: Obenshain
Public schools; regional charter school divisions. Authorizes the Board of Education (the Board) to establish regional charter school divisions consisting of at least two but not more than three existing school divisions in regions in which each underlying school division has (i) an enrollment of more than 3,000 students and (ii) one or more schools that have accreditation denied status for two out of the past three years. The bill requires such regional charter school divisions to be supervised by a school board that consists of eight members appointed by the Board and one member appointed by the localities of each of the underlying divisions. The bill authorizes the school board, after a review by the Board, to review and approve public charter school applications in the regional charter school divisions and to contract with the applicant. The bill requires that the state share of Standards of Quality per pupil funding of the underlying school district in which the student resides be transferred to such school.
Patron: Hanger
Education; computation of composite index; land-use assessment value. Requires the General Assembly to modify the current standards of quality funding formula and calculation of composite index of local ability to pay to incorporate within the real estate indicator of local wealth the land-use assessment value for those properties located within a land-use plan.
Patron: Obenshain
Involuntary manslaughter; death of a fetus; penalty. Provides that any person who, as a result of driving under the influence, causes the death of the fetus of another is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The bill provides that if such person's conduct was so gross, wanton, and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life, he is guilty of aggravated involuntary manslaughter.
Patron: Obenshain
Public institutions of higher education; student loan information. Requires any public institution of higher education that receives federal education loan information for a student enrolled in the institution to provide such student, at least once during each academic year, certain information and estimates regarding the student's federal education loans.
Patron: Dunnavant
Virginia Longitudinal Data System; workforce data. Requires the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), through the Virginia Longitudinal Data System, to report additional information regarding the alignment of postsecondary education and workforce in the Commonwealth. The bill also directs the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Virginia Employment Commission, and the Department of Taxation to cooperate with SCHEV to further assist in the collection and sharing of data regarding workforce analysis.
Patron: Dunnavant
Virginia Community College System continued as the Virginia College System. Renames the Virginia Community College System as the Virginia College System. The bill also renames the Chancellor and State Board for Community Colleges as the Chancellor of the Virginia College System and State Board for the College System.
Patron: Dunnavant
Standards of Quality; mathematics intervention services. Requires local school divisions to identify students in grades 10, 11, and 12 who are at risk of graduating without the necessary skills to take college-level mathematics coursework, as demonstrated by their individual performance on a Standards of Learning assessment, the PreACT, PSAT/NMSQT, ACT, or SAT, the Virginia Placement Test, or any diagnostic test that has been approved by the Department and to provide mathematics intervention services to such students. The bill requires such intervention services to be aligned with the developmental math curriculum offered by the Virginia Community College System and provides that local school divisions may partner with a local comprehensive community college to provide such intervention services.
Patron: Chase
Health care services; payment estimates. Requires practitioners licensed by the Board of Medicine and hospitals to provide a patient or the representative of a patient scheduled to receive a nonemergency procedure, test, or service to be performed by the practitioner or hospital, at least three days in advance of the date of such procedure, test, or service, an estimate of the payment amount for which the participant will be responsible. Under current law, the requirement to provide such estimate applies only to hospitals for elective procedures, tests, or services and only upon request.
Patron: Surovell
Access to electronic textbooks and adequate connectivity. Prohibits local school boards from requiring the use of any electronic textbook in any course in grades six through 12 unless the school board adopts a plan to ensure that by July 1, 2020, (i) each student enrolled in such course will have access to a personal computing device capable of supporting such textbooks and (ii) the relevant school has adequate connectivity, which the bill defines as bandwidth of at least one megabit per second per enrolled student.
Patron: Surovell
Public schools: online courses and virtual programs. Provides that no student shall be charged tuition or fees for enrolling in any online course or virtual program that is required or is offered by the school division in which he resides. The bill provides that no local school board can offer and no student can be required to take any online course or virtual program unless every student enrolled in the course is provided or offered, free of charge, a computer or other electronic device necessary to take the course. Further, the bill provides an exception for the high school graduation requirement to take a virtual course if such requirements are not met.
Patron: Carrico
Reporting of controlled substance overdoses. Requires the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, state and local law-enforcement agencies, emergency medical services agencies, and hospitals to report information about overdoses of controlled substances within 120 hours of receiving such information to the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Resources and for the Secretary to make such information available to public health, law-enforcement, and emergency medical service agencies and fire departments and companies within 120 hours of receiving the information. The bill also requires the Secretary to report this information quarterly to the Governor and for such report to be made available to all public health, law-enforcement, and emergency medical services agencies in the Commonwealth. The bill is a recommendation of the Joint Commission on Health.
Patron: Petersen
Public institutions of higher education; tuition and fee increases; public comment. Prohibits the governing board of each public institution of higher education from approving an increase in undergraduate tuition or mandatory fees without providing students and the public an opportunity to provide public comment at a board meeting at least 30 days prior to any vote on such an increase.
Patron: Favola
Local school boards; school meal policies. Requires each local school board to adopt policies that (i) prohibit school board employees from publicly identifying or stigmatizing a student who cannot pay for a meal at school or who owes a meal debt, including requiring that such student wear a wristband or hand stamp; (ii) prohibit school board employees from requiring a student who cannot pay for a meal at school or who owes a school meal debt to do chores or other work to pay for such meals; and (iii) require school board employees to direct any communication relating to a school meal debt to the student's parent, which may be made by a letter addressed to the parent to be sent home with the student.
Patron: Favola
Truancy; procedures. Makes several changes to the procedures relating to interventions when a pupil fails to report to school for a total of five scheduled school days for the school year, no indication has been received by school personnel that the pupil's parent is aware of and supports the pupil's absence, and a reasonable effort to notify the parent has failed, including (i) removing the appointed attendance officer as a party to the plan to resolve such nonattendance, (ii) permitting but not requiring the attendance officer to participate in the conference necessitated by additional absences subsequent to the development of the plan, and (iii) permitting but not requiring the attendance officer to file a complaint with the juvenile and domestic relations court alleging the pupil is a child in need of supervision or to institute criminal proceedings against the parent pursuant to relevant law. Under current law, the attendance officer is required to participate in such conference and is also required to file such complaint and institute such proceedings in cases in which the pupil is absent for an additional school day without indication that the pupil's parent is aware of and supports the pupil's absence.
Patron: Vogel
Pharmacy drug disposal program. Requires that each pharmacy participate in a pharmacy drug disposal program in order to properly dispose of unwanted prescription drugs. Under current law, participation in such program is voluntary.
Patron: Black
Standards of Quality; reading diagnostic tests. Requires that the first reading diagnostic test administered to a student in kindergarten through grade three include a rapid alphabet naming component and that local school divisions report the results of reading diagnostic tests to parents, including subset scores.
Patron: McPike
Stroke care quality improvement. Provides that the Department of Health shall be responsible for stroke care quality improvement initiatives in the Commonwealth. Such initiatives shall include (i) establishing a system to collect data and information about stroke care in the Commonwealth, (ii) facilitating information and data sharing and collaboration among hospitals and health care providers to improve the quality of stroke care in the Commonwealth, (iii) requiring the application of evidence-based treatment guidelines for transitioning patients to community-based follow-up care following acute treatment for stroke, and (iv) establishing a process for continuous quality improvement for the delivery of stroke care by the statewide system for stroke response and treatment.
Patron: McPike
Certified stroke centers; designation of hospitals. Expands the list of certified stroke center designations for hospitals included in regional stroke triage plans to include comprehensive stroke centers, primary stroke centers with supplementary levels of stroke care distinction, and acute stroke ready hospitals and adds the American Heart Association to the list of entities authorized to provide certification of such hospitals.
Patron: DeSteph
Certain educational institutions; designation of governing boards. Renames as boards of trustees the boards of visitors of certain educational institutions in the Commonwealth, including baccalaureate public institutions of higher education.
Patron: Stuart
Local ability to pay; certain counties. Requires that the composite index of local ability to pay for any county within which there is a school division composed of a town be calculated as if there were no such school division composed of a town within the county.
Patron: Spruill
Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers; membership. Increases the membership of the Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers from nine to 10 by adding one nonlegislative citizen member and increases from five to six the number of members that constitutes a quorum.
Patron: DeSteph
Prescription refill; protocol. Provides that a prescriber may authorize a registered nurse or licensed practical nurse to initiate a protocol for a prescription refill for Schedule VI controlled substances, provided that (i) the practitioner has established a bona-fide practitioner-patient relationship with the individual to receive the refill provided; (ii) there is a standing protocol written and maintained by the prescriber; (iii) there is a written order by the prescriber for the registered nurse or licensed practical nurse to initiate the protocol; (iv) the prescription refill is for a maintenance medication prescribed for chronic, long-term conditions and the medication is taken on a regular, recurring basis; (v) the prescription refill is for no more than 90 consecutive days; (vi) documentation sufficient to the Board of Pharmacy is maintained; and (vii) other requirements established by the Board of Pharmacy are met.
Patron: Wexton
Medical assistance; determination of income; personal needs allowance. Provides that, when determining the income of a recipient of medical assistance services who is receiving long-term care in a medical institution or intermediate care facility, the Department shall disregard a personal needs allowance in an amount that is at least $100 and that the amount of the personal needs allowance shall be adjusted annually to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index, all urban consumers (CPI-U).
Patron: Dunnavant
Priority Needs Access Program. Directs the Department of Medical Assistance Services to amend the Medicaid demonstration project (Project Number 11-W-00297/3) to create the Priority Needs Access Program to (i) increase the income eligibility for adults with serious mental illness from 100 to 138 percent of the federal poverty level; (ii) include in the benefit package inpatient hospital and emergency room services; (iii) expand program eligibility to individuals with a diagnosis of mental illness, substance use disorder, or a life-threatening or complex chronic medical condition; (iv) and include the entire population of the demonstration project in the Commonwealth Coordinated Care Plus managed care program. The bill also creates an annual hospital assessment for private acute care hospitals.
Patron: Lewis
Public institutions of higher education; crisis and emergency management plan; annual exercise. Requires each public institution of higher education to annually conduct a test or exercise in accordance with the protocols established by the institution's crisis and emergency management plan and certify in writing to the Department of Emergency Management that such a test or exercise was conducted. Under current law, each such institution is required to annually conduct a functional exercise in accordance with the protocols of such plan. The bill declares that the activation of its crisis and emergency management plan and completion of an after-action report by a public institution of higher education in response to an actual event or incident satisfies the requirement to conduct such a test or exercise.
Patron: Lewis
Old Dominion University; board of visitors. Provides that the rector, vice-rector, and secretary of the board of visitors of Old Dominion University shall assume their duties on July 1 of the year they are elected.
Patron: Suetterlein
High School to Work Partnerships; establishment; exemptions. Permits each local school board to (i) establish High School to Work Partnerships (Partnerships) between public high schools and local businesses to create opportunities for high school students to (a) participate in an apprenticeship, internship, or job shadow program in a variety of trades and skilled labor positions or (b) tour local businesses and meet with owners and employees or (ii) delegate the authority to establish Partnerships to the local school division's career and technical education administrator or his designee, in collaboration with the guidance counselor office of each public high school in the school division. The bill requires such local school boards to educate high school students about opportunities available through such Partnerships. The bill also requires the Board of Education, the Department of Labor and Industry, and the State Board for Community Colleges to identify Partnerships that may be eligible for exemptions from certain federal and state labor laws and regulations and establish procedures by which such exemptions may be obtained for such Partnerships.
Patron: Mason
Public schools; homeless children. Aligns provisions regarding when a homeless child or youth is deemed to reside in a school division with Subtitle VII-B of the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, as amended (42 U.S.C. § 11431 et seq.) and updates references to such act.
Patron: Newman
Requiring the Board of Education to provide for a verified credit in social studies in high school.
Patrons: Peake, Newman
Definition of "training center".