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2020 SESSION

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Senate Committee on Education and Health
Subcommittee Public Education

Hashmi (Chair), Howell, Locke, Dunnavant, Peake

Clerk: Patty Lung, Catherine Dent
Staff: Julia Carlton, Anna Moir
Date of Meeting: February 24, 2020
Time and Place: 30 min. after Adj., Subcommittee Room 2, 5th Fl. Pocahontas Bldg.
MEETING DATE CHANGED FROM 2/20

H.B. 332

Patron: Hope

Department of Education; pilot program; reading diagnostic tests and instruction. Requires the Department of Education to develop and implement a geographically representative two-year pilot program to administer reading diagnostic tests that include all components of a normed rapid automatized naming test. The bill requires each local school division in the pilot program to provide evidence-based instruction, including structured literacy instruction, to students in kindergarten through grade three who fall below the benchmark on any such reading diagnostic test or demonstrate deficiencies based on their individual performance on the Standards of Learning reading test. The bill requires the Department of Education to report to the Governor and General Assembly, no later than December 1, 2022, on the outcomes of the pilot program and the necessary resources for statewide implementation of such tests and instruction.

H.B. 376

Patron: Willett

Teachers, other instructional personnel, and support staff; shortages; data; reporting. Requires (i) each school board to report to the Department of Education annually the number and type of teacher, other instructional personnel, and support staff vacancies in the school division and (ii) each approved education preparation program to report to the Department of Education annually the number of individuals who completed the program by endorsement area. The bill requires the Department of Education to (a) establish deadlines for and the format of the reporting of such data and (b) aggregate and report such data annually on the Department's website.

H.B. 697

Patron: Roem

School meal policies. Requires each local school board to adopt policies that prohibit school board employees from requiring a student who cannot pay for a meal at school or who owes a school meal debt to throw away or discard a meal after it has been served to him.

H.B. 698

Patron: Roem

School boards; distribution of excess food. Allows public school boards to distribute excess food to students eligible for the School Breakfast Program or National School Lunch Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or to students that the school board determines are otherwise eligible to receive excess food.

H.B. 703

Patron: Roem

School meal debt; donations. Permits any school board to solicit and receive any donation or other funds for the purpose of eliminating or offsetting any school meal debt at any time and requires each school board to use any such funds solely for such purpose.

H.B. 837

Patron: Carroll Foy

Board of Education; school boards; dress or grooming codes. Requires the Board of Education to include in its guidelines and model policies for codes of student conduct (i) standards for reducing bias and harassment in the enforcement of any code of student conduct and (ii) standards for dress or grooming codes, which the bill defines as any practice, policy, or portion of a code of student conduct adopted by a school board that governs or restricts the attire of any enrolled student. The bill permits any school board to include in its code of student conduct a dress or grooming code. The bill requires any dress or grooming code included in a school board's code of student conduct or otherwise adopted by a school board to (a) permit any student to wear any religiously and ethnically specific or significant head covering or hairstyle, including hijabs, yarmulkes, headwraps, braids, locs, and cornrows; (b) maintain gender neutrality by subjecting any student to the same set of rules and standards regardless of gender; (c) not have a disparate impact on students of a particular gender; (d) be clear, specific, and objective in defining terms, if used; (e) prohibit any school board employee from enforcing the dress or grooming code by direct physical contact with a student or a student's attire; and (f) prohibit any school board employee from requiring a student to undress in front of any other individual, including the enforcing school board employee, to comply with the dress or grooming code.

H.B. 894

Patron: Levine

Education preparation programs; teacher licensure; certain training or instruction. Requires education preparation programs offered by public institutions of higher education and private institutions of higher education to ensure that, as condition of degree completion, each student enrolled in the education preparation program receives instruction on positive behavior interventions and supports; crisis prevention and de-escalation; the use of physical restraint, consistent with regulations of the Board of Education; and appropriate alternative methods to reduce and prevent the need for the use of physical restraint and seclusion. The bill requires every person seeking initial licensure as a teacher who has not received such instruction to receive instruction or training on such topics. The bill requires the Board of Education to adopt regulations to implement the foregoing requirements.

H.B. 1139

Patron: Keam

Board of Education; Regulations Governing Educational Services for Gifted Students; comprehensive review. Requires the Board of Education, as part of its current comprehensive review of its Regulations Governing Educational Services for Gifted Students, to consider revisions to (i) the process of screening and identifying students for eligibility for gifted and talented programs and referring students to such programs to improve the identification of student populations that are underrepresented in such programs, including economically disadvantaged students, English language learner students, and students with disabilities and (ii) the data collection requirements of the annual report required by such regulations to better inform equitable screening and identification for and access to gifted and talented programs for student populations that are underrepresented in such programs.

H.B. 1143

Patron: Tran

Local school boards; support services positions; licensed behavior analysts and licensed assistant behavior analysts. Includes licensed behavior analysts and licensed assistant behavior analysts as support services positions in a local school division for the purposes of Title 22.1 (Education).

H.B. 1276

Patron: O'Quinn

School boards; career and technical education; academic and career plans; contents. Requires each school board to include, as part of each student's academic and career plan in the career and technical education curricula, a list of (i) the top 100 professions in the Commonwealth by median pay and the education, training, and skills required for each such profession and (ii) the top 10 degree programs at institutions of higher education in the Commonwealth by median pay of program graduates. The bill requires the Department of Education to annually compile such lists and provide them to each local school board.

H.B. 1355

Patron: Rasoul

Community Services Efficiency Act; Department of Education; community schools. Requires the Department of Education to establish an interagency task force composed of state and local agencies and entities in the areas of early childhood development, health, social services, community engagement, family engagement, higher education, communities in schools, and workforce development for the purpose of developing a program for the establishment of community schools whereby public elementary and secondary schools serve as centers for the provision of such community programs and services to students and their families as may be necessary on the basis of the unique needs of the student population to be served. The bill requires such program to include a process by which school boards and community partnerships may apply to the Department of Education to designate an elementary or secondary school in the local school division as a community school.

H.B. 1388

Patron: Adams, D.M.

Public school accreditation; triennial review. Eliminates the ability of a school that only maintains a passing rate on Virginia assessment program tests or additional tests approved by the Board of Education of 95 percent or above in each of the four core academic areas for two consecutive years to apply for and receive a waiver of accreditation from the Department of Education, which waiver confers full accreditation for a three-year period. Current law provides high-performing schools a separate pathway to obtain three-year accreditation.

H.B. 1426

Patron: Roem

School boards; school meals; availability to students. Requires each school board to require each public elementary and secondary school in the local school division to participate in the federal National School Lunch Program and the federal School Breakfast Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and to make meals available pursuant to such programs to any student who requests such a meal, regardless of such student's family income or whether such student has the money to pay for the meal or owes money for meals previously provided, unless the student's parent has provided written permission to the school board to withhold such a meal from the student.

H.B. 1443

Patron: VanValkenburg

Department of Education; biennial teacher compensation review. Requires the Department of Education to conduct a biennial review of teacher compensation that takes into consideration the Commonwealth's compensation for teachers relative to national average teacher salary. Current law requires the Director of Human Resource Management to complete such biennial review.

H.B. 1633

Patron: Edmunds

Board of Education; school modernization loan interest rate subsidy payments; eligibility. Requires the Board of Education to establish a program to use Literary Fund proceeds to subsidize interest payments on certain loans made by the Virginia Public School Authority to local governing bodies and school boards for the design and construction of new school buildings and facilities or the modernization and maintenance of existing school buildings and facilities as follows: for school divisions in localities determined to have above-average or high fiscal stress by the Commission on Local Government in its most recent version of such report, the Board shall subsidize up to 100 percent of the interest due on such loan. Under current law, eligibility for such interest rate subsidy payment is based on the local composite index of ability to pay.

H.B. 1653

Patron: Wilt

Department of Education; data collection; school counselor positions. Requires the Department of Education to collect data from school boards regarding their ability to fill school counselor positions, including (i) the number of school counselors employed in elementary, middle, and high schools in the local school division; (ii) the number and duration of school counselor vacancies; (iii) the number, role, and license type of other licensed counseling professionals employed by the school board; and (iv) information about their preferences for meeting updated school counselor to student ratios with other licensed counseling professionals. The bill requires the Department of Education to report the results of such data collection to the Governor, the Secretary of Education, the House Committee on Appropriations, and the Senate Committee on Finance and Appropriations no later than December 1, 2020.

H.B. 1680

Patron: Tyler

Board of Education; Career and Technical Education Work-Based Learning Guide. Requires the Board of Education to review and revise, in consultation with certain stakeholders and no later than December 1, 2020, its Career and Technical Education Work-Based Learning Guide to expand the opportunities available for students to earn credit for graduation through high-quality work-based learning experiences or in the case of agricultural education, supervised agricultural experiences, in addition to job shadowing, mentorships, internships, and externships.

H.B. 1722

Patron: Roem

Department of Education; guidance and resources; applied behavior analysis services. Requires the Department of Education to develop and publish no later than November 16, 2020, guidance and resources relating to the provision of applied behavior analysis services in public schools for students who are in need of such services.