By:  Averitt                                           H.B. No. 359
       72S40563 CMB-D
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
    1-1                                AN ACT
    1-2  relating to the authority of school attendance officers.
    1-3        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-4        SECTION 1.  Section 21.039(c), Education Code, is amended to
    1-5  read as follows:
    1-6        (c)  A school attendance officer shall not forcibly take
    1-7  corporal custody of a <any> child under the age of 10 years
    1-8  <anywhere> without permission of the parent, guardian, or other
    1-9  person standing in parental relation to the child except in
   1-10  obedience to a valid process issued by a court of competent
   1-11  jurisdiction.  A school attendance officer may forcibly take
   1-12  corporal custody of a child 10 years of age or older without the
   1-13  permission of the parent, guardian, or other person standing in
   1-14  parental relation to the child for the limited purpose of returning
   1-15  the child to the child's residence or to the school in which the
   1-16  child is enrolled or in obedience to a valid process issued by a
   1-17  court of competent jurisdiction.
   1-18        SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
   1-19  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
   1-20  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
   1-21  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
   1-22  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
   1-23  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
   1-24  passage, and it is so enacted.