By:  Gallegos                                         S.B. No. 1784
                                A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
                                       AN ACT
 1-1     relating to the provision of private community-based dropout
 1-2     recovery education programs to provide alternative education
 1-3     programs for students at risk of dropping out of school.
 1-4           BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
 1-5           SECTION 1.  Subsection (e), Section 29.081, Education Code,
 1-6     is amended to read as follows:
 1-7           (e)  A school district may use a private or public
 1-8     community-based dropout recovery education program to provide
 1-9     alternative education programs for students at risk of dropping out
1-10     of school.  A school district, when utilizing a community-based
1-11     dropout recovery education program, shall develop goals,
1-12     objectives, and guidelines that best address the needs of students
1-13     at risk of dropping out of school.  These guidelines shall include,
1-14     but need not be limited to, grading students' work, offering course
1-15     credit, curriculum development and implementation, modifying
1-16     instructional time requirements, performance standards,
1-17     qualifications of staff and faculty, class size, student-faculty
1-18     ratios, and methods of evaluating subject mastery.  The guidelines
1-19     may, but do not necessarily need to, comply with all the
1-20     requirements of this code.  [The program must grade students' work,
1-21     offer course credit, modify instructional time requirements, and
1-22     establish methods of evaluating subject mastery.]
1-23           SECTION 2.  This Act takes effect September 1, 1999.
1-24           SECTION 3.  The importance of this legislation and the
 2-1     crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
 2-2     emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
 2-3     constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
 2-4     days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended.