1-1     By:  Luna                                             S.B. No. 1819
 1-2           (In the Senate - Filed March 12, 1999; March 15, 1999, read
 1-3     first time and referred to Committee on Economic Development;
 1-4     May 6, 1999, reported favorably by the following vote:  Yeas 6,
 1-5     Nays 0; May 6, 1999, sent to printer.)
 1-6                            A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
 1-7                                   AN ACT
 1-8     relating to the identification of technical education programs that
 1-9     are needed to maintain and improve the state's economic and
1-10     technological competitiveness.
1-11           BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
1-12           SECTION 1.  Subchapter C, Chapter 135, Education Code, is
1-13     amended by adding Section 135.61 to read as follows:
1-14           Sec. 135.61.  FORECASTING TECHNICAL EDUCATION PROGRAM NEEDS.
1-15     (a)  The board shall develop and administer a program to forecast
1-16     the types of technical education programs that are needed to
1-17     maintain and improve the state's economic and technological
1-18     competitiveness.
1-19           (b)  The program shall review the state's business and
1-20     industry workforce needs for trained and educated workers and
1-21     suggest specific technical education programs in specific areas
1-22     that are needed to ensure or that would enhance the state's
1-23     economic and technological competitiveness.  The board may
1-24     recommend the creation of new technical education programs or new
1-25     methods of delivering technical education programs.
1-26           (c)  The board shall provide information and recommendations
1-27     developed under the program to any institution of higher education,
1-28     as defined by Section 61.003, that:
1-29                 (1)  provides technical education programs; or
1-30                 (2)  the board determines should offer technical
1-31     education programs for the purpose of Subsection (a).
1-32           SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
1-33     crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
1-34     emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
1-35     constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
1-36     days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
1-37     and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
1-38     passage, and it is so enacted.
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