LEGISLATIVE BUDGET BOARD
                              Austin, Texas
                                     
                    FISCAL NOTE, 77th Regular Session
  
                              April 16, 2001
  
  
          TO:  Honorable Paul Sadler, Chair, House Committee on Public
               Education
  
        FROM:  John Keel, Director, Legislative Budget Board
  
       IN RE:  HB1330  by Zbranek (Relating to the provision of Internet
               service by regional education service centers.), As
               Introduced
  
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*  No fiscal implication to the State is anticipated.                    *
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The bill requires those Regional Education Service Centers (RESC)
providing Internet services adopt appropriate methods to verify that
each person using the services is a public school student, a public
school teacher or other public school employee and that the Internet
service cannot be used to gain access to materials, including
pornography, that do not a have a legitimate educational purpose.  In
addition, it would restrict the user to not more 35 hours of use a week.
  
Local Government Impact
  
According to the Texas Education agency, there is currently only one RESC
providing direct Internet services; there are eight additional RESC's
that re-market Internet services to districts, staff and students.  It
is unclear whether the bill is intended to impact those arrangements as
well.  At the RESC that provides direct Internet services, there would
be an $8 charge per year, per computer to add filtering of Internet
content.  The number of computers is not well known, but probably is
between 5,000 and 10,000.  It would be expected that school districts
receiving Internet access directly from that one RESC would incur costs
of $40,000 - $80,000 per year to add the filtering.
  
  
Source Agencies:   701   Texas Education Agency
LBB Staff:         JK, CT, PF, UP