BILL ANALYSIS
By: Grusendorf
Committee Report (Substituted)
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
The Investment Capital Fund provides the funding for grants up to $50,000 per campus for school restructuring to improve academic achievement. The grant allows all stakeholders to collaborate on school restructuring for academic achievement. It has been discovered that it is more efficient to restructure several schools as one group than restructure each school individually. School leaders from collaborating campuses are also able to restructure more effectively by working with a lead school with similar restructuring goals.
This bill allows a group of schools located in the same district who have collaboratively organized together to apply for a single grant from the Investment Capital Fund as a means to improve and enrich academics. This bill will improve the efficiency of the Texas Education Agency through processing a single grant request than by processing a number of grants to individual campuses all pursuing the same strategy.
RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.
ANALYSIS
The commissioner may make grants from the fund to an eligible school or a group of schools located in the same school district that collaboratively organizes for purposes of this section. A school or group of schools as described within the Investment Capital Fund section, subsection (b)(2), is eligible to apply for a grant if the school or each school in the group of schools has met the requirements as set forth by the education code. A grant from the fund is to be made directly to the school or, in the case of a group of schools organized as described by (b)(2) of the Investment Capital Fund section, to each school designated in the group's application as a member of the group. The grant may be used for designated purposes. The commissioner may make a grant that exceeds $50,000 to a group of eligible schools organized as described by this bill; if not more than $50,000 in grant funds is distributed to any school that is a member of the group.
EFFECTIVE DATE
This Act takes effect September 1, 2005.
COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL TO SUBSTITUTE
CSHB 3012 changes language from clusters of schools to a group of eligible schools located in the same school district that collaboratively organize for purposes of this section. The substitute clarifies language as to when the commissioner may make a grant that exceeds $50,000 to a group of eligible schools. The effective date is specified as September 1, 2005.