Amend HB 2013 by adding the following appropriately numbered SECTION to the bill and renumbering subsequent SECTIONS of the bill appropriately: SECTION ____. Subchapter A, Chapter 130, Education Code Amendment to Sec. 130.0012. PILOT PROJECT: BACCALAUREATE DEGREE PROGRAMS. (a) The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board shall establish a pilot project authorizing public junior colleges to offer baccalaureate degree programs in the fields of applied science and applied technology at a community college which currently: (1) has offered an associates degree in fire science for at least 35 years; (2) has a facility in place that is operational; (3) has the requisite faculty to comply with the accreditation requirements of the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools; and (4) enters into an agreement with the coordinating board to waive state funding for one or more academic years for all or a specified level of courses offered under the program under subsection (g). (2) In SECTION 3 of the bill, immediately following amended Section 130.0012(b), Education Code (page 3, between lines 1 and 2), insert the following: (g) In its recommendations to the legislature relating to state funding for public junior colleges, the coordinating board shall recommend that a public junior college receive substantially the same state support for junior-level and senior-level courses offered under this section as that provided to a general academic teaching institution for substantially similar courses. In determining the contact hours attributable to students enrolled in a junior-level or senior-level course offered under this section used to determine a public junior college's proportionate share of state appropriations under Section 130.003, the coordinating board shall weigh those contact hours as necessary to provide the junior college the appropriate level of state support to the extent state funds for those courses are included in the appropriations. This subsection does not prohibit the legislature from directly appropriating state funds to support junior-level and senior-level courses offered under this section. The governing board of a public junior college that offers a degree program under this section may enter into an agreement with the coordinating board to waive state funding for one or more academic years for all or a specified level of courses offered under the program. The coordinating board may not include state funding for those courses in its funding recommendations to the legislature for public junior colleges for any academic year for which the governing board of the public junior college has agreed to waive state funding under this subsection.