BILL ANALYSIS

C.S.S.B. 736

By: Hinojosa

Public Health

Committee Report (Substituted)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

School districts in Texas currently are required to adopt a dating violence policy that includes awareness education for students and parents. Local school health advisory councils, made up of parents and local community members, advise a school district on the health curricula used in the school district. With the help of local family violence shelters and resource programs, health advisory councils of some school districts have made great progress in implementing a dating violence policy. C.S.S.B. 736 seeks to replicate this progress statewide by including local domestic violence programs as groups from which representatives may be appointed as members of health advisory councils. 

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

C.S.S.B. 736 amends the Education Code to include local domestic violence programs among the specified groups from which a school district's board of trustees is authorized to appoint one or more persons to serve on the district's local school health advisory council.

EFFECTIVE DATE

On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2011.

COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE

C.S.S.B. 736 omits a provision included in the original requiring a school district's local school health advisory council to include any council recommendation concerning the school district's policies, programs, and resources on dating violence, bullying, and sexual harassment in the written report that the council must submit at least annually to the board of trustees.