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Amend CSHB 21 (house committee report) by adding the following appropriately numbered SECTION and renumbering the subsequent SECTIONS of the bill accordingly:
SECTION ____. Subchapter A, Chapter 42, Education Code, is amended by adding Section 42.008 to read as follows:
Sec. 42.008. TEACHER SURVEY. (a) Out of the amount appropriated for the basic allotment under the Foundation School Program for the state fiscal biennium beginning September 1, 2017, the commissioner shall set aside an amount, not to exceed $80,000, necessary to fund the administration of a survey of the opinions of public school teachers in this state regarding the efficacy of the public school finance system.
(b) The survey shall consist of questions developed jointly by the committees of the senate and the house of representatives with jurisdiction over public education. The agency and the Legislative Budget Board shall provide support to the committees, including recommendations for proposed questions if requested by the committees.
(c) The survey shall be administered by a vendor selected by the comptroller. The vendor shall be responsible for providing the survey to each school district and open-enrollment charter school in this state and providing any assistance required by school districts and open-enrollment charter schools in distributing the survey to teachers.
(d) The survey must:
(1) permit teachers to submit anonymous responses directly to the vendor; and
(2) be conducted in accordance with a timeline that requires teacher responses to be submitted to the vendor not later than April 30, 2018.
(e) A school district or open-enrollment charter school may not require a teacher to provide any information to the district or school regarding the teacher's responses to the survey.
(f) For each school district and open-enrollment charter school, the vendor shall notify the commissioner of the rate of participation in the survey by teachers employed by the district or school. For school districts or schools with high participation rates, as determined by the commissioner, the commissioner, in a manner considered appropriate by the commissioner, shall include consideration of the participation rate as a favorable additional factor in determining the performance rating assigned to the district or school under Section 39.054 for the 2017-2018 school year.
(g) The vendor shall submit the results of the survey to the legislature and the governor not later than December 31, 2018.
(h) This section expires September 1, 2019.