BILL ANALYSIS |
C.S.H.B. 2442 |
By: King, Ken |
Public Education |
Committee Report (Substituted) |
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
According to interested parties, certain changes are needed to facilitate the implementation of recently enacted legislation that changed the measurement of time for the required operation of public schools from days to minutes. C.S.H.B. 2442 seeks to make those changes.
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT
It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly create a criminal offense, increase the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or change the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.
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RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
It is the committee's opinion that rulemaking authority is expressly granted to the commissioner of education in SECTIONS 5 and 8 of this bill.
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ANALYSIS
C.S.H.B. 2442 amends the Education Code to replace the requirement that each public school district operate for each school year so that the district provides for at least 75,600 minutes of instruction, including intermissions and recesses, for students with a requirement that each district operate for each school year for at least 75,600 minutes, including time allocated for instruction, intermissions, and recesses for students. The bill replaces references related to instruction time with references related to operation time. The bill authorizes the commissioner of education to adopt rules to implement provisions relating to the required operation of schools, including rules to determine the minutes of operation that are equivalent to a day of instruction, rules defining instructional time, and rules establishing the minimum number of minutes of instruction required for a full-day and a half-day program to meet the operation time requirements. The bill removes the provision establishing that a reference to a day of instruction for Education Code purposes means 420 minutes of instruction and repeals the requirement that a school day be at least seven hours each day, including intermissions and recess.
C.S.H.B. 2442 authorizes the commissioner to proportionally reduce the amount of funding a district receives under the foundation school program, with regard to the equalized wealth level, or under certain other state assistance programs and the average daily attendance calculation for the district if the district operates on a calendar that provides fewer minutes of operation than the required minimum.
C.S.H.B. 2442 authorizes the commissioner to adopt rules establishing full-day and half-day minutes of operation requirements for kindergarten and prekindergarten programs. The bill establishes that, for a district that operates a half-day program, average daily attendance for purposes of the foundation school program is one-half of the standard calculation of average daily attendance based on days of instruction. The bill makes a district that operates a half-day prekindergarten program eligible to receive the half-day average daily attendance calculation if the district's prekindergarten program provides at least 32,400 minutes of instruction to students.
C.S.H.B. 2442 authorizes the commissioner to calculate the average daily attendance of a district using an alternative minimum amount of minutes of operation for a dropout recovery school or program and for a school program offered at a residential or correctional facility. The bill exempts such a district or program from the minimum minutes of operation requirement that would otherwise apply, authorizes the commissioner to establish the alternative minimum minutes of operation required for the district or program, and establishes that the commissioner's determination in such a case is final and may not be appealed. The bill authorizes the commissioner to determine the qualifications to be considered a dropout recovery school for purposes of eligibility for an alternative minimum operation time requirement, which may differ from the qualifications required for designating an open-enrollment charter school as a dropout recovery school and from those required for performance evaluation purposes.
C.S.H.B. 2442 requires the commissioner, on application from an open-enrollment charter school or a charter school operated by a public college or university or a public junior college, to calculate the average daily attendance for the school using an alternative minimum amount of minutes of operation if the school was eligible during the 2014-2015 school year to earn a full average daily attendance calculation, the school provides at least the same amount of instruction to students as it provided during that school year, and the school is no longer eligible to earn the full average daily attendance during the current school year. The bill adds a temporary provision set to expire September 1, 2018, authorizing the commissioner to waive a requirement of, or adopt rules to implement, provisions relating to average daily attendance as amended by the bill or similar legislation for the purpose of assisting school districts in implementing those provisions.
C.S.H.B. 2442 applies beginning with the 2018-2019 school year.
C.S.H.B. 2442 repeals Section 25.082 (a), Education Code.
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EFFECTIVE DATE
On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2017.
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COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE
While C.S.H.B. 2442 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following comparison is organized and formatted in a manner that indicates the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.
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