For the second week in a row, neither the House nor Senate Education Committees met and the Lansing rumor mill has it that the lack of meetings hinges on a disagreement between the chambers on a package of proposed dyslexia legislation (SB 567-68) that passed the Senate earlier this session, but seems to be struggling to gain support in the House due to concerns with its over prescription and strong opposition from school groups. Despite the lack of committees, the House did manage to do some key business on the floor now that Democrats have their one-vote majority back…SB 744 (a bill to fix some key errors in the Teacher Tenure Law created as part of the educator evaluation reform last fall) passed the chamber with immediate effect and now returns to the Senate where MASSP has been urging Senate Republicans will help give the bill immediate effect so as to avoid problems next school year (stay tuned on this issue and MASSP will share more details when we know what action the Senate takes). The House also reported out a package of legislation dealing with charter school transparency (HB 5231-34 and HB 5269) and what information charter schools need to post publicly regarding staff salaries, who their authorizing body is, and which education management organization they contract with, if any…MASSP's understanding is that this sort of information is largely already available so the bill would codify current practice in most cases rather than representing a significant change. On Thursday, the House Labor Committee took testimony on HB 5594, a bill that would shift the responsibility for issuing work permits for minors out of the hands of local school districts and over to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, which said they plan to implement a new electronic system…MASSP is following this legislation closely and preliminary indications are that the shift would reduce local district workload and simplify the work permit process for students and businesses while still retaining the ability for school districts to engage should a student begin to have attendance issues. The Detroit Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference is scheduled for next week which means that neither chamber will be in session…this means that when the Legislature returns to Lansing on June 4, there will likely only be three or four more weeks of session before they break for the summer (in other words, just enough time to pass some budgets, clear the decks on whatever housekeeping items are outstanding, and leave town before anything too controversial happens). 

Introduced Bills

  • HB 5735 - Carol Glanville (D-Walker): Modifies the Michigan Merit Curriculum law to strike all the names of specific courses required, leaving the requirements of the law at specifying a certain number of credits per subject area aligned to state standards.
  • SB 876 - Paul Wojno (D-Warren): Modifies certain provisions regarding immunization in the state school aid act.
  • SB 877 - Erika Geiss (D-Taylor): Modifies grade requirement for certain immunization records in the revised school code.