In the House
We are on course to pass out a budget during the 60-day regular session and avoid the cost of a special budget session. Senate Bill 250 and House Bill 4023 were both read for a first time on March 5th thus paving the way for the bills to be in the amendment stage on Monday, March 7th, and on third and final reading the following day.
Three education bills passed out of House this week:
House Bill 4844 is designed to ensure that teachers could not be forced to give up their planning periods or lunch periods to provide substitute teaching or other duties. This bill passed the House unanimously on March 2nd. The bill also addresses the amount of personal leave days county BOE employees could use as well as detailing the means by which those days could be used consecutively.
House Bill 4467 also passed the House on March 2nd. It creates a project model which overwhelmingly passed the House March 2, would establish a “project model to provide early childhood classroom assistant teachers in first-grade classrooms with more than 12 students.”
“While the bill that passed the House this week takes just a small bite at that apple, I’m hopeful we see the benefits of targeting our educational investments toward the younger grade levels to ensure our efforts at the higher grades aren’t in vain,” Hanshaw said. “We cannot throw dollars at the high school level and think it’s going to make a difference if the foundation for learning isn’t set. Data shows us if our students are not achieving grade-level reading ability by the third grade, they have a single-digit percentage chance of ever catching up.”
House Bill 4845 establishes the Katherine Johnson Academy as a magnet school program at colleges and universities in the state. The bill makes clear the program is “in recognition of one of West Virginia’s most outstanding and distinguished citizens whose contributions as a pioneer in the advancement of science, mathematics and space travel have been recognized through numerous honors, including the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.” Furthermore, the legislation provides that any student accepted into the program would be awarded a PROMISE scholarship. Any additional expenses would either be waived by the institution or funded by other private scholarships
This bill also passed the House unanimously on March 2nd.
With a bipartisan vote of 83-11 House Bill 4020 on March 2nd. The purpose of this bill is to divide the Department of Health and Human Services into two departments. The current makeup of DHHR is one secretary overseeing a $7.6 billion budget. That number is 39% of the state’s spending.