Rep. Pat Sullivan (D-47), Rep. Skip Priest (R-30), Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-5) and I released HB 1410 today. We have 38 co-sponsors at this point. It’s scheduled for a hearing next week. The bill is a huge effort – 110 pages that completely re-write school funding formulas, teacher compensation plans, and almost everything else about how we fund schools. The Senate companion bill will be introduced tomorrow, and should be identical. Click here for official bill information.
We expect there will be many amendments, but we’re announcing our first big one at the hearing next week. In reaction to a series of studies on the achievement gap between white kids and kids from a variety of other ethnic groups we found some common themes, and want to start the work with help with outreach to parents and the community, improvements in the preparation of teachers to deal with diverse classrooms (something we hear about from young teachers all the time) and quicker routes for bilingual adults from immigrant communities to enter the teaching force. We have so few teachers in many language groups that we should work hard to attract more, and growing our own seems like the most effective strategy.
We’ve published a few documents to help explain the bill. Most readable is our 4 page intro pamphlet. Next is the 17-page outline of the bill’s changes to law, section by section. We’ll add more as we develop them.