Day 19 saw two House Subcommittee meetings quickly moved on a few bills to pass them to the full House committee. Here are these pieces of legislation:
HB 579 – Rep. Carter Barrett the “clean up” special needs voucher bill that was in reality changing some language to weaken the IEP process. With some consultation with some of our lobbyists the author of the bill Rep. Barrett was willing to make some of the changes to truly clean up some of the language like removing the “expedited IEP process”. The new language substitute bill is the one that was passed. It will go to the full House Education Committee for consideration.
HB 1140 – Rep. Amari Crawford – Presented a bill that would focus on the mental health and well being of student athletes. It also reaches into the availability of training and information for coaches and the student athlete concerning suicide ideation. GHSA worked with the author of this legislation to keep it focused on mental health of the student/athlete its intent. It passed and now moves forward.
HB 127 – Rep. Mesha Mainor – ESOL bill to address interpreters in IEP meetings. There were several speakers of foreign languages who traveled from Savannah to support the bill requiring the appropriate interpreters for the critical IEP meeting to bridge the gap of understanding of the already complex and sometimes overwhelming process. It passed with only 3 members of the subcommittee present. It moves to the full House Committee.
We continue to monitor all of the education related bills as we move to day 20 tomorrow. The halfway point of the 40 day session. Have a good evening!
