As we begin the fifth week of the legislature, lawmakers have introduced over 500 bills in the House as well as the Senate. Every Friday a list of the new bills related to education and school boards is published on our blog, The Advocate, and we highlight certain bills in our Friday Chatroom.

As more and more bills are introduced, we have begun monitoring the bills that contain a mandate for school boards or districts. Mandates, especially statewide, unfunded ones, can be burdensome to school districts. The mandates can be expensive both monetarily and from a time perspective.

Today in Senate Education Finance and Policy the committee will hear two bills that seek to eliminate or reduce district mandates. MSBA will testify in favor of SF 147 which would eliminate a mandated report from school districts to PELSB. Sens. Clausen and Duckworth's bill seeks to eliminate the report to the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) information for all probationary teachers who were released or whose contracts were not renewed. However, the report is not used by PELSB or anyone else because the data is not presented or recorded in a consistent manner.

Another bill, SF 190, as amended, would eliminate to establish an alternative learning center (ALC) in cooperation with other districts and serve the geographic area of at least two districts.

You can review the list of bills with mandates MSBA has started and feel free to share your views with us either by email or join the Friday Chatroom.