AWSP Blog

This week, we reached the peak of new policy bills being heard in committees. The first significant cut-off of this year’s legislative session is next Wednesday, January 31 when bills must be passed out of committee. Those with fiscal implications must pass out of House Appropriations or Senate Ways and Means by February 5. The next step after that is for bills to be passed off the floor of the House or the Senate and the deadline for that is February 13. After that, the bills move to the other side and the process repeats.

It was another busy week in the Legislature as the House and Senate Education Committees continued hearing a plethora of bills related to special education funding, new curriculum and graduation requirements, simple majority for bonds, and more. AWSP signed in support of the various bills that would increase funding in special education and update the health standards to include more information, resources, and instruction related to fentanyl. But, similar to the State Board of Education and the WEA, we shared the message that for the bills related to computer science, financial literacy, agricultural literacy, and Holocaust and genocide education, we would rather see a comprehensive look at the graduation requirements in order to strategically envision potential changes for future students.

The 2024 Legislative Session kicked off this week, and it will be a 60-day sprint to the finish. Hundreds of new bills were pre-filed, hundreds of bills are still in play from last year, and hundreds of new bills are being introduced, which makes for lots of reading and a massive bill tracking list. The first cut-off of the session is January 31, when bills must pass off the floor of their house of origin, so this list will be much shorter in just a few weeks. Whew.

The House and Senate pounded their gavels one last time on Sunday, April 23, as they declared “Sine Die” for the 2023 Legislative session. This Latin term means “without a day,” and it is used to describe an adjournment when the date to reconvene is not specified and when the Legislature intends to leave town for the last time. However, there is a bit of a caveat to that statement since the Legislature may come back for a special session to address the Blake Decision. More on that later.

Just ten more days of this year’s legislative session remain. All policy bills had to pass off the floor of the opposite house by April 12. Once again, there were some very late nights and some bills that didn’t make it past this deadline. Over the next few days of the session, legislators will pass bills necessary to implement the budget, continue work to concur on different versions of bills that have passed, and come to an agreement over a final budget. And all of this should end by Sunday, April 23.