The Committee on Education was called to order at 4 p.m., on Wednesday, March 3, 1999. Chairman Wendell Williams presided in Room 3143 of the Legislative Building, Carson City, Nevada. Exhibit A is the Agenda. Exhibit B is the Guest List. All Exhibits are available and on file at the Research Library of the Legislative Counsel Bureau.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:

Mr. Wendell Williams, Chairman

Mr. Tom Collins, Vice Chairman

Ms. Sharron Angle

Mr. Greg Brower

Mrs. Barbara Cegavske

Mrs. Vonne Chowning

Mrs. Marcia de Braga

Mr. Don Gustavson

Mrs. Ellen Koivisto

Mr. Mark Manendo

Ms. Genie Ohrenschall

Ms. Bonnie Parnell

STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:

OTHERS PRESENT:

Chairman Williams said there was a proposed amendment by Ms. Parnell regarding A.B. 144 (Exhibit C).

ASSEMBLYWOMAN PARNELL MOVED TO RESCIND THE PREVIOUS ACTION ON A.B.144.

ASSEMBLYMAN COLLINS SECONDED THE MOTION.

Ms. Parnell said she motioned to rescind previous action because there was almost all new language in the newly amended A.B. 144.

THE MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY.

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ASSEMBLYWOMAN PARNELL MOVED TO AMEND AND DO PASS ON THE NEWLY PROPOSED AMENDMENT OF A.B. 144.

ASSEMBLYMAN COLLINS SECONDED THE MOTION.

Ms. Parnell explained when A.B. 144 was heard on February 10, 1999, in the committee, it appeared as though it was the pleasure of the committee members and those in attendance to reflect the pledge of allegiance as a requirement, not as an option. After legal staff reviewed that language, they suggested the language was not strong enough and should be rewritten to have language that reflected the pledge of allegiance be required and not as an option. She said the new language, as stated in Exhibit C, was very clear. It said, "Each public school shall set aside appropriate time at the beginning of each school day for pupils to pledge their allegiance to the flag of the United States. In addition, each public school may set aside appropriate time during the school day for additional patriotic observance." The proposed amendment also reflected the prior deletion of lines 9 through 11, which came to be known as "the waiver portion."

Ms. Parnell said there had been questions concerning the deletion of the 1-hour requirement in the statute. It was her belief that the 1-hour requirement was an issue more appropriately addressed as curriculum. The Education Reform Act passed in 1997 mandated new standards for social studies curriculum to be developed no later than September 1, 1999. S.B. 285 focused on social studies curriculum and would address that concern.

She said the immediate press coverage mischaracterized the intent of A.B. 144. At that time, the bills co-sponsor, Senator Jacobsen, had a concern about whether or not he wanted to leave his name on that piece of legislation. She sent Senator Jacobsen the newly proposed amendment, and he responded to leave his name on the amended bill as long as it required the daily pledge of allegiance.

ASSEMBLYMAN GUSTAVSON MOTIONED TO FURTHER AMEND THE LANGUAGE OF A.B. 144 TO REMOVE THE WORD "MAY" IN THE SECOND FROM THE LAST LINE AND INSERT "SHALL."

ASSEMBLYWOMAN CEGAVSKE SECONDED THE MOTION.

Chairman Williams said the motion meant the pledge of allegiance would be required and also additional patriotic observance would be required. He asked if Ms. Parnell was comfortable with that amendment. Ms. Parnell replied she was not and was most comfortable with the amendment she proposed, which used the language, "may set aside appropriate time."

Mrs. de Braga reconfirmed Ms. Parnell’s motion by asking if the original language of A.B. 144 was gone in its entirety and was replaced with the new language starting with, "Each public school shall" and ending with, "patriotic observance." To which Ms. Parnell replied that was correct.

Mrs. de Braga said she understood the desire to have as much patriotic observance as possible but fully believed most schools had done that to the extent possible. She thought if a vague statement of appropriate time in a school day was mandated, the school districts time would be micromanaged. She thought it was good to require the pledge of allegiance to the flag but still allow schools to proceed with whatever other patriotic observance when appropriate.

Mr. Gustavson said statute stated, "that there shall be at least 1 hour set aside each school week in all grades, schools, etc." If A.B. 144 passed with the newly proposed amendment, the 1-hour requirement would no longer be included. He explained he was only trying to state that time "shall" be set aside, not "may" be set aside.

Mr. Manendo remembered his government class, which spent a lot of time dealing with patriotic observances, and met the statute requirement every day, and therefore thought school districts were exceeding that time already.

Mr. Collins thought Mr. Gustavson should have approached Ms. Parnell with his amendment prior to making his motion and therefore asked Mr. Gustavson to withdraw his motion.

THE MOTION TO ADD THE WORD "SHALL" INSTEAD OF THE WORD "MAY" IN A.B. 144 FAILED (ASSEMBLYWOMAN ANGLE, ASSEMBLYWOMAN CEGAVSKE, AND ASSEMBLYMAN GUSTAVSON VOTED YES).

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THE MOTION TO AMEND AND DO PASS ON THE NEWLY PROPOSED LANGUAGE OF A.B. 144 PASSED (ASSEMBLYWOMAN ANGLE AND ASSEMBLYMAN GUSTAVSON VOTED NO).

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Chairman Williams opened the hearing on A.B. 145.

Henry Etchemendy, Nevada Association of School Boards (NASB), said A.B. 145 was a bill that NASB had requested and sponsored. He said the bill was one of three summer school and intersession school bills that were introduced in the current legislative session. A.B. 13 was one of those bills, which had already been heard by the committee. He mentioned Clark County School District had proposed S.B. 187. All three bills were similar in many respects. One major difference was A.B. 145 was permissive. It allowed school districts to set up summer schools or intersession programs for schools. If school districts established the program, the bill provided some measure of funding.

Mr. Etchemendy said there were schools around the state in various districts that provided "so called" summer school and intersession school for 6 to 9 weeks. There were many students who could use summer school to enhance their abilities and had not gotten the opportunity because of lack of funding. Some school districts fully funded their summer school programs, but others did not and depended upon students to pay the fee. The NASB felt the bill, with the appropriations attached, would make it available to a lot students who could not afford to attend. The appropriation in the bill was for $2 million per year, and was the same in each of the three bills mentioned. There would be a biennium appropriation of $4 million to do that.

Mr. Etchemendy drew attention to page 1, which established the definition of intersession instruction. Section 5, line 5, established a state program and had a requirement the state superintendent shall administer the state program and set up the criteria for eligibility. Line 11 of that section defined who was eligible. Subsection 4, line 25 specified the superintendent of public instruction may utilize up to 1 percent but no more than 1 percent of the funds to administer the program. Section 6, line 28, established the process by which a school district could apply for funding for the program and the various information needed with respect to their application. Subsection 2 established how the money would be distributed and that it was based on the total enrollment of the school district, versus the total enrollment throughout the state, which was the formula that would basically be utilized. He said that might not be the appropriate funding method because there were some school districts that would get virtually nothing from the allocation done in that manner. For example, the Esmeralda School District only conducted elementary school and had very few students enrolled with no summer school program established. Under the proposed program and if it were to go into affect in the current year they would only get $600, which would not be much of a summer school with that appropriation. Mr. Etchemendy agreed with the formula to appropriate funding, however, thought some sort of minimum should be established so every district would get enough to provide some sort of program.

Mr. Etchemendy said the Education Coalition met on a weekly basis and had reviewed the proposed bills and felt there was a way to combine them into one bill. Therefore, they had put together a compilation of the bills based on work Mr. Etchemendy did and had shown it to the sponsor of A.B. 13. The sponsor seemed to want to work along those lines, if feasible with the committee.

Chairman Williams said it would be a good idea to present the language that encompassed A.B. 13 and A.B. 145 to the committee. He asked if there was anyone from the Education Coalition who opposed the combined language.

Mr. Etchemendy explained the group had just met on Monday of that week. Some people were at a terrible disadvantage because they had to look at handwritten work he had done, but he explained the purpose of it and there was no opposition or concerns at that point.

Mrs. de Braga enjoyed the comments on getting a minimum appropriation for rural area school districts. She thought rural school districts had the ability to receive a sum of money to be able to present the program and it was the goal in most rural areas to have tuition free. She proposed some funding from remediation could be used to help the rural areas, if there were some dollars available from that program. Mrs. de Braga said the rural school districts wanted to have the right to refer others to summer school that were not necessarily "at risk" children because others would benefit from summer school as well. Therefore she hoped when deliberations were made some of those concerns could be considered.

Chairman Williams said since the bill would go to the Committee on Ways and Means, language would need to be constructed that could be agreeable to everyone involved.

Steve Williams, Washoe County School District, also mentioned the compilation of the bills were being processed and agreed it made a lot of sense instead of trying to push "three parallel tracks." He thought there were some good features of all bills and thought they could be combined by the people who were interested in education and therefore could be done very quickly.

Larry Spitler, Clark County School District (CCSD), supported A.B. 145 and had been a part of the Education Coalition in pulling some of the bills together. He said the Education Coalition was addressing dropout students and had done something very similar to what was done with the intersession program. CCSD pulled together all of the various bills with appropriations to compile something reasonable to help address prevention, intervention, and recovery within a drop-out picture starting with the grade school levels. He said CCSD could see intersession programs and summer school programs serving both "at risk" students and students who were doing extremely well. A lot of students wanted to go to summer school to take classes, because they could not fit any more into their schedules during regular session. He explained there were more amendments CCSD wanted to include and therefore wanted to be a part of the group in developing the new language.

Chairman Williams asked how much time was needed for the coalition to put it together, to which Mr. Etchemendy was confident they could have the document together by the next work session, which was on Wednesday, March 10, 1999. Mr. Etchemendy said one of the things already compiled was intersession programs and summer school programs would be available to all students, regardless if they were "at risk" or not.

Chairman Williams declared no action was taken and closed the hearing on A.B. 145. He opened the hearing on A.B. 147.

Larry Spitler represented CCSD and said A.B. 147 had been introduced in various forms in the 1997 session, but was not funded. He explained the bill was probably brought back through the Committee on Ways and Means to re-evaluate its effectiveness.

Mr. Spitler said section 5, appropriated $510,000 for funding tuition for each summer school. He understood the direction from the committee was to support the work of the Education Coalition to consolidate the earlier mentioned bills into one combined bill. Therefore, should the committee act on A.B. 147, section 5 would be deleted because it would not be needed as a result of combining those bills.

Mr. Spitler drew attention to section 1, which read, "CCSD shall establish an experimental program to extend the instruction of pupils beyond the regularly scheduled school day." The section also stated the allocation to the CCSD was to allow not less than 25 schools within the district to participate in the program. Not less than two-thirds of those schools would be "at risk" populations.

CCSD found a similar program in 1995 to be effective, in which the school day was extended. They offered tutorial programs and actually invited parents to come in and work with their children. Unfortunately, pre-testing was done, not post-testing; therefore no accurate measure was available to show progress.

Section 2 described how the $900,000 appropriation would be allocated.

Section 3 indicated that CCSD would report to the Seventy-first Legislative Session with all of the results to determine if those programs worked. Mr. Spitler said the best kinds of "safety nets" for children were needed so all extended day programs were varied and hopefully met the needs of children who might have dropped out at a young age or started doing very poorly in their school work. CCSD had an objective to improve that significantly.

Mr. Spitler said Clark County had been successful with moving or decentralizing the school district in terms of moving a member of the board of trustees to what was called, "area service centers." There were four fully functional centers with administrative staff and full computer access to all school records so a parent could go there as opposed to going to what was traditionally called, the "edge shed." Parents could participate in the evening programs provided by the centers. He said a lot of English as a second language (ESL) programs were offered, which was great because parents and children could work together and build a very positive experience within the academic environment. He said CCSD was asking for assistance in building two more of those service centers. Some of the centers were located as storefront property, for example, in shopping centers and office buildings, which were proving to be very effective. CCSD was working on their budget and was determining how many staff members would actually be involved with the $900,000 appropriation to be presented to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mrs. Cegavske wondered if the appropriation would only pay for salaries, or did it include supplies and materials.

Mr. Spitler said the budget would be presented to the Committee on Ways and Means, but it did include instructional materials and supplies. He said the bill also authorized a snack because the students would be in school for 6 hours. The snack would be needed especially if the school day was extended.

Mrs. Cegavske said her concern was to make sure there would be enough funding for supplies. She would hate to see the program start and then realize that more money was needed to buy materials.

ASSEMBLYWOMAN KOIVISTO MOTIONED TO AMEND AND DO PASS DELETING SECTION 5 OF A.B. 147.

ASSEMBLYMAN COLLINS SECONDED THE MOTION.

THE MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY.

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Chairman Williams closed the hearing on A.B. 147 and opened discussion on S.C.R. 3.

Pepper Sturm, Research Division of the Legislative Counsel Bureau, said he was present at the request of Senator Raggio who was unable to attend the meeting. Mr. Sturm mentioned he was not there to testify in favor or opposition of the measure; however, was there to only present Senator Raggio’s remarks regarding S.C.R. 3.

Mr. Sturm read from prepared text of Exhibit D. In short, the resolution encouraged the Board of Regents of the University and Community College System of Nevada (UCCSN) to share more detailed information with school districts about the academic performance of the districts’ high school graduates within the college and university system. To facilitate the exchange, the UCCSN was urged to establish a process to request the necessary consent forms for release of student information. In addition, the State Department of Education was directed to provide assistance through its Statewide Management of Automated Record Transfer (SMART) system, or through other data sources as needed. S.C.R. 3 encouraged Nevada’s school districts to provide constructive feedback to the colleges of education in Nevada concerning the strengths and weaknesses of Nevada teachers trained in those institutions and employed by the districts. The resolution also required the State Department of Education to study the matter, in cooperation with the UCCSN, and report its findings to the legislature in the year 2001.

Dr. Keith Rheault representing the Department of Education supported the concepts incorporated within S.C.R. 3. He said the Department of Education had been trying to share data and work with the University System. Dr. Rheault said he would love to have seen the resolution in place 7 years ago because the Department of Education did follow-up graduation information, which had to be done by mail.

Dr. Rheault said the statewide automated record system that was going to be in place was not funded yet. He explained the automated record system would be maintained and completed in the CCSD area, but once it was in place, it would be of great value in sharing information with the university. One example of what would be available on the system was students who took remedial courses at the university. Analysis would be able to be done to find out why that student took remedial courses. The system would show which subject area was being taught in a remedial fashion and if there was a course-taking pattern, it could be used for the student’s improvement. Ultimately, the Department of Education supported S.C.R. 3 and would gladly work with the university to carry out the wishes of the resolution.

Henry Etchemendy, NASB, supported S.C.R. 3 but said there was a "hole" in the resolution. He drew attention to page 3, lines 26 through 30, which read, "the Department of Education shall provide assistance to the collaboration by means of the statewide automated system of information concerning pupils that is maintained by the Department or by means of other sources of information concerning pupils maintained by the Department." Mr. Etchemendy said that particular program was not funded in the governor’s budget and the system was not totally complete in the state. He hoped the money committees would find a means of completing the program because it was essential and of great interest to the NASB.

Marcia Bandera representing Elko County School District (ECSD) spoke in support of S.C.R. 3. Regardless of what happened to SMART, the ability to share information was still greatly needed.

Ms. Bandera said the first remediation study completed involved 41 graduates from Elko County who had taken one or more remedial classes in English or math at one of the post secondary institutions in the system. ECSD knew that 35 of those students went to Great Basin College, which indicated perhaps they were not in a 4-year program track but another occupational track. Ms. Bandera said, "we could not call up our neighbors that are about a dirt lot away from us" to find out which students went to that college. While ECSD supported the automation program, the need for information did not rely only on automation. She thought it was strange that information could not be shared and thought S.C.R. 3 would help.

Dr. Jane Nichols, UCCSN, testified in support of S.C.R. 3. She said the UCCSN had worked with the State Department of Education and the school districts to try to share information, particularly in light of the remedial course report. The reason information had not been shared was because of federal law requirements. The resolution would in no way get around those federal requirements, but it would place the burden on the UCCSN to get permission from the students or if under 18, from the parents, in order to share information. Dr. Nichols said it should be made very clear to students it would be their right to choose whether they wanted information shared or not, but she thought most students would be happy for UCCSN to share information. The UCCSN had already been working with the SMART data base to create ways for information to be shared while protecting individual identities, but getting information the high schools wanted and needed to try to improve the academic performance of students. In conclusion, the UCCSN would do every thing possible to carry out the intent of the resolution.

Mr. Collins asked if information would be confidentially held, for example, when a student graduated from high school and their transcripts were transferred to a college.

Dr. Nichols responded it would not be public information. As in the high schools, student identification and student grades were held confidential. Dr. Nichols said it was important to understand the intent of the resolution, which was to enable the sharing of data across the system in order to generate reports and to be able to understand course-taking patterns.

Kristine Jensen, Nevada Concerned Citizens, provided her questions regarding S.C.R. 3 (Exhibit E).

• "What is the extent and depth of information to be shared?"

• "Is the information non-identifiable? For example, information by subject not by individual."

• "Would there be any repercussions upon the student and/or parent for refusing to give consent? For example, restricted enrollment or participation in certain activities."

• "Will students/parents be informed that the release of information is optional and notified as to what their privacy rights entail?"

• "Where else, or in what other manner will the information be shared? For example, School-to-Work or an employment profile."

Ms. Jensen said in her research related to the School-to-Work system and the Resource Development Plan, there were goals and plans to share information clear back to the federal level. She wanted to know if S.C.R. 3 intended to get information from that level.

Ms. Jensen gave some possible suggestions to help with the resolution.

1. "Specifically outline what information is to be shared."

2. "Clarify the information as being non-identifiable and used for aggregate data purposes only."

3. "Specifically state that the release is optional and will not affect the student status."

4. "State the limited scope of the usage of the information."

Mr. Collins wondered if those questions were presented to the committee.

Dr. Nichols said she received the list of the questions and would be happy to respond to them in writing in collaboration with the State Department of Education because it was a shared decision and responsibility.

Chairman Williams declared no action taken on S.C.R. 3.

Meeting was adjourned at 5 p.m.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:

Hilary Graunke,

Committee Secretary

APPROVED BY:

Assemblyman Wendell Williams, Chairman

DATE: