Sarah Mueller
The Senate Education Committee unanimously approved school turnaround legislation despite some concerns by members.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Dennis Baxley (SB 1498) speeds up the timetable for F-rated schools to adopt and put into place improvement plans. Members of both parties raised concerns that the required timeline might be too strict and not always in the school’s best interest.
Under Baxley’s legislation, schools that earn the lowest grades on the state assessments, scoring a D or a F, must create a turnaround plan. Currently, a school wouldn’t have to do that unless it received two consecutive D’s or one F and has two years to raise test scores. His bill would give the schools the rest of the school year plus an additional year to turn things around or they would face closure, conversion into a charter school or relinquishing control of operations to an outside entity.
“I really believe that it’s time to hit the gas,” Baxley said. “How long are we going to send (kids) to a place to fail?”
The bill is tied to a more comprehensive piece of legislation (CS/HB 7079) that revamps the statewide accountability system to align with the new Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (BEST) Standards, which is replacing Common Core.
Baxley noted that the majority of schools that have entered the turnaround system successfully exited with a “C” grade or higher. He said his bill is aimed at addressing the more than 60 schools that exited and then got another low performing score.
Ingrid Hanley is a fifth-grader who says she goes to a school that would suffer or even close if Baxley’s bill became law. She said its score has fluctuated between a “C” and a “D” over the past few years. But that doesn’t explain what’s great about her school.
“My school [has] done a lot for me personally,” she said. “My school has helped me grow as a student and as a person.”
Opponents of parts of the legislation say schools with large populations of low-income students face challenges that make the strict time frame problematic, such as children entering kindergarten already behind, absenteeism and tardiness.
Sen. David Simmons said he was troubled by the tight timeframe and hoped Baxley would introduce an amendment before the next committee stop so it didn’t “unreasonably and inappropriately” penalize those schools.
Baxley’s bill now heads to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Education.
The House Education Committee is set to hear HB 7079 Tuesday afternoon.
