Education Committee- House
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Bills discussed (44)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
|
SB167
Act 563
· 9 mentions in chapter, agenda, transcript
Matched: “SB167 A. Clark TO AMEND THE DATES BY WHICH CERTAIN REQUESTS TO TR…”
|
TO AMEND THE DATES BY WHICH CERTAIN REQUESTS TO TRANSFER PUBLIC SCHOOLS OR PUBLIC SCHOOL … | A. Clark | Notification that SB167 is now Act 563 |
|
HB1633
Act 475
· 5 mentions in chapter, transcript, agenda
Matched: “HB1633 Brooks TO AMEND ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATING…”
|
TO AMEND ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATING IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES FOR CERTAIN STUDENTS WHO TRANSFER SCHOOLS; … | Brooks | Notification that HB1633 is now Act 475 |
|
SB292
Act 264
· 4 mentions in agenda, chapter, transcript
Matched: “…SCHOOL EMPLOYEES WITH A WEARABLE PANIC ALERT SYSTEM DEVICE. SB292 K. Hammer TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE DATE OF AN ANNUAL…”
|
TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE DATE OF AN ANNUAL SCHOOL ELECTION; TO MOVE THE … | K. Hammer | Notification that SB292 is now Act 264 |
|
HB1025
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1025 McGruder TO CREATE THE TEACHER FAIR DISMISSAL ACT OF 2025.”
|
TO CREATE THE TEACHER FAIR DISMISSAL ACT OF 2025. | McGruder | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1398
Act 352
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1398 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO SUPPORT, ESTABLISH, AND IM…”
|
TO REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO SUPPORT, ESTABLISH, AND IMPLEMENT A CARDIAC EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLAN THAT INTEGRATES … | L. Johnson | Notification that HB1398 is now Act 352 |
|
HB1457
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1457 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO SUBMIT DATA AND OTH…”
|
TO REQUIRE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO SUBMIT DATA AND OTHER INFORMATION RELATED TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL … | L. Johnson | WITHDRAWN BY AUTHOR |
|
HB1490
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…N PROGRAM USING A UNIFORM STATEWIDE DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM. HB1490 Wardlaw TO REPEAL THE REQUIREMENT THAT A PUBLIC SCHOOL STUD…”
|
TO REPEAL THE REQUIREMENT THAT A PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENT RETURN TEMPORARILY ISSUED ITEMS, RESOURCES, MATERIALS, … | Wardlaw | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1492
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1492 Gramlich TO REQUIRE EACH PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT AND OPEN-EN…”
|
TO REQUIRE EACH PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT AND OPEN-ENROLLMENT PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL TO IMPLEMENT A MOBILE … | Gramlich | Recommended for study in the Interim by the … |
|
HB1580
Act 801
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…BLIC SCHOOLS OR PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS SHALL BE SUBMITTED. HB1580 Gramlich TO REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO PROVIDE CERTAIN INFORMATION…”
|
TO REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO PROVIDE CERTAIN INFORMATION ON TYPE 1 AND TYPE 2 DIABETES WHEN … | Gramlich | Notification that HB1580 is now Act 801 |
|
HB1601
Act 354
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…TAX LEVIED BY A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF DIRECTORS. HB1601 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE STATE-SUPPORTED INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHE…”
|
TO REQUIRE STATE-SUPPORTED INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION TO PROVIDE CAREER COUNSELING AND OTHER RESOURCES TO … | L. Johnson | Notification that HB1601 is now Act 354 |
|
SB135
Act 399
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…SCHOOL IN ORDER TO BE ELIGIBLE TO ENROLL IN A HOME SCHOOL. SB135 J. Boyd TO AMEND ELECTION REQUIREMENTS IN THE CASE OF AN UN…”
|
TO AMEND ELECTION REQUIREMENTS IN THE CASE OF AN UNCHANGED RATE OF AN ANNUAL AD … | J. Boyd | Notification that SB135 is now Act 399 |
|
HB1017
Act 904
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…OVATION IN ARKANSAS. DEFERRED BILLS Number Sponsor Subtitle HB1017 A. Collins TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING PAID MATERNITY LEAVE…”
|
TO AMEND THE LAW REGARDING PAID MATERNITY LEAVE FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL EMPLOYEES; AND TO REQUIRE … | A. Collins | Notification that HB1017 is now Act 904 |
|
HB1020
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…O PAY FOR INCURRED COSTS FOR APPROVED PAID MATERNITY LEAVE. HB1020 A. Collins TO REPEAL THE ARKANSAS CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL FR…”
|
TO REPEAL THE ARKANSAS CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM ACCOUNT PROGRAM; TO CREATE A NEW EDUCATION FUNDING … | A. Collins | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1023
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND OPEN-ENROLLMENT PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS. HB1023 A. Collins TO AMEND THE STATE TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM; AN…”
|
TO AMEND THE STATE TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM; AND TO AMEND THE ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS FOR LOAN … | A. Collins | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1027
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…NTS UNDER THE STATE TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM. Page 2 of 3 HB1027 D. Garner TO CREATE THE BRIGHTER START ACT OF 2025; AND TO…”
|
TO CREATE THE BRIGHTER START ACT OF 2025; AND TO REQUIRE THE TREASURER OF STATE … | D. Garner | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1030
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…TING AND FUTURE ARKANSAS BRIGHTER FUTURE FUND PLAN ACCOUNT. HB1030 T. Shephard TO REQUIRE A SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICER OR LAW ENF…”
|
TO REQUIRE A SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICER OR LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL TO OBTAIN CERTIFICATION IN YOUTH … | T. Shephard | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1031
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…OUNSELOR TO RECEIVE YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH FIRST AID TRAINING. HB1031 D. Garner TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS HEALTHY LIFESTYLE EDUCATIO…”
|
TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS HEALTHY LIFESTYLE EDUCATION ACT OF 2025; AND TO ENSURE THE HEALTH … | D. Garner | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1051
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…IC SCHOOLS ADDRESSES CERTAIN HEALTH ISSUES FACING STUDENTS. HB1051 Andrews TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL START DATE REQUIREMENTS.…”
|
TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL START DATE REQUIREMENTS. | Andrews | WITHDRAWN BY AUTHOR |
|
HB1062
Act 565
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…Andrews TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL START DATE REQUIREMENTS. HB1062 R. Scott TO CREATE THE TEACHER AND STUDENT PROTECTION ACT O…”
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TO CREATE THE TEACHER AND STUDENT PROTECTION ACT OF 2025. | R. Scott Richardson | Notification that HB1062 is now Act 565 |
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HB1081
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…THE TEACHER AND STUDENT PROTECTION ACT OF 2025. Richardson HB1081 B. McKenzie TO REPEAL ADDITIONAL FUNDING FOR THE DEVELOPMEN…”
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TO REPEAL ADDITIONAL FUNDING FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES. | B. McKenzie | WITHDRAWN BY AUTHOR |
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HB1139
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…NT AND ADMINISTRATION OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES. HB1139 B. McKenzie TO CREATE THE RELEASED TIME EDUCATION ACT. HB11…”
|
TO CREATE THE RELEASED TIME EDUCATION ACT. | B. McKenzie | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1197
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…REPORTING REQUIREMENTS TO WHICH PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE SUBJECT. HB1197 S. Meeks TO PROHIBIT SCHEDULING, HOSTING, OR REQUIRING AN O…”
|
TO PROHIBIT SCHEDULING, HOSTING, OR REQUIRING AN OUTDOOR PRACTICE, SCRIMMAGE, GAME, OR ACTIVITY FOR AN … | S. Meeks | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1239
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…THE HOURS WHEN AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING HAS BEEN DECLARED. HB1239 A. Collins TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003;…”
|
TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003; AND TO ADD AN ADDITIONAL CATEGORY … | A. Collins | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1242
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…NT AT EACH MEETING OF A SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF DIRECTORS. HB1242 J. Mayberry TO AMEND THE MECHANISM BY WHICH SCHOOL NURSES A…”
|
TO AMEND THE MECHANISM BY WHICH SCHOOL NURSES ARE COMPENSATED. | J. Mayberry | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1283
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…DITIONAL CATEGORY OF FUNDING FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION FUNDING. HB1283 J. Mayberry TO REQUIRE THE DIVISION OF ELEMENTARY AND SECON…”
|
TO REQUIRE THE DIVISION OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION TO INCLUDE DIGITAL MEDIA STANDARDS IN … | J. Mayberry | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1312
Act 909
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…AN EMERGENCY. PENDING FISCAL IMPACT Number Sponsor Subtitle HB1312 Brooks TO AMEND PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING AMOUNTS UNDER THE PUB…”
|
TO AMEND PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING AMOUNTS UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003. | Brooks | Notification that HB1312 is now Act 909 |
|
HB1482
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “AGENDA(Revised 3/5/25 @ 2:30 PM) Moved HB1482 to Deferred Bills House Committee on Education Thursday, Ma…”
|
TO CREATE AN EXCEPTION TO THE SCHOOL ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS FOR A STUDENT WHO TAKES A … | Gramlich | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1483
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…KINDERGARTEN THROUGH GRADE TWELVE LIBRARY MEDIA STANDARDS. HB1483 Gramlich TO ALLOW A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT TO USE STATE FUN…”
|
TO ALLOW A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT TO USE STATE FUNDS TO PAY FOR AN ADULT … | Gramlich | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1484
Act 910
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…UNDING AMOUNTS UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003. HB1484 Gramlich TO LIMIT THE NUMBER OF CREDITS A STUDENT MAY OBTAI…”
|
TO LIMIT THE NUMBER OF CREDITS A STUDENT MAY OBTAIN IN A COURSE CREDIT RECOVERY … | Gramlich | Notification that HB1484 is now Act 910 |
|
HB1495
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…S A STUDENT MAY OBTAIN IN A COURSE CREDIT RECOVERY PROGRAM. HB1495 Hawk CONCERNING THE TRANSFER OF A STUDENT'S PERMANENT SCHOO…”
|
CONCERNING THE TRANSFER OF A STUDENT'S PERMANENT SCHOOL RECORD. | Hawk | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1512
Act 341
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…remember a couple of announcements, um, without objection, HB 1512 and SB 246, which is Arkansas Access. We”
|
TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS ACCESS ACT; AND TO AMEND VARIOUS PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE … | M. Shepherd | Notification that HB1512 is now Act 341 |
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HB1528
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…AMEND THE MECHANISM BY WHICH SCHOOL NURSES ARE COMPENSATED. HB1528 McGruder TO REQUIRE A REPORT CARD TO INCLUDE A STUDENT'S CU…”
|
TO REQUIRE A REPORT CARD TO INCLUDE A STUDENT'S CURRENT READING GRADE LEVEL. | McGruder | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1539
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…ERNING THE TRANSFER OF A STUDENT'S PERMANENT SCHOOL RECORD. HB1539 A. Collins TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003;…”
|
TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003; AND TO ADD AN ADDITIONAL EDUCATION … | A. Collins | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1541
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…RT CARD TO INCLUDE A STUDENT'S CURRENT READING GRADE LEVEL. HB1541 Wooten TO REQUIRE A PRIVATE SCHOOL THAT ACCEPTS STATE FUNDI…”
|
TO REQUIRE A PRIVATE SCHOOL THAT ACCEPTS STATE FUNDING OF ANY TYPE TO PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION … | Wooten | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1542
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…TRANSPORTATION TO CERTAIN STUDENTS ENROLLED IN THE SCHOOL. HB1542 Wooten TO REQUIRE PRIVATE SCHOOLS TO ADMINISTER AN ANNUAL S…”
|
TO REQUIRE PRIVATE SCHOOLS TO ADMINISTER AN ANNUAL STATEWIDE STUDENT ASSESSMENT; AND TO REQUIRE PRIVATE … | Wooten | Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1545
Act 501
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…TIONAL EDUCATION CATEGORY OF FUNDING FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION. HB1545 K. Brown TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS MILITARY CHILD SCHOOL TRANSI…”
|
TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS MILITARY CHILD SCHOOL TRANSITIONS ACT OF 2021. | K. Brown | Notification that HB1545 is now Act 501 |
|
HB1561
Act 473
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…THE ARKANSAS MILITARY CHILD SCHOOL TRANSITIONS ACT OF 2021. HB1561 Painter TO ESTABLISH THE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION PROTECTION…”
|
TO ESTABLISH THE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION PROTECTION ACT OF 2025. | Painter | Notification that HB1561 is now Act 473 |
|
HB1571
Act 502
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…STABLISH THE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION PROTECTION ACT OF 2025. HB1571 Ray TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS ADULT DIPLOMA PROGRAM ACT. SB223…”
|
TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS ADULT DIPLOMA PROGRAM ACT. | Ray | Notification that HB1571 is now Act 502 |
|
HB1598
Act 474
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…CREATE THE RELIGIOUS RIGHTS AT PUBLIC SCHOOLS ACT OF 2025. HB1598 Brooks TO REQUIRE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO ESTABLISH…”
|
TO REQUIRE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO ESTABLISH A NEW ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS; … | Brooks | Notification that HB1598 is now Act 474 |
|
HB1640
Act 476
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…UBLIC SCHOOLS FROM SCHOOL RATINGS FOR CERTAIN SCHOOL YEARS. HB1640 Duke TO AMEND THE DEFINITION OF "ADMINISTRATOR" AS IT RELAT…”
|
TO AMEND THE DEFINITION OF "ADMINISTRATOR" AS IT RELATES TO ETHICAL GUIDELINES AND PROHIBITIONS; AND … | Duke | Notification that HB1640 is now Act 476 |
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HB1642
Act 916
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…ONS ON EMPLOYMENT SPECIFIC TO PUBLIC SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS. HB1642 Gramlich TO AMEND THE MEASURES CONSIDERED WHEN CALCULATING…”
|
TO AMEND THE MEASURES CONSIDERED WHEN CALCULATING A SCHOOL RATING; AND TO ENSURE A STUDENT … | Gramlich | Notification that HB1642 is now Act 916 |
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HB1646
Act 917
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…OOL-LEVEL GRADUATION RATE IF THE STUDENT PASSES A GED TEST. HB1646 McGrew TO REQUIRE CERTAIN MATERIALS TO BE STORED IN LOCKED…”
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TO REQUIRE CERTAIN MATERIALS TO BE STORED IN LOCKED COMPARTMENTS WITHIN A DESIGNATED AREA. | McGrew | Notification that HB1646 is now Act 917 |
|
HB1672
Act 800
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…IALS TO BE STORED IN LOCKED ROOMS WITHIN A DESIGNATED AREA. HB1672 McCollum TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE TO CREATE…”
|
TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE TO CREATE A MORE EFFICIENT SYSTEM FOR PUBLIC … | McCollum | Notification that HB1672 is now Act 800 |
|
SB246
Act 340
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…couple of announcements, um, without objection, HB 1512 and SB 246, which is Arkansas Access. We”
|
TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS ACCESS ACT; AND TO AMEND VARIOUS PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE … | J. Dismang | Notification that SB246 is now Act 340 |
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Uh, if you would please stand and Representative Wade Andrews will start some prayer this morning. Bear with me.
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
0:15
Dear Father in heaven, thank you for everything that you give us, Lord. Thank you for the beautiful day you've given us. Thank you for allowing us to come here to do your work. At this place, Lord, watch out for everyone here gets our sins, procrastinate,
amen. Thank you, Representative. I remember a couple of announcements, um, without objection, HB 1512 and SB 246, which is Arkansas Access. We
made under a special order of business during joint education meeting on Monday, that's Monday morning 9 a.m., uh, which is, which is what we had discussed, uh, so again just kind of make your plans to be there. I wanna make sure the public is aware of that as well. So Monday morning 9 a.m., that meeting will be in Big Mac A. And Without objection, we're gonna go out of order this morning as well and we're gonna start with Senator Hammer, who has joined us from the other side, uh, SB 292. So, uh, Senator Hammer, if
you would please introduce yourself for the record and you recognized present SB 292. Thank you Mr.
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:15
Chairman Kim Hammer, state senator, would you, would you define the other side just
in case there's Misunderstanding. It's up to your own interpretation, sir. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh, Truly an honor to be down here with you on the house in, served my first year, 8 years on the house. So I appreciate each one of you. I appreciate the service that you provide, um, may I proceed, Mr. Chair, with the presentation of the bill. You recognize. Thank you. This is a
very short, simple, but effective and important bill this year, election falls on Veterans Day and what this bill does is allow them to move to the 3rd week of the month in the event a state holiday fall. on an election day for school boards, and that's really all this does is graining that latitude for them to move it to the 3rd week because we're going to be bumping up against the state federal holiday this time around. And so without this you're going to have election on that holiday and we really think
it'd be best not to do that. So that's the essence of the bill, Mr. Chairman. I'll be
glad to answer any questions. Further questions from members for Senator Hammer. Just a point of clarification. So this is only relative to when there is a holiday, no other
exceptions, just strictly if there's a holiday on
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:31
that election day. Yes sir, on page 2, starting at line 1 through 4 is pretty specific an annual school election that is scheduled to occur in a month in which a 2nd Tuesday of the month under this subdivision of section falls on a state
holiday, shall be held on the 3rd Tuesday of that month, so it's very specific to this one unique situation. There are additional questions for
members. Represent McGruder, you recognize for a question, sir. Thank
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
2:56
you, Senator Hammer, uh, for coming down here and gracing us with your presence. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, my, my question is in regards to uh last year, I think we had
an election that came around Thanksgiving, uh, does this affect something in that area. Uh, I think what it would do,
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
3:13
the way it would be written is. Uh, I don't know of any elections that fall on Thanksgiving. And I would say, in which the 2nd Tuesday month under subdivision 6 falls State holiday shall be held on the 3rd Tuesday month. So I, I don't think there's going to be a conflict, but I'll tell you what we can do, we can let this one go through. We find one, we still got time to come back and address that specific one. I'll be glad to co-sponsor that with you on the other end, if you want to run that, if we end up
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
3:45
running into that scenario. OK, I think it was a, a runoff election after the general, but that's that's my only question. Thank you. you Are there additional questions from
members? Seeing none, no one has signed up to speak on the bills and anyone who would like to speak for or against the bill. CNN, Senator Hammer, would you like to close for your bill? I'm closed for the
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
4:04
bill and appreciate a good vote. Thank you, members for letting me present first this morning. Senator Hammer is closed for his bill.
We have a motion to pass on the table. Is there any discussion on the motion? See no discussion, all in favor
say aye. All opposed. Congratulations, Senator, your bill is passed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just appoint a
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
4:19
personal privilege. I've heard we're pretty cold-hearted on the other end. I'm gonna go down where it's cooler because it's really warm in this room, so I'm gonna go to the cold side now that it's just hope
that you can bring some goodness to those folks down there. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Senator.
Members, we are, uh, just a quick announcement, we are also blessed with the presence of our former chair of House Education Speaker Ryan Evans has joined us this morning. Not really sure why he's joined us, but he is here in the room, so we always wanna make sure we, uh, uh, recognize the good speaker when
he's here, uh, with us. Uh, without objection again, we're going to
take a couple of things out of order while we wait on Representative Johnson to get down here. Uh, we're gonna move to SB 167 and HB 1633 and I'll yield a chair to representative McKenzie.
Ah Chairman, what, what bill we're gonna take first? SB 167, so you're recognized to present SB 167. I'm also I believe you have an amendment. We do, yes, OK, I'd like to present the. Mr. Colleagues, there's an
amendment being passed out by staff right
now for SB 167. Uh, this is just adding me as a, as the house sponsor along with Senator Alan Clark. OK. So I would appreciate a good vote on the amendment. All right, uh, anyone speak?
Well, no, uh, what is the will of the committee? We've got a motion to adopt the amendment. Uh, second, uh, all in favor say aye. I posed OK, so now you're able to present your bill, uh, SB 167
as amended. Thank you committee. I appreciate the adoption of the amendment. SB 167 is a very
simple bill passed on the Senate side without any objection unanimously. This is simply moving the school choice date to June the first. Currently it's May the 1st, uh, this is agreed upon by administrators, AEA and other school leadership and so it's just simply moving that date from May 1 to June 1, and I'll be happy to take any questions. Are
Speaker 28
6:40
there any questions from committee? Representative Gonzalez more than you're recognized. Yes,
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
6:53
thank you, thank you. I was just wondering about the um the the reason behind moving it to June 1st and not leaving it May 1st.
Uh, so it was, uh, in Senator Clark it answers a little bit better, but, uh, just wanted to make sure that with, with different school calendars, uh, just
making sure that we get to the end of the school year, um, was, was the general preference, uh, it just seemed a little bit more, um, advantageous based upon what schools are dealing with to make sure that they have all their administrative duties in, uh, prior to the prior to
Speaker 36
7:25
the the final day for, for a student to choose and you recognized for a follow up.
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
7:32
You're good, no worries and So basically, parents would be choosing, initially it was May 1st, um, but then now we're changing it to June 1st. OK, and then this is, these are for mainly public schools. This is this is for, you know, the district district,
the typical process that currently is May 1st, the only thing that change is moving to June 1st. OK, so
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
7:55
would that also include, it's just a question. Those students who are in private schools on vouchers, they're there and they decide they want to come back to the public school? Would they need to wait until June 1st. No later than you, you have to be signed up by June 1st
to to be uh a part of the admissions process for that school, so then it wouldn't be
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
8:16
just any time during the school year as long as you're in by June
1st, that's the requirement, thank you. Any other questions from committee?
Speaker 28
8:26
Representative McGruder, you recognize? Well, that's a fake uh athletics. Uh, if I could hold my powder, maybe the next bill won't adjust that. Any other questions from committee? Uh, no one signed
up to speak for or against. Does anyone wish to speak for or against the bill? OK, Chairman Brooks, you're recognized to close for your
Speaker 28
8:47
bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm closed and I make a motion to pass. OK, there's a motion to pass on the table for SB 167. Any discussion on the motion?
All right, all those in favor say yay. I messed that
up, but that's fine. All those opposed say no. All right, your bill is passed. Thank you committee. I
Speaker 28
9:10
appreciate it. You're not recognized uh to present your next bill. So, uh, the next bill that we have an amendment to
be adopted on this as well and staff is passing out that amendment. And with uh the chair's permission I would like to bring uh Mr. Lance Taylor, executive director of the AAA, up to the table. He was kind enough to come down
here in the midst of a lot of state championship basketball that's happening all over the state. Can you recognize yourself for
Speaker 50
9:39
the record? Lance Taylor, executive director of the Arkansas High School Activities Association. Thank you, sir, for being here. We'll just
give the committee one second with the amendment. And a free to present.
Circum of the amendment that's being passed out is uh to bring HB 1633 in line with SB 167, which we just passed out of this committee, uh, which is changing the school choice date to June 1st, and that date will be impacted or this bill will be impacted by that date change, which I'll explain in just a moment. I'd appreciate adoption of the
Speaker 28
10:17
amendment. OK Uh, so is that a motion? Sorry, make a motion to pass so adopting them, so we have a motion to adopt the amendment. Is there a discussion
on the motion? See no discussion. All those in
favor say aye. All those opposed say nay. Congratulations, your amendment's been adopted. Now you present the bill.
Uh, SR HB 1633 is, um, for lack of a better term, a AAA transfer bill. Uh,
there's no secret amongst all of us that um transferring between schools for the purpose of athletics has become a significant challenge and Mr. Taylor can can probably address some of the, the statistics, but one striking statistic to me that stuck out,
uh, recently was a couple of years ago, a lot of you may be familiar with Hooten's Arkansas Football magazine. Every year Hootens puts out a magazine. that the details, all the different teams and and athletes in the state, both uh high school and college. And a couple of years ago from 100 athletes that had been profiled in that, uh, the following year, 100 out of 150 of those were at a different school, uh, and this was not necessarily a, a, a move to a private school. This was a move between public schools, uh, because obviously people make a
lot of decisions based upon why they would choose the school that is best for them. Athletics can play a significant role in that and so, uh, a majority of our, our schools had reached out and said we want to make sure that we create equality across the board, uh. And so this is, this is born out of a lot of discussions with our public school administrators and uh the I checked with uh uh Mr. Taylor this morning to kind of see what the data was 84.1% of public school administrators responded that they are in favor
of this and so basically what this bill does, it's 6 pages, but it's very simple. All it does is it equalizes the transferring in for the purpose of athletics for interclass inter interscholastic activities it equalizes the transferring. says that up until June 1 now up until June 1, uh, going into your 10th grade year, so it would be a, a, not someone who's just finished or just finishing their 9th grade year, going into their 10th grade year. They may transfer, um, as much as they want to up to that point. They can transfer from a public
school to a public school they can transfer from a private school to a public school, private to a private, public to a private, the transfers are equal across the board. After that date, after June 1 of the rising 10th grade year, so they're going to be a 10th grader, uh, should they choose to transfer after that date, they will have to set up 365 days. Uh, the goal of this is quite frankly, to prevent transfer portals in high school, um, again, the narrative frankly used to be that, that private schools were, uh, were quote
unquote recruiting, uh, I think there's, there's a lot of data suggests that wasn't accurate. However, um, the, the issue has become much more prevalent in recent years, uh, amongst school districts. that are 25, 30 miles away from each other that are, that are seeing great athletes with good opportunity, uh, and so we wanna make sure that number one, that if a student is transferring, they're primarily transferring for the purpose of academics, uh, and should they choose to transfer that we have uh significant parameters are consistent parameters in place for all students so we have
quality across the board, uh, so that is, uh, that is the whole of
the bill and I'll be happy to take any questions. All right, any questions from committee? Yeah, Representative Walker, you're
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
13:50
recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I agree, um, there is an issue out there that needs to be addressed. I think we're on the right track, but, uh, if you guys can help me remember, um, I think we used to do something real similar to this until last session and we upped it to was it 12th grade?
Um, what's, what's the difference between this and how we used to do it before last session of upping it to
Speaker 64
14:16
12th grade. I don't believe it was 12th grade. The start of 12th grade I thought what we. For for public
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
14:23
schools, I'm sorry for public schools, yes. And we're public schools in this
is why I'm asking that question. I'm just curious on how was it different then to what we're going to now if we pass this
Speaker 50
14:34
bill, it puts everybody equally. Everybody's equitable across represented Walker.
I'm it makes it equal for everybody. It doesn't matter if you're going to a public school, a non-public school. If you're a charter school or if you're home school, it's gonna be the same rule for every student across the state of Arkansas and I
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
14:51
agree with making it Well, that's not really where I'm headed with that question. I'm curious on the public school side of it because I have a lot of rural schools, and I'm just wondering what the difference is between we're doing now, before we changed it last session to 12th grade for the public schools. Like, is this the exact same way we used to do it and
we're just trying to go back to it. OK, um, you're recognized for
Speaker 75
15:15
a follow-up. Oh, sorry. Um Thank you for the leniency on that. Um So Let's just
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
15:23
say in a rural school this happens, or in my rural areas, this happens a lot where a teacher outside of a, a school district that they're going to move into because I just recently got hired as a 10th grade student, um, going into 11th grade, however you want to
look at it, will that kid be eligible or ineligible,
Speaker 50
15:45
makes a complete bona fide move from one public school district to another would be helpful. That rule, sir. and the hardship there,
there are 8 hardship exemptions that are currently in place under. AAA rule, those have not changed at all either. OK, and I'm assuming
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
15:58
if somebody follow up and if somebody else has a question,
I'll be happy to drop out and drop back into the queue just. OK, I'll just ask one more and
I'll drop. OK. What happens if somebody buys a house in the district, um, and they're moving from they're originally they're going to a school district outside of the district. They buy a house within this new district. Will that kid be eligible? Yes sir, they make a complete bona
Speaker 72
16:27
fide move. Yes, sir, that's, that's part of
the, of the, the current exemption process already with the AAA. I have a few
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
16:33
more questions, but to help my colleague out, I'll drop out and let her ask hers. Representative Duke recognized.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
16:43
Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, my question, I guess, would be for Mr. Taylor, if you could kind of give a little bit of the history on how this has evolved with this. Sit out period because my memory serves me correct. It's been a lot of different. Methods of this over the last 10 or 15 years and um maybe also if you could include how that's looked in maybe different areas of state because I know it impacts different areas of the state, maybe a little bit differently depending on how close you are or far or far away you are from schools. I know
what I see in Northwest Arkansas may be very different from the way it looks in other parts of the state, and it may not be, but if you could
Speaker 50
17:20
elaborate on that, I would appreciate it. So it has changed a lot the transfer rules have, and then It was steady for a long time and then we We started passing, I guess our rules and our association also laws over here that we had to meet and so they got out of whack because there were rules for public schools, there's rules for charter schools. There were rules for private schools and there were rules for
homeschooling. So we had 4 different set of rules and it's hard for parents across the state to keep up with all that information. So what this does, it treats everybody is the same as it's fair for everybody across across the board because it's gonna be the same transport rule. for every single student in our state. You recognize. So If you're
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
18:05
in in memory serves me correctly. There were also variations if you moved from a
larger district to a smaller district at certain points in
time, there was no variations in that, so has it been for the public schools? Is there ever a sit out period for them? Yes, before, but that's,
Speaker 50
18:22
that's what I think Representative Walker was saying it used to be the 10th grade rule. Yes, ma'am, this
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
18:27
is just putting everyone to the rule that was originally there. however many years ago it was, because I
know that there's been a merry round of rules around this for several years. Thank you,
just the simplicity is this just makes sure everybody's on the exact same level playing field. Representative Walker, you want
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
18:45
another question? I'm up. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, So I'm just trying to remember how all this used to work, because I know whenever we brought the Lawrenceville out, um, last session, the focus was tearing walls down for our families, so we didn't have to penalize them or whatever whenever they try to transfer somewhere and I'm, my concern is that we're trying to add some of these walls back up. I know we're helping out the private school, charter schools or whatever, but the public school side of it, we're going from 12th grade down to 10th grade,
and so I'm just trying to, to make sure we're doing. what's right for our families too. Um, so my question that that's leading into in the rural areas, um, sometimes people will transfer to another school district for the right reasons, whether it's academics or whatever, but I know, um, we'll have families that may be running from, um, I don't know if it may be abusive partner or whatever, they haven't having to move into another school district to, to kind of run away
from it. Would that kid, if he was in 11th grade, would he be penalized or would there be an
exception for that one too. I think that's a great question, Representative Walker. So reading from the AAA rules of hardships. Rule number 8 is an extreme and unusual circumstance exists that's no fault of the students or the parents, examples of conditions that warn extremely unusual circumstance, extreme medical or psychiatric conditions, sexual abuse or assault, physical abuse to assault must have supporting documentation. So there certainly are exemptions that that go directly to Director Taylor, uh, relative to an
individual circumstance. That can be looked at and frankly my experience, you know, with, with all school types is that those exemptions have been looked on with, with merit for every single one of them, uh, understand the specific situation. So certainly given those scenarios, yes, there are allowances that would be made. OK, um, I'm
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
20:36
guessing those situations happened where they were deemed in, or I mean deemed eligible. Do we know if any have been deemed ineligible or is that data that we keep.
Speaker 49
20:48
We keep hardships, we keep them on file, uh, for less. We keep them for 7 years, matter of
Speaker 50
20:53
fact, whenever we do approve one or do not approve them just to make sure that'll last their whole career from 7th grade to 12th grade, so there are both the hardships are just documentations, Representative Walker. They have to get documentation. A lot of times the judge will remove a student from a family because they've abrogated their responsibility parents, DHS, any kind of documentation we accept to approve those hardships. We do it all the time. OK.
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
21:19
So the family would have to go on record by going through the whole court process then before they would have the documentation to support
Speaker 50
21:28
a transfer the police, the police, I mean, there's a lot of different ways that you can get the documentation that we accept. It's all listed in our handbook. There's 8 rules, I think Representative Brooks just said one, but there's, there's 7 before
Speaker 78
21:38
that, so there's, there's quite a few there that they and just to clarify,
that's all, I know you're, you're looking there, uh, so it's, it's in the AAA handbook, uh, it's where what I'm reading from, uh, which.
be the Bible of the AAA, if you will, uh, so there are 8 different domicile exceptions. Uh, you can find them on page 48 and 49 of the AAA handbook should you be bored later on today, it's 149 pages ish, uh, so you can print it off and read the whole thing, um, but uh no, so those those exceptions are within that and Representative Walker, to your point, to your question about, um, you know, documentation, that type of thing. I certainly know of situations where
uh there's been significant bullying in place and, and the child has gone and has done counseling relative to bullying. and that bullying can be from a
number of different places and exemptions have been granted, uh, relative to that, and so, uh, my experience has been that the AAA has been extremely fair, uh, relative to, to where they were currently. The goal of this simply is to create predictability across
the board because it's something that's has been asked for by, by virtually every single school district in the state. OK. My last follow-up, I got
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
22:43
it. All right, um. I saw a press release from, I think it was out of Indiana. It was in the month of this last
month of February where they trying to make it fair across all income classes whether you're the poor or middle class, the rich, or whatever, um, they had it to where starting in the 10th, I think it was 10th grade, you may have to correct me. It might have been
6 semesters of high school. So frankly that would go all the way through the end of your 11th
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
23:10
grade year, where basically, um, you got one free transfer, so it was the same across the board, uh, most. The kids, I doubt would ever use the free transfer or whatever. Um, I think there was a 365 day window where you had the ability
to move back in the district if you realize the transfer was, um, not for you or whatever and then it was over with. Anything after that was setting out 365 years. Have we considered anything like that to try to make it fair and equitable across the board like we're talking about or has that just been completely discarded. I'm just curious always go back to your home district, uh,
but we, we certainly, um. Considered a lot of different options
within this legislation, and you and I have talked about that offline, you know, we've, we considered, uh, what's the
best way to address this, um, and as we talked to schools and superintendents and athletic directors, uh, this was really the, the solution we came up with to create equitability across the board for everyone, the most simple one because yes, we certainly could uh allow transfers all the way to the end of 11th grade. Uh, I think what we would find is we would find, um, like it or not. not, we would find a team who needs a tight end, go and find, finding that tight end before they get into their senior year. Uh, we would find someone who is down a quarterback, uh, going in and saying, hey, I know there's
a quarterback in Jonesboro. Let me move him over to Greenwood, and there's no dispersions on Jonesboro or Greenwood. Uh, just use those two examples, uh, so I I think we would find um a situation that is, is not what we intend in terms of the academic health and success for students, uh, we find schools because we all know that. matters whether we like to, whether we like it or not, um, that's a value that is especially in the South. And so I think we would find, uh, schools attempting to, to figure
out a way to meet their athletic needs, um, as opposed to focusing on the academics and so we wanted to, we wanted to create uh similarity and equity across the board for all schools. If if that's the case
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
25:07
and so you said 12th grade, would we, is there any way we could consider doing a one free transfer, leaving it with 10th grade the way you have your. Bill and saying in the 1st 4 semesters of a high school or however you had wired it to where it'd be 10th, 11th, and then you're done going into 12th. This language is agreed upon and
again, as, as we looked at all the different options, this was, this is what the majority of schools, uh, said would serve their best needs to, to focus on the student most
of all. OK, thank you. Thank you. I'm just gonna ask, we do have some other questions in the queue, so
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
25:47
Representative McGruder, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, uh, Representative Books, uh, for the bill, uh, Coach Taylor, uh, I have been waiting to get back at you for losing, uh, my conference championship this year.
Been waiting to get back at AAA. Y'all had West Memphis traveling to, uh, are we sure we for a game, so I've been waiting for this opportunity and I just want to remind the representative we got a red coat right over there, right over your shoulder, OK. I will get out of the middle of that being said, I, I am very frustrated about the way uh College football has shifted and uh I appreciate this bill because kids are transferring from district to district, uh, just for sports reasons. So, uh,
this bill says once you get to your 10th grade, you're pretty much locked in unless you have a bona fide move.
Speaker 50
26:36
Am I correct? you're already a transfer, you can always go back to your resident district within the 1st 11 days of either semester and, and be eligible as long as you're not violating the same sports, same season rule, so. If I was at West Memphis playing basketball, I couldn't move back to Marion at Christmas after playing for y'all and play the same sport. OK, OK. Thank you for the clarification.
And just, just to kind of put a button on button, that's the wrong terminology of bow to put a bow on, uh, what I'm thinking there, uh, to put a bow on kind of what the what the hardship exemptions are. I'll just read from the AAA handbook, so just so you know, so, court of law has removed student from the parents or guardians and subsequently assigned the place the student a different place of domicile student is an orphan, no record of parents' whereabouts, students' parents are out of state residents and students attending a school in state. Students parents have abrogated responsibility toward the students.
parents, students, parents, employment requires absence from home for great portions of the time while a student is home. They, the parents arranged a domicile with relatives or friends for the purpose of supervision. A student is married and living with a spouse, and has a parent domicile in the school district or a spouse who has an established domicile industry one year prior to marriage. Students lived 3 continuous years at any time as a bona fide member of a family may establish the family as heads as substitute parents with respect to the domicile and the 8th 1 that I read earlier on about which broadens it to.
potential legal or other ramifications. So those are the 8 exceptions, the hardship exceptions that the AAA currently allows again, in my mind,
giving flexibility to this rule. This rule allowing us to have consistency across the board, but also understanding that there are a number of situations that the AAA has consistently looked at to approve waivers in those situations. Thank you. Uh, any other
questions from committee? OK, seeing none, uh, comments from the public, we.
We have representative Matthew Shepherd signed up to speak for. I believe Representative
Shepard is in public health with another representative running the bill. OK, that's fine. Um, any other, would anyone
from the like like to speak for or against the bill. OK. Uh Here's Representatives. I do want to make a note, I know that you are a fine established attorney at law, but your handwriting seemed similar to a doctor. So I had to, I had to get Kristen to write it.
Representative Matthew J. Shepherd
Unverified
29:04
I'm, I'm guilty of bad handwriting, so can you recognize yourself for the record, please? Matthew Shepherd, District 97. Thank you. Well, I, I just wanted to, this, I think this is the first time I've ever signed up to speak for a bill in committee, but I'm honored, by the way. But um this is an issue that has uh It's kind of grown over the last couple of years, this issue of of transfers, particularly with regard to athletic and extracurricular eligibility and
uh something that that I've had conversations with the AAA, the speaker has had conversations with the AAA and that that has been looked at and really worked on for the better part of the last year and a half and I'm, I'm sure that, uh, Mr. Taylor may have shared that he had worked with members of the AAA, both Publix and. Private schools about what could be done to um to address this issue and try to provide some uniformity across the board. And, and so this is this bill is is ultimately the result of that
work and I wanna thank the AAA, uh, and Mr. Taylor for their work on this and this is kind of, I think, Um, maybe a unique issue where by and large, Uh, to my knowledge, most public schools and most private schools actually agree. And I know that that's uh that sometimes is an issue, particularly in the educational space about, you know, well, what, how does this impact public schools? How does this impact private schools, but what we have here is a bill that's gonna um provide uniformity
across the board and I think it's something that's important, athletics and extracurricular, uh, things are not the most important thing, but they are, they are still important and they're part of a of an of an educational experience and I know that for myself and many. that the lessons that that I learned, uh, being a part of those types of activities have uh served me well even to this day. Um, and so I do think it's important. I think it was, it's worth this piece of legislation,
I think it's important that we provide that uniformity and I think it's something that's gonna be very well received across the state and I'd be glad to answer any questions, uh, but I do appreciate the committee's time. Thank you. Are there any questions from the committee? OK, thank you, Representative Shepherd. Um, there's
no one else signed to speak for or against the bill. Uh, would anyone like to speak for or against the bill? Seeing non-represented Brookshire recognize the close
for your bill. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the questions. I appreciate the
dialogue and certainly appreciate uh Representative Shepherd and Speaker Evans for their work. They were a driving force behind this for a number of months as we looked at at the way to attack this issue again provide just the right solution for schools across the board. So with that I'm closed for the bill. I'll
Speaker 28
31:54
make a motion to pass, right? There's a motion to pass on the on the table. I sorry do pass estimated my pass as amended. Thank
you. Uh, is there any discussion on the motion? Yes, Repsentative McGruty you recognized. Oh, no discussion. OK, um, so no discussion. All those in favor say aye.
All those opposed, nay. Congratulations, your bill has been passed as amended. Thank you. Um, before I give up power, I do, I've been, I've received requests to take, again, additionally out of order, we would like to have Representative Johnson present HB 1398 at the table.
Speaker 52
32:34
Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chairman Committee Representative Lee Johnson,
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
32:43
District 47, and have someone here with me to testify this morning if I could have her
Speaker 125
32:47
introduce herself. Thank you. Thank you, Chairperson. My
Sarah Owen
Unverified
32:50
name is Sarah Owen. I speak on behalf of a board member at Cabot Public schools as well as the mother of a former student with a congenital heart defect.
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
33:00
Members, I, you know, the most compelling testimony often is not from us, but from people we bring to the table, right? Uh,
I think I've reached out to most of you individually and, um, you know, this bill is trying to increase readiness in schools
for cardiac arrest when those events happen and what I'd like to do is go ahead and allow the testimony here to stand for herself and then we'll be
able to answer any questions you want to ask. Thank you. Thank you,
Sarah Owen
Unverified
33:26
Chairperson. Like I said, uh, my name is Sarah Owen. I do speak on behalf of being a. board member in the Cabot public school system, as well as being a mother of a former student with a congenital heart defect. One of the things I'm very passionate about is making public education very safe for all students, a place where parents can feel safe sending
their students to school with um medical issues and um. Disabilities, um, one of the things I was very passionate about as a board member was making that possible in Cabot. We have made it a um a goal to be a heart-safe district and we've partnered with Project Adam and Arkansas Children's Hospital to ensure that all 18 of our buildings in our school district are certified heart safe buildings. What that means is there is a, a cardio emergency response plan in place should there be a cardiac episode, not only with students,
but with faculty and staff, and I speak to you today with. A situation that happened within the last month we had a student in kindergarten. I
apologize. I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Uh, we do have an
amendment that needs to be adopted on this, uh, Representative Johnson. uh, so if we could, that is my fault. No, it's not. It's my fault for not, uh, not seeing it there so the son, if you would please, uh, you're presenting Senator Wallace is
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
34:39
a co-sponsor. Representative Johnson has presented the
amendments. Uh, is there any questions on the amendments, no questions. We
have a motion to adopt the amendments. Discussion on the motion. All in favor say aye, all opposed. Congratulations your amendment has adopted. Now you're recognized to present HB 1398 as amended. My apologies. Thank you for your testimony. You may continue. No
Sarah Owen
Unverified
34:59
problem. to share with you a story of a kindergartener within the last month, who was a kindergartner with a congenital heart defect, did have a cardiac episode and because that elementary school had a cardiac response plan in place. The actions were taken to call the first responders, put forth the effort to call 911 and
put the plan in action for. That student to receive care from our first responders and on their way to Arkansas Children's Hospital because of this plan that student's life was saved and that parent made the choice to send that student to a public school, knowing that that student was taken care of and there was a plan in place, um, I do have a daughter who did pass away from her congenital heart defect and as a board member I did have the privilege of putting plans in place and she did have to take an ambulance two different times, um, on a
Friday night football game. Because of a cardiac episode, unfortunately, I did have the, the authority to make that action, but that's not always the case in public schools with parents of congeal heart defects, so the value of having a cardiac emergency plan in place in schools
Speaker 135
36:00
just sets parents at ease sending your children to school. Members, I think you can see the importance statistics
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
36:09
that have been passed out in a handout, they're staggering. I mean, we, we prepare for tornadoes,
we prepare for fires. It is much more common to have a cardiac
event in a school, and this isn't always just a student, right? There are many events we have where we have parents, teachers, other people at the school, having our, having it, having people prepared and ready, knowing where these devices are, y'all know I'm a physician and, and there's very few things I can describe where a specific intervention takes. Someone from not living. To living and that's what an AED does and that's something that's a device that anyone can use and so it's a very powerful tool. Uh, the more we can do to sort
of orient people to that, the better. Uh, this is something that we started out with with the American Heart Association and we've worked with DESE. We've worked with the Department of Health, we've worked with school administrators and we feel like what we have now is a very fair and reasonable approach to trying to make us more ready for these cardiac events, and we'd be happy to take any questions. Thank you, Representative Johnson, Ms. Owen, are there questions
from the committee? Representative Duke, you recognize for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, uh, Representative Johnson
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
37:14
for bringing this and, and thank you, ma'am, for sharing your story and for your service on the school board.
Um, quick question, um, I know there's no. I know there's no fiscal impact to DESE. Is there an impact to the school districts. To my knowledge, no, I don't think there's any impact to
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
37:31
them as well. I didn't think so, but I just wanted to make sure
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
37:35
because I feel like that's a question we always need to ask here so that we understand what we're asking to do. The biggest cost, you
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
37:41
know, they, they, the AEDs cost money, but you know, fortunately we've been a thought leader as our state and, as you know, from, from legislation your family passed, right? I mean, we we're one of the first people to put our foot forward
and say this is an important issue and so there's already ADs available in schools. We already made this step last session to make them available at sporting events and So it's just a matter of making sure people know where to find them, how to use them, and,
and you know what to do if someone collapses. Thank you. Are there additional questions
about the committee? See no additional questions we do have uh. Oh and this signed up to speak on the bill. Uh, is there anyone
else you'd like to speak for against the bill? Seeing none, Representative Johnson, would you like to close for you? Yeah, I'm close. Thank you. Johnson is closed for his bill. We have a motion on the table of do pass from representative painters a discussion on the motion. Reverend McKenzie, you're recognized. I, I
just wanted to take a moment to, obviously I'm gonna be in favor of this bill. We just passed off the floor another uh good piece of um cardiac preparedness. I want to thank you, Ms. Om. I know it's, it's never easy to lose a child. It's, it's even harder to lose a child and then come and advocate for the thing that's going to
help other children from not doing that, so I want to commend you for for being a part
of this. process, so thank you. Seeing no additional discussion, we have a motion to pass on the table. All in favor say aye. All opposed. Congratulations, Representative Johnson, your bill
is passed. Thank you, Ms. Owen, for your time. Members, we will continue to go out of order since Representative Johnson is here gracing us with his presence. We will recognize uh Representative Johnson for HB. 1601 and there is an amendment
on this, so Representative Johnson, you're recognized to present your amendment as staff is passing out. Members, this amendment also
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
39:30
is just adding a, a co-sponsor and a Senate sponsor. I appreciate a good vote on the amendment. Representative Johnson has presented
his amendment, adding a co-sponsor, we have a motion on the table from Representative Painter to adopt the amendment. Is there a discussion on the motion? I see no discussion on the motion all in favor say aye, all opposed. Congratulations, your
amendment has been adopted. You're now recognized to present
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
39:56
HB 1601 as amended. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
committee. Committee, you know, I, I know y'all spent a lot of time in this committee talking about career technical training and education, and we know how important it is to try to connect people with the resources to learn a skill, um. You know, our, our strategy as a state is like most states, which is to engage in our high schools and try to get people interested early in these career opportunities, right? Um, but sometimes when you're 16 or 17, uh, you're maybe not sure that college isn't the right choice
for you, right? You come to this fork in the road and, and I understand that. I get that, you know, um, I know you're aware for your uh higher ed 4-year education institutions, they measure their graduation rate. In 6 years, right? And the average across the nation, the 6th year graduation rate is 65%. That means that 35% of the of the students that start college don't get a degree within 6 years. So, so when you're in high school, um, sometimes
those, you know, you're not you may not be as prepared as you think you are for college, right? And when you get to be 20 and your grade points 1.2, and you're at risk of dropping out of college, right? And you have 1015 $20,000 in. that these are, these are a group of individuals who are pretty motivated to find a different route to a career, right? Not necessarily the traditional route through college that they started and so this idea came to me from talking to my son. He's, he's in his mid early twenties and I watched him and his some of his
friends go through this process of going to college and, and some of them, you know, peeling off and not making it and then not really seeing how to connect with. Some of the career opportunities that we know are out there. So I started talking to some of our higher ed, uh, representatives about this idea of maybe trying to come up with a way to better connect that group of at-risk students in college with career technical resources with industry, with workforce services, um, in this bill that you see before you as a result
of a lot of a lot of hard work on people's part besides me, uh, the representatives from the UFA, from ASU, from Marko Tech, all had input into this and all of our, the good thing I found out is that almost all of our institutions that I interacted with have some resources already. It's just a matter of sort of making sure we're connecting these kids that are at academic risk with those resources, um, I don't think there's any opposition to the bill. Happy to answer any questions on the bill if you have some around the intent or the execution. Thank you, Representative
Johnson or other questions for the representative on the bill. See no representative Duke, my apologies.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
42:39
Representative Duke, you recognized for your question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm just getting going on the questions apparently this session.
So you, you said. I understand where this idea came from and the universities, the majority of them already have a plan in place for this. I would say they
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
42:55
have resources. I would say this is helping them connect the resources. This, I would say this is the beginning of the of a plan. Some of them
have a different, uh, I would say not all of them have a mature plan yet, right? So there's resources there, but how do you then connect the student that needs the resources, how do you know when they're at risk and how do you make those connections? And that's the goal of this bill is I don't want to discount like I don't wanna, I don't wanna try to make it sound like our higher ed institutions have no research resources for these kids. They do. It's about trying to draw attention to those resources and make sure we're connecting the kids with them when they need them. Follow up
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
43:35
But don't these universities, I mean, it's been a long time since I've been in college, but I got a few kids. They have
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
43:43
academic academic advisors, correct? Yes, but and this is anecdotal, but my experience with academic advisors is more about advising you like how to stay in school. Do you just connecting you with tutors, connecting you with like what's your major and are you hitting the marks for your major and maybe you need to change majors and uh so the these academic advisors, it's, it's about. Knowing when to say, hey, you're, you may be at risk of
dropping out. Do you know that these other resources are available, right? Not just in our college institution that you're attending right now, but outside the institution across the state. One more,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
44:16
if I may, um. And we're talking, we're not talking high school students, we're talking legal adults
18 to 22, 24, 26. Some of them could be married. Many of them are living on their own. So wouldn't you agree that many of them should be able to make, and at this point in their lives,
whether they make the good decisions or bad decisions, because sometimes bad decisions you learn more from. But They should be able to make.
Some of these life decisions on their own. Yes, and
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
44:47
all this really is about is trying to connect
them with the resources, the kids that I wasn't speaking of the peers when they came to me to just ask, hey, who would I call about getting some technical training. What, what, what is workforce services, um, those are resources I had to go and look for and find, so it's just trying to make those resources more readily available
if someone's looking for them and just trying to make them connect, connect with those resources. Representative Brown,
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
45:22
you recognize for question. Question, huh, um, having, um, When working on my master's degree. I taught a course in comp one at ULR. And I was very concerned about those students in my class
because most of them didn't seem prepared at all for college. Most of them And I um So this would Give these students who really want to. Move forward with their lives and opportunity to have another route and and be advised to that route rather than running up their student loans and, and really not succeed. Yes, this is not about encouraging people one way or the other, it's more just
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
46:04
about providing the resource and saying, hey, listen, if this is
not working out for you, here are some resources. Here's how you can connect with some career technical training. Here's how you can connect with workforce services to try to take a different path if that's what you want to try to do. Thank you. You're
Chair
Unverified
46:23
welcome. Thank you I'll be supporting this bill. Thank
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
46:28
you. Representative Gonzalezor than you recognize. Thank you. I was wondering, I think it's an awesome idea on, um, line 31, the division of Higher Education
shall maintain an accessible location on its website, um. counseling and other career-related resources. So not only will the institutions of higher ed have that, but also the division of higher education. So I think that's awesome, but I'm wondering if that also should be part of the K-12. How, how, how might that work? It's a good thought. I think that would probably be a different bill for me, you know,
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
47:01
this was more about trying to connect these kids that are adults, I mean,
to Representative Duke's point, I'm calling them kids. I mean, at some point you got to recognize
that when your kid turns 18, they're an adult, right? In the in this idea of adult parenting, I don't know where that came from. I certainly didn't get it, right? So, so to, to your point, these are adults and we're trying to connect them with those resources, um, and that language is, you know, was out there in, and I think someone's comfortable with that approach, right? Represent Beck you recognize for question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So how, how would this work with, um,
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
47:41
you know, there, there are a lot of employers that, you know, like electrical plumbing, I I'm sure welders, I guess that are doing apprenticeship programs and you know, have some training and stuff like that, how would that Would they be, would there be some kind of, you know, because I'm interested in saying, OK, is the, the person who maybe wants to be an electrician or something like that, you could connect them up with someone to my hope is that this is a start,
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
48:04
right? And I hope this is, this is a start of something that we could maybe build off of because I do think there's an
opportunity for industry to also connect with this group of adults who are looking for a different path for whatever reason, um, and maybe even an idea where, you know, there's about, about 40% of the kids that drop out of college end up dropping out with some. sort of debt. Maybe there's even a way to connect industry to interested adults with debt and work on a process to, hey, you come and do this apprenticeship, maybe we can, you know, address some of your school loans. So I think there's an opportunity. I think the key is starting to identify these kids and uh
I'm going to stop that. Starting to identify these young adults who are at a fork in the road, right, at a struggling place in their life, and then provide them with the resources and connect them, right, with the industries that need this workforce. I mean, there's a huge group of young adults in our state who are sitting there in their, in their early twenties, mid-twenties who have been trying to meander through the path of college and you know, 35%, that's the national average, uh, drop out within or don't graduate within 6 years. You know, I'm sure there are
lots of industries that would love to connect with that group of the workforce. It's just trying to, how do you, how do you collect it, collate it, build that, and I, I would love to see something build off this in the future that would involve something like what
you're saying. Thank you. See no additional questions from the committee. Apologies, Representative McGruder recognized. Thank you.
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
49:35
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the bill. That's why I signed on for a co-sponsor even while I'm here, I'm getting
calls from uh my students or former students about how to proceed in college and advisors do the best they can, but they have a heavy case load, so I love the idea of this uh bill. I do have a conflict with us not calling them kids because they're still on my payroll and as long as we're on the payroll, we got to make sure we're uh we're providing so they're still kids, but uh. Uh, I, I, I'd like to start. I'm hoping we can add more to it and if there's anything I can do to
assist, please let me know. Thank you. See no additional questions, there's no one signed up to speak for or against the bill, which I close for your Bill Johnson. I clothes from your bill.
Appreciate a good vote. Thank you Johnson is closed for his bill. We have a motion to pass on the table. Is there discussion on the motion? Reps some Duke you recognized
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
50:33
for discussion on the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, Representative Johnson. I think this is a really good idea. The struggle I have sometimes down here in Little Rock, particularly on these committees, we have a lot of good ideas that come through here. I don't necessarily think they all need to be laws. And so although I think this is
a good, well, I guess I should be talking here technically to so back over here talking to the members, sorry, um, although I think this is a good idea. I don't think that it needs to be. In law, I think our universities should maybe take this good idea and they should implement this idea and they should do that and what fits best for them, but I do think we have to be really careful, like how many times, what, what's our standard on what we're actually going to put in code or what we think should be encouraged in my baby universities or schools or industries or whatever should listen a little bit more to the
conversations and discussions, or maybe we should be more proactive on that level back home, but I'm not inclined to put this, or I'm not going to vote to put this in. recommend this go out of this committee to be put in Arkansas law, because although it is a really good idea. I just don't know that that's the place in which it belongs. So I would encourage our
universities to learn from this discussion, but I'm going to be voting no for those reasons. Thank you. Is there additional discussions on the motion?
Seeing no additional discussion. We have a motion on the table of do pass as amended. All in favor say aye. All opposed say no. Congratulations Representative Johnson your bill has passed as mitted. Members again, uh, keeping with the theme of going out of order. We are going to recognize now Representative Grahamlich. For, I believe you're gonna present HB 15801. Am I correct, Representative? Russian Grammoth is recognized. If you would please introduce yourself for the record and you recognize to present your bill.
Uh, my name is Zach Gramli uh state represent District 150, and I'd like to invite someone to the table. If you would please introduce yourself for the record and then you're
Zach Gramli
Unverified
52:33
recognized uh to assist. Hi, my name is Rainie Wilkins. Um, so 1580 today is um.
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
52:37
The goal of this is to give education on type 1 and type 2 diabetes, um. Rainie's a family member of mine. I wanted her to be able
to share her story about how she found out she was a type one diabetic. Um,
Rainie Wilkins
Unverified
52:51
About 6 years ago towards the end of my, uh, high school. I felt ill and I wasn't exactly sure what was going on. There was months on end that I was very sick and I had no idea the symptoms or the warning signs of type one diabetes. Nobody in my family had diabetes and so it wasn't something I was familiar with, um, so I had, um, a lot of things going on. I could tell something was wrong, but I didn't know what was wrong, and by the time.
That I was so extremely sick to the point that it was dangerous is when I finally got diagnosed. And so, um, my hope with this bill is to help be able to educate people, especially like family, schools, things like that on the warning signs so they can figure it out and get help before it becomes really dangerous or too late for people and they can save themselves some heartache and all of the emotional and physical turmoil that comes with, you know, waiting so long to get diagnosed and not knowing what's going on, so.
Speaker 182
53:54
Thank you for that. I'd, I'd also like to add, um, within a couple of days
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
53:59
of filing this, someone sent me an email totally out of left field and they um uh they asked if I could read it to you also, so I'll do that very quickly. Um, I recently became aware of your house bill, uh, 1580 Quick internet search does not reveal why you have chosen to advocate for type 1 and type 2 diabetes, I'm exceedingly grateful that you have, and I wanted to share my family's story with you. On Thursday, January 13, 2022. My son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes with a blood sugar of 968. Looking back, there were signs
that I missed. However, we have 0 family history of type 1 diabetes and very little type 2. Then Monday, Monday he had thrown up at school and was sent home. He progressively got worse, and on Wednesday evening, he took his shirt off in front of me, and I was shocked. He was so thin. My sister is a nurse and worked in the emergency room for many years. She told me he needed fluids and probably Zofran. I never have taken a child to the ER for anything, and this was also during COVID era restrictions. I don't want to use our local hospitals, so I took him to Arkansas Children's. scooped him up in a wheelchair
and pricked his finger, and it only read high. A trauma team surrounded my child and took off running. I was confused and scared. When they said diabetes, I was in complete shock. They began to explain things and told me that it was a miracle he walked in on his own and that they were surprised he was not in a coma. I, he had to have a CT of his brain to check for swelling. He spent hours in the pediatric ICU due to diabetic uh ketoacidosis, um, that was absolute hell for him. I felt like an awful parent.
I've always done what's best for my kids' health and wellness in all areas. I missed the signs, but to be fair, I didn't know all the signs. I'm well read and have an education, including a bachelor's degree in business, and I'm about to graduate with a master's in education. I've watched the news and I've been a forever learner my entire life. I had just heard the warning signs of type one in our culture, type 2 is prevalent and all the ads we see are for medications for type 2. This bill is an opportunity for Arkansas to make changes that could save lives. Had I not taken my son to children's, he could have gone into a coma, experienced brain swelling,
leading to permanent damage or death. Mandating or allowing schools to help monitor kids for diabetes is a amazing, amazing concept that will only benefit kids. So. I mean, I think, I think the testimony speaks for it. I just want to make sure that um families and are educated about the type 1 and type 2 diabetes, my community, the, the group I represent and teach there. They're at high risk for this stuff, so um I'd love to answer
any questions. Repent Duke you recognize for a question from the committee. Congratulations for
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
56:35
starting us off on questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's like Groundhog Day, right? So, um, my question on this is, it says in here. Um, online 26, if a school district provides information on immunizations. So does, I, I don't know the procedure on that right now because do they provide them? Do they not provide them on immunizations and infectious disease and medications currently.
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
56:58
On those areas. Well, I, I, I guess if, I mean, I guess if a school does that, then they would be subject to this bill. They did not already do that, then they would not be subject to this bill. I would. Be open to supporting legislation that would require that stuff being disseminated,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
57:16
but we're not doing that today, follow up. So how, what, what is this envisioning like? Is this a pamphlet that goes out, is this, I mean like I would say it's as
Speaker 182
57:28
you look at the A, B, C, D, it definitely
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
57:31
ratchets up on what that actually looks like. Um, I think that, um, you know, very pamphlet could be uh part A and
Part B, you know, um, or that could be posters throughout the school and stuff like that, but I could see that being a pamphlet, um, and then, you know, I think C could be like, hey. School nurse or somebody has noticed like, hey, something's going on, we may need a recommendation
to, uh, hey, you might need to go to your PCP just something to consider and then it starts to go on from there. So I think, I think a pamphlet handout is a great
first way, um, but, you know, that would be up to the school and whatever they think would
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
58:04
be best. Are they able to give that specific of a recommendation like that that we think that they have type 1 or type 2. Can the nurse do that or a school employee do that or do they just recommend you go
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
58:14
to a primary care physician I mean, I would say this in my experience. Um, you know, I have suggested to our nurse like, hey, you might go talk to this person, this child, you know, something seems a little off, um, and so she take care she does something from there. I mean, I don't know what she does from that point because that would be a little
bit of violation, but um, you know, like she, I assume things happen. I know we have kids have been referred to our nurse like, hey, you might check on this, and then come
Speaker 188
58:40
to find out within a few months, like, hey, they're diabetic, and that's why they were still wetting yourself in the 6th grade, so. OK,
Representative Austin McCollum
Unverified
58:49
thank you. McCollum, you're recognized for a question. At the uh Same question regarding line 26. I think I heard an answer. Um Maybe the answer was you're
uncertain whether which schools already um provide such information. I understand what your bill's intent is if they do, they need to do this as well and if they don't, I guess it doesn't touch on that, um, but. I guess we're not sure. I agree. OK.
Speaker 196
59:17
Alright Represent Brown, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. um,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
59:28
Representative Grahamlich, do you know, um, if Um
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
59:37
Schools or school districts, um, or teachers in their teacher education, do they get any kind of training. I know that I mean, yes, they get training. Let me finish my sentence, I guess I should say, um, they get training to, to look for abuse, correct? Yes, ma'am. OK. Do
you know where that occurs? Is that? occur at the school level or, I mean, in my experience we've
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:00:01
had that kind of training at the school level. We've also had that training on Arkansas ideas, um.
I never had medical training, I'm just curious if um this sort
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:00:12
of information could be shared with the teachers at that
Speaker 205
1:00:14
time so they can maybe spot something. Yeah, I think so. I mean, we do. I know Arkansas ideas
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:00:19
we do mandated training on there that deals with various infectious diseases and stuff like that, so, um, if that was something. That that could be something that could happen, sure. Thank you. Epson Garner, you're recognized for a question. Thank you. And I
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:00:39
just have a quick question as Ran. um, if, if a
nurse or a, or a teacher, this child needs help. give that information to go to the. What happens then and the lily. I mean, I would say, I mean, yeah, I yeah, I mean, I
would say, yeah, recommendation, I mean, I can, I, I mean, I can as a teacher, I
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:01:10
don't feel like I can really make a recommendation, but like,
I mean, at the end of the day, it'd be the family and if they choose to want to send their kid to a doctor or not, you know, they're gonna make that final decision and so I don't see. And there's liability connected to that, I mean, I guess it'd be as anything else if we know a kid's abs is sick and they're not getting, getting care, they probably fall in the same
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:01:30
kind of circumstance, and, and that's where I was going is that um. Mandated reporter kind of issue. If you see that a child is sick
Zach Gramli
Unverified
1:01:41
and the parents not doing anything, then yeah, I think in a circumstance like that I would make a call if I, if I see something like
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:01:57
that. Absolutely. Represent Beck you recognize for a question. Thank you. And, and I didn't. And all that that previous question, so you, some of this might have been covered there, but It, it almost looks like. You know, the, the, I'm I'm talking about, I'm not the liability aspects of this. It's, it's almost like if, if I
provide the, the, the, I hit one of the requirements above which I, I would. find that that would be hard not to meet that requirement, and now a child, you know, a nurse misses it or someone misses it that that the child is, uh, I'm I would almost be If someone misses the diagnosis of this is, OK, the, the child obviously was having trouble. Someone goes back and looks and second guesses and said, hey, that child was showing all the
signs of type 1 diabetes and you guys did nothing. And uh is this going to create a problem? I mean, I don't think so. I mean, and I
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:02:52
would say that because. That would be just the current state we're in right now. So if anything, this just helps us catch a few more if we can. I don't, I don't foresee like anyone being held liable, um, because I mean at the reality, teachers can't be held liable. They're not medical professionals. If a, if a nurse, it comes under her attention, she's gonna make a recommendation to do the right thing. At the end of the day, it's a parent's decision or the
Speaker 188
1:03:15
Guardian or whatever to make those next steps. In my opinion. I'm, I'm saying follow
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:03:21
up. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm just saying that. If the, if the, the nurse misses it, right? And It turns out that, you know, the church, the nurse has seen the individual and you know, tried to do what they thought was best, but then they just missed it. And, and this thing is saying that they should have done. You know, I should have told the parents and the guardians are
the are the guardians and all that. So I'm curious as to, you know, does this kind of put them on the line there or yeah,
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:03:54
I think, I think I understand what you're, what you're getting at, um. What
I would say. I would you be more comfortable if the language was May instead of shall. I mean, like, I mean, at the end, is there like a, a you afraid since there's an expectation of this, that it
could be bad like, I mean, I, I think the
reality is, you know, this isn't a requirement to diagnose, it's just a requirement to like give them
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:04:26
information. I, I think I would, but It's, it's, it's, it's just like almost like you missed it, right? And this child was showing all the symptoms and someone,
a doctor comes in. You know, something happened. I mean, I guess, I guess the bigger
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:04:42
thing is like. If we don't do any requirement
at all, then schools may choose not to do anything and then the awareness isn't built to possibly catch things and so I don't, I I really don't, um, I really don't think that there's gonna be a liability issue. I think we're trying to build awareness with families so that they are able to take hold of their, you know, the healthcare awareness of their lives and, you know, take, make sure their kids get the right health care that they need, um, so I wouldn't, I think the, the main focus on this should be just like, hey, we're providing information and trying
to educate people. And if we're already giving them information for an infectious disease we're already giving them information for an immunization or already giving them information for medications or other health issues. I mean, if a student, if a student caught an STI, no one's liable, like the teacher's not liable, yeah, we told them like, hey, these are, well, I didn't, but you know, in health class they may find out that these are some of the issues that you can have
Speaker 223
1:05:41
and these are symptoms. I mean, I don't, we're not gonna hold. health teacher or a nurse liable
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:05:51
for that, right? I think that the the the issue that I have is if you read it, it kind of reads like that that last line there kind of reads like, you know, you blew it. You didn't give me that recommendation, uh, as opposed to, you know, maybe it's something as simple as just that would communicate a concern or something, you know, I, I'm just playing, I, I hear you, but I
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:06:12
mean a recommendation isn't telling anyone to do anything. Like I can recommend you to comb your hair over. That's I'm not telling you, you have to do
something, and so I think I, does that, does that make sense?
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:06:28
I, I, I, it just seems like there's, there's, you, you're kind of saying that this person should do that, but, but, uh, I, I, I think it would be a better thing to say that they would communicate or they may, may, or they would communicate that would, that would take that notch down just a touch. OK. I think that we can work on some
language for that and I'm gonna, I'll pull this down we can come back. thinkers from Graham like you have additional questions. Are you, does your plan to pull it down? Yeah, we'll pull it down. We'll have some conversation and I'll just add this for flavor. So I'm looking at the enacting line of code and it talks about parents, you know, opting in and, and giving written permission to um schools to administer um type 2 and type 1 glucose checks as well as the in I think what you're on to is in the right direction again, we, I love the analogy of making
Representative Beck come his hair over, um. It's not that I won't allow any. You're not required to tell him to come home comb his hair over, you're required to tell him something about his appearance that seems a little off. So like the, the check down there is from Rick's got something going on a little bit different today. Maybe I'll tell him to comb his hair, so it's, it's the 1 + 2. All of the enacting legislation underneath this is in is the baseline to help kids get the treatment that they need. Your bill does that too. I think we
still need to figure out that bridge in between. I think if this were to be a May and then we work with DESE in the in the department. To figure out, and we all know this is the theoretical we're arguing today about the bill and what does it actually mean in practice, um. If we make this as a shao language to get passed, it gets passed tomorrow, they have to go promulgate it. If we can work with them as a legislature to inform what that packet of information is because they're required as you, as you aptly put, if they have to do, if they are required to give out information on immunizations as well as uh uh congenital diseases.
Someone's giving them something, probably Desi, probably ADE that they then give out. So I think this is the bridge if we were to, like you said, pull this bill down, make it in May, and then over the, over the time over history and tell Dei and tell AD how we'd like for them to inform that. I think we could get to a place where we're going to help kids, we're gonna save kids' lives from an undiagnosed disease that
Speaker 28
1:08:48
can kill them. So, um, and so let me just clarify as the chair and and notwithstanding the multiple attacks and represent Beck's appearance.
trying to move past that, uh, you're gonna pull the bill down, we're gonna work on language and move forward at another time. That sounds good. OK, so Representative Gramlich is pulling down 1580 and Graham, we will now move to your next bill. All right. All right, thank you
Zach Gramli
Unverified
1:09:14
so much, um, you're recognized for HB 1492. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we'll talk about hospital 1492
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:09:20
in you and if, uh, with your permission, I'd like to invite some someone to the table. Go ahead.
She, she's walking over now. Ma'am, if you would please introduce yourself for the record and you recognize uh to assist Representative Graham. Loreal
Speaker 234
1:09:39
Haoff, CEO of Make our school safe. Uh, thank
Speaker 182
1:09:44
you for your time committee today. Um, So I, I'll start with a little bit about what this would do a little bit with like how I perceive
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:09:54
it as a classroom teacher and then I'm gonna let her present some testimony um on her experience and how she
thinks this could have helped her situation. So 1492 is a goal to create a wearable, uh, panic alert alert device for all teachers, um, and, and in my head, I In the classroom, I could use this, uh, just a few months ago. Um, I had a, uh, student who was um extremely aggressive. He had social emotional issues. He didn't go to school in the 5th grade because he beat, he bit a teacher hard enough that he was
expelled, um, and so he was in
my class and he had a box knife, um. And he wasn't necessarily being aggressive with it. He was utilizing it as a tool, but he was not a kid who needed to have a
knife, or that any kid should probably have a knife in school. But at the time, Um, I texted my admin and just like
all of us, we don't immediately check our texts and I got nothing. I didn't really need to make a phone call because I didn't want to call attention to it and make him aware that like, hey, this is wrong. I didn't need to click the button on the wall because that would have alerted him and something could have happened
and so I had a kid with a knife and something could have gone really wrong, and I didn't really have a great
way to immediately notify my admins like, hey, I need someone here now. And they may not know exactly what I needed them for, but I need someone here now. Um, and so that's low level, that's how it immediately could have helped me out a few months ago. Um, and so I'm gonna let Um, her
Zach Gramli
Unverified
1:11:25
share her story about how she thinks this could have helped her family. Hi everybody, my name is Laurie Alhade, and I'm here in support
Laurie Alhade
Unverified
1:11:37
today of HB 1492, Alyssa's Law. I'm the founder of the nonprofit Make Our School Safe. But more than anything, I'm Alyssa's mom. Alyssa was my beautiful, fearless 14 year old daughter. She was full of life, passion, and dreams. She was a soccer star, a leader, a fighter. She had her whole future ahead of her, but on February 14, 2018, that future was stolen. She was one of the 17 victims murdered at Marjorie Stone and Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
That morning I sent her off to school just like any other day. I had no idea it would be the last time that I would see Alyssa alive. In those critical moments when a shooter roamed the hallways with an AR-15 students didn't know to lockdown. Teachers didn't have a way to instantly call for help and first responders, and they couldn't get there fast enough. Seconds matter, lives were at stake, and my daughter Alyssa never made it out. That is why I'm here today, because no parent should ever have to go through what I went
through. I text Alyssa, I told her to run and hide, that help was on the way, but unfortunately that help didn't arrive fast enough. The principal of Alyssa's law is simple. Time equals life. And when a life threatening emergency happens whether it's an active shooter or a medical crisis, or any other danger, every second can mean the difference between life and death. Alyssa's law ensures that schools have wearable panic alarms linking directly to law enforcement in real time. This is not just technology, this is
a lifeline, a lifeline for teachers who need help in an instant. A lifeline for students who deserve a fighting chance, a lifeline that should have existed on February 14, 2018. Alyssa should be here today. She could be in college chasing her dreams, and instead I'm here fighting for the children who still have the chance to live. theirs. This law does not replace school safety measures. It enhances them and strengthens them. In short, that in an emergency, no school, no teacher, no student is left
waiting. Every time a panic alarm is used, I know that Alyssa is saving lives. While her legacy lives on, our family feels her absence every single day. We wake up with the ache of her loss, and we go to bed knowing that there are other parents out there who may feel this pain if we don't act. I want to thank Governor Sanders, the Learns Act representative Gramlich and all the co-sponsors for your leadership and making school safety a priority in Arkansas when this bill is passed,
Arkansas will become the 8th state to enact Alyssa's law, setting a standard that every child deserves to be safe in school. I call an Arkansas lawmakers to pass HB 1492. Do it for your children, do it for your teachers and do it that so no other parent should live with the heartbreak that I carry every single. day. Alyssa's name should not just be a reminder of tragedy. It should be a beacon of hope. Let's make sure her life saves others. Thank you. And so I would just say this
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:14:45
technology can save us in what is Possibly one of the worst situations,
uh, a parent or a teacher, a student can imagine to, I have kids fighting in the hallway and I, I need help. And it, it tells us, it tells us exactly where we're in the school so that admin, school resource officers could respond or even as it talks in the bill about integrating with local public safety and answering point infrastructure so that we can have police notified immediately. To come to the school, saving minutes, seconds.
I mean This, this, it really moves the needle on on making people safe in our schools. So, um, with that, I'd like to try answering any of your questions. Um. Yeah, like Kristen take a note of the hands as we go up.
I just want to say as a as a quick note to our witness, thank you for being here. I understand someone who's lost so much. It's, it's really hard to discuss these things, but your advocacy is really appreciated. So are there questions from committee? Representative Duke, you recognize we have a long queue,
so if, uh, yeah. Yeah. there Representative Duke, you're recognized. Oh, sorry, my bad. Brown, Representative Brown, you recognize. Thank you,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:16:01
Mr. Chair. um, Representative Graham L, um, could you
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:16:05
Kind of explain how just logistically this would work. Yeah, so
Speaker 240
1:16:12
from my understanding, uh specifically. Like
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:16:20
If you have this device, are you calling a school administrator or are you calling the police so it depends. There's
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:16:25
different, there's different, uh, commands for each, um, from my understanding, one company, what they do is they have a small panic device. It's about the size of an ID. In my head, when this if and when this passes, it's gonna go right behind my ID has a button on it. When I click it 3 times, it's, it notifies my school resource officer and my admin to where I am in the school and that I need help. And they may not know exactly what I need. But they're gonna come running.
If I click it 8 times, it immediately notifies local, uh, the local police department or whatever your local infrastructure is in that case, and they know they know something's going on in that school and that someone needs to come now. Thank
Laurie Alhade
Unverified
1:17:05
you. Yeah, sure, she looked at if it presses it 8 times, it's mass notification. So it's not only going to 911 and PSAP. It's going to every single teacher so they can lock down and get into a safer space in my head, like I mean, we
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:17:18
already have, we have a piece of this already in our
schools, um, where like if I, the office calls a code red, code yellow, code green, blah blah blah, like it goes up on everyone's computer, and we know immediately what it is. Right. My issue in my school right now is if, if worst of the worst scenario, there's a man with a weapon in our hallway. I don't have a way to tell the school immediately like, hey. Like lock up. I have to, I have to somehow contact my office and tell them down there. Phone call, text, button on the wall, email, whatever, and that's
minutes that could be saved when all I have to do is 12345678. And the school is notified immediately. Representative Painter, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr.
Chair. Um, Uh I, I like the intent
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:18:10
where we're going. I just have a few concerns, a few questions. Uh, is this vendor specific or is this open to different ones I would say any vendor who
Speaker 235
1:18:20
can meet the requirements would be open to this. And
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:18:27
Guess what, how did we come to, you know, Put putting a button possibly behind it an ID, uh, you know, there's, I think there's different platforms, I think that, that could be on people's cell phones and stuff like that. I, I'm just looking at costs for districts because some of the concerns that I have from my schools are that are already tight. We got there's no funding. How are we going to pay
Chair
Unverified
1:18:49
for this and this looks pretty expensive. Let's talk a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about um the
like the actual technology. I'll thank you, Mr. Chair, for the latitude. I'll let you answer your question. I will go ahead and, uh, I've already alerted Secretary Oliva because I think a big portion of this conversation needs to be about funding and a lot has happened in the last 3 years, but we may not have it all on top of our minds. So please answer your questions, Secretary Lee, would you mind coming to the table and when he's done answering, recognize yourself
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:19:16
for the record. So I would say a couple things. First off with the And I've spoken with, uh, other teachers in the legislature about this, you
know, we had, we had a panic button on our phone for a while, um, and then it became unfunded and, you know, people stopped using it and what
ultimately ended up happening with it was forgotten in our phone, like, like I, I would, I would say like any anything that's going to take more time for me to find and scramble and in an intense situation, be trying to find a panic app on my phone. And if I got a new phone, it didn't transfer over, blah, blah, blah. There's like, there's like tons of extra little issues that can make this more complicated and so what I like about having a physical piece of technology that I wear around my neck is, it's just handed to me and it works or if we can give it to a sub and it works and we don't like everyone could have access to it. We're
not having to like figure out how to download an app on someone's phone and oh, what if they don't have a smartphone? They just have a little a razor or, you know, whatever kind of flip phone that they have. I mean, like, this allows everyone
and it's not, it's my personal device. I really shouldn't be, you know, utilizing my personal device for, for, you know, work, so, um. And then with the funding, a
couple pieces and I'll let him share is I know they were talking with like continuing funding, uh, or not continuing fun continuing costs. It's gonna be approximately for a large school or large campus can be
about $8000 a year and then if you were to have a larger district and begin to, you could see cost savings or smaller schools are gonna be, uh, um, cheaper than that, but the 8000 is definitely on the high end of costs, um, and I can get more information on that in a moment, um, secretary,
Speaker 253
1:20:45
you recognize Jacob believe as Secretary of Education. Uh, first, thank you for allow me an opportunity to come and speak on. What I consider to be the most important priorities that we can make when running schools, and I think if you were to ask superintendents and principals
every time I speak with them and get in front of them. I always start any conference or presentation with what's the most important thing in our day to day operations. And we always start around safety because we have to keep kids safe when they're in our care, and a lot of people may forget and learn, but the S and learns is safety, and we've done some really great work and some great investments as a legislative delegation as a and as a state to learn um from tragic events that have happened, such as that the Margerstone and Douglas School.
Ma, many of you may not have known, but in my previous life, when I worked in the state of Florida, unfortunately, tragedies like that is how I got to meet parents like Alyssa's mom. And I actually served on the Marjorie Stillman Douglas Commission for about 5 years before. Um, moving to the state, so, so I have a firsthand knowledge of experience on minutes don't just matter. Seconds matter when you're responding to a tragedy and as representative was
saying, you know, we, we've made some investments and looking at phone answers. There's actually a lot of science and research around When your adrenaline. is running in your heart rate beats are elevated, there's certain levels where you start losing gross motor skills. And then there's certain levels where you start losing fine motor skills. So having something as simple and easy as pressing a button when you're faced in a life or death situation, makes a big difference. We, we've actually
learned from other states, uh, recently that have implemented, uh, I want to say Georgia had implemented mobile panic buttons. systems across their state and in their schools, and they had an incident and they, and the sheriffs and the investigators and everybody looked to that initiative as saying, because we are able to respond in seconds, not just minutes lives were saved. So the question was about funding and how can we as a state look at ensuring this commitment. If you remember historically in the past few
budgets, we, we've invested about $50 million a year in each year to help schools, um, with mitigating threats or we kind of call it school safety or hardening grant, and we identified what our tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 levels of support. What are some of those best practices because every campus is unique, every campus is different. Uh, how do we look at single point of entry? How do we look at radios? How do we look at cameras? What, what are some of the things that we want to do? We've made a very strong commitment as a state and moving
and ensuring that every school campus is in compliance with what we call kind of a tier one expectation around school safety. As we go deeper into enhancing our level of commitment around safety. I think there's an opportunity if that funding was sustained, that we could take a portion of that funding into a statewide procurement to invest in something of this caliber, if that's the will of the legislative delegation, which I think if we could procure it at a state level would probably bring the price down and help
support districts with implementation so that we can bring it to scale and we'd be able to sustain and maybe continue the recurrence. costs out of that allocation appropriation that we already carved out of our budget to make sure that we're improving and hardening and keeping our students safe. Person Walker, you recognize for a question. Yeah, I'm gonna bring it back
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
1:24:25
home to the cost. Um, so if I understand right, it's 8000 per year, per school, but
Is that part school campus or will that be per building? How will that
Speaker 240
1:24:39
look? From my understanding in campus, um, it's gonna be per campus if a
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
1:24:44
district has 2 or 3 campuses, it would be 8000 per campus within that district, and
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:24:49
from my understanding as well, like, I mean, kind of referring to the secretary's position is if you enter into a longer contracts or you know, you have more stuff, that price can come down. So 8000 is on the high end of your total costs. Follow up
Speaker 64
1:25:06
Recognize. So, I represent a lot of schools that are about
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
1:25:12
700 kids K through 12. And I used to be a technology coordinator for a few years for one of those small schools and what I noticed with pricing was the fewer kids you have, the more the perki cost usually tends to be and there'd be times it would be double for a small school compared to a large school, um. And so, with this being an unfunded mandate is why I really
want to focus on the cost of it, so I'm I'm assuming the annual fees to maintain the, the operations that are going on online to sync all this together, um, but I'm assuming there'd be an initial cost to cover the equipment that would be coming in along with the tags, the wireless system that you'd put in. Sure, so the wireless system
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:25:58
and all that would be paid for using the um money from the Department
of Education, so the, I mean Like it says in the fiscal impact, um, if I can find that real well, OK, in my head, I
it's, it's cost of the devices, which is gonna be a little key card and the continuing education and then the um
just funding and paying, paying the company to manage
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
1:26:24
it. Is it in the bill that the That the initial cost is covered by a grant. So we're just hoping
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:26:30
that that happens. No, sir, no sir, it's not in the bill that the secretary, um. From my understanding was conversations with the department that that
Speaker 181
1:26:36
it's gonna be covered by the $2 million. OK, thank you.
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
1:26:42
My other questions are kind of shifting gears, so I'll just get back in the queue if other members have questions. Thank
you. And remember, just remember, uh, please feel free to continue your line of question. You don't have to
ask for a follow up just, uh, continue the dialogue with the sponsor. Represent Mayberry, you're recognized for a question.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:27:01
Thank you, Mr. Chair. um, first of all, Laurie, thank you for being here. Um, I, I actually know the area well. I'm a graduate of Plantation high school, have family that lives in Coral Springs, so I, and I, I
knew some families who had children at the school, so my heart goes out to you. I'm, I'm sorry, horrible, horrible situation. Um, my concern though is that my school district, Has already spent quite a bit of time, especially the last 4 months, um, putting together a plan where they've worked with another system and they have worked with their law enforcement. They have worked with their school board. They've
worked with their, um, faculty to figure out what works best for that school district and they've already Gone through all the training. They've already gone through the, the payment of, of this system and, and they did not feel like wearing something for every faculty member wearing something around their neck would be best, and they, they wanted to use an app on the phone. Because, um, the systems that we've had
before, there were lots of faults, um, alarms and when you have false alarms often that then creates kind of a situation where when it's real, you may not respond like you need to. And so, you know, we're, we're What would you say to my school district that's already laid all this out. They understand the concern. They know that there's a need for quick reaction. They've already done all this
training with, um, their local law enforcement and now we're gonna come around and say sorry, all that's to waste in August of this coming year, you have to have a whole new system in place. That's, that's really, really hard to, to, to make them. They've been doing the right thing. No, I agree, and I mean, obviously I don't, you know much more
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:29:06
about their procurement of why they chose them, what they did than I do. I'm totally ignorant to
why they made those decisions. Um, I would say, um, a couple things. One, I hope no
one's phone is dead, because that's from my opinion, that's the biggest issue here. It's like if my phone's dead and there's an issue then. Just totally out of luck, you know what I mean, the the entire panic button thing goes away, um, so I understand and, and I can, I can sympathize to that, um, I would also say, um, you know, Again, focusing back on like the, the,
Zach Gramli
Unverified
1:29:37
the human interaction part of it like. I know even when I'm like under high pressure to send a text out I can't hit buttons right and I can't find, I can barely find
them messaging app, so like under high pressure, if my adrenaline is pumping, I'd have a really hard time finding that, that, that app, and I'll be honest, I
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:29:54
don't know if I could find the panic button app from 6 years ago on my phone right now if I needed to. You know what I mean? So, um, but I would, I would say a couple of things just, and I'm kind of listening to the conversation and I see where we're going with this, um. We could probably find a way to amend this to, to meet some, meet some needs um for how this could be implemented and stuff like that, um, there's I, I, I will firmly, I'm, I'm firmly on
this that I don't think the app on the phone is the right way to do it and then I'm firmly for, I think the pant wearable panic button is, is there, and that's from my own experience in the classroom, um, but I think we can look at amending this for how we're going to implement this, um, and then we can probably do a study for the cost and the continued use of this, and we can go from there. If the committee would be amicable
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:30:43
to that. I I still have the, I would appreciate just some more
flexibility in this. Um, I also have, have concerned in the fiscal impact statement from the state says that there is no fiscal impact on it, and I'm just, I, I'm a little perplexed by that because unless the companies are giving it to us for free, you know, there, there is a fiscal impact somewhere, um, and, and I just want to remind everybody. that I wasn't allowed to even allow you all to vote for school nurses, um, because there was a
potential potential fiscal impact to our local school districts and a school nurse, I also firmly believe is very much a part of health and safety in the school district and when we're talking about making every school district spend potentially $8000 for service that hopefully would never have to be used, um, I, I just, I, I kind of have to take a step back and say, These school nurses that help
save lives every day. I mean, we just had two bills. We had a bill on on cardiac arrest since we're doing. Yes, I, I, I'm asking about the fiscal impact on this and why, if someone could explain to me, um, why we're saying that there is no fiscal impact I would say this is because
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:32:10
there's no additional money spent like this money is already at the $10 million is already allocated by the Department of Education. So it's not like we're having to increase the the budget that's that's already set.
be my aunt. Do you have additional questions? Vice Chairman McKenzie, you recognized for a question. I'm 2 for 2 today on getting my question out right as you pull the bill back, but um I do want to just make a note, so. I don't want us to all remember that Secretary just came down to the table and illuminated how we would fund this. I know that I've had my problems with the green sheets this year. I, I cannot not only in this committee but across the, the chamber, but um we did just get and no offense to this analogy
from the horse's mouth how this would get funded. Um. I, I also wanna, again, if we're going to amend this, uh, I'll in a I'm gonna end this whole thing with a would you agree? So I stay in the bounds of the law. This is an investment and something that we all know is something extremely important. Some this is also an investment that this legislature, less than 10 years ago. made We made an investment in, in by resounding as I look up at Arkle at 84 votes in favor to.
To require the same, almost the exact same, um, requirements on school districts for the purposes of a panic button. So uh I get and I want to work through the cost too. I want this, I want this to be as net neutral as possible, but, um, with all things in terms of budgeting, this is a signal of the investment of what we care about. This is a signal and do we believe that our school should be a safe environment for for students and that should we save seconds so that it can save lives. Yes, so I think I want to make sure that momentum is noted that uh I don't want a Marjorie.
Douglas Stone event or a um Uvaldi that happened in Arkansas, and if we can do that. And it's money that's already previously allocated, um, and it's a, it's a signal to the future that we're not gonna stand for that in the state of Arkansas. I, I just want to make sure that, that we keep that top of mind as we amend as we make this a better bill. Wouldn't you agree? I believe so.
OK, members, the uh bill sponsor has indicated he would like to pull the bill down. However, we have a
lot of questions, so cute. I've got 8 members who are still asking who still want to ask questions, so, uh, just
given that we are here with a witness who has a very powerful testimony, and I, and I want to make sure that we honor uh her presence. Uh, I want to continue the que the line of questions if anyone wants to jump out of the queue, please let me know, but I'm gonna go ahead and continue the line of questionings, uh, if, uh, if the bill sponsor would allow. additional questions
Speaker 184
1:34:51
on this prior to pulling and I mean and and truthfully, I mean, if, if people get their questions answered and
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:34:57
the committee feels like we could move on with this and we can do this, but if we want to amend, we'll amend, it's
really at the will of the committee. Sure,
I will leave it up to your, uh, your preference whether we pull down after we continue to ask questions. Representative
Chair
Unverified
1:35:17
Cozart is recognized. you are having, yes sir, so. You know, as, as I know, he, he, he bitch it to
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
1:35:24
the former panic button, yes, I, I was the double co-sponsor on that bill and but that bill was never funded without state money funding and it was never guaranteed money.
We had it the first year, cried and begged to get it the 2nd year and so I'm seeing the same thing here that we have a grant for the first year. And I, I did hear Secretary Leva talk about funding, but we have those schools already using some of that specialty funding that they're using and they're not gonna want to pull away and take that away unless there's extra money that's going to be put into school safety. This bill will fail just like the last one did. It went 2 terms, some of
the schools picked it up and, and used it after that and still are, but it's if it's not funding it's an. unfunded mandate to our schools and schools hate that. I've just been on the texting with the superintendents and they are good with it if we fund this, they will be glad to use it. It's a great, it's a great deal. I have nothing against what you're trying to do. I just know that we do this and in 2 years, we don't have it again because the funding goes away if you have the funding go away, then
you don't have anything so that's my main question. I'm, I'm just making a speech here. I love what you're trying to do. I definitely 100% for safety all the years I sat in that chair right up there, and I know he's the same way we're for safety. We want safety for our kids, and I don't think there's anybody in this room that does not want that. That is why we ran that bill in 15. We wanted something to happen, but if we don't have the funding, so until I get a guarantee that that's going to be funded continuously. I'm
gonna have a hard time with this. Well, and I, you know, I'm, I'm done. I'll I'll Yeah,
Speaker 231
1:37:19
yeah, yeah. Wouldn't you agree? Well, that's what my question is, are we gonna have permanent funding? Well, it sounds like there's a conversation around that. I cannot say yes
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:37:25
or no to that right now and just to be honest, I mean, I started teaching in 2016 and we downloaded the Panic app and had it for just a, just a minute and then
I stopped hearing about it. So my district chose to go in a different direction and, uh, you know, everyone's gonna make their own decisions, but I think. I think this is the way we need to go, but thank you.
Representative Austin McCollum
Unverified
1:37:43
Uson McCollum you're recognized for a question if you still have. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I, I don't need to um add on on the funding conversation especially considering the bill is going to be, I guess. Take down, we'll have more conversations about money. It sounds like the committee would like to get some of those questions answered, I guess, um. What I wanted to bring it back to was uh maybe just technology, what's available now compared to what this could be, um.
I think where I am is uh. I agree with you that phones sometimes don't work. Sometimes The apps just don't work because you have storage issues or
battery issues, all these other things. My logic is, OK, what else is available? This sounds like great technology, technology, and it's, it's a simpler technology.
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:38:37
I mean, it uses high frequency Bluetooth, um, which everyone in here has, has probably has Bluetooth on
their phone or whatever and, and what did they have uh from my understanding, different places throughout the school that are sensors and you click the button that goes to the sensors, sensors to the main hub. And then goes from there, um, I guess with the vendor. You want
Speaker 218
1:38:57
to talk more about the technology piece. My question was just going to be, yeah. More or
Representative Austin McCollum
Unverified
1:39:04
less, would you agree that there are other types of technology besides things
that are just on your phone that enable. Yes, I would, I would agree I would agree 100% with
Zach Gramli
Unverified
1:39:13
that, and I mean, again, my own personal,
personal experience on this like the um. Phones are tough,
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:39:19
and then I guess also just and too, I mean, we just went bell to be, no cell phones. I need to be a res I need to be an
example for my kids and have my cell phone put away as much as possible, or I'm gonna have a fight I don't want to have,
Representative Austin McCollum
Unverified
1:39:33
so. I guess besides the um technology and the, um, you know, the funding part of it. Is there anything else um that you think we should be thinking about in the meantime as you you go back and work this, and I ask, I ask it in that way just because there's some of us that
might go to another committee here in a few minutes. I
Speaker 221
1:39:50
mean, I mean for me the biggest piece of this is just. Like
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:39:54
the simplicity of use, how quickly it can be used, how it's kind of, it's kind of dummy proof on how it works. I mean, you really have a hard time losing this, and I mean,
reality is the only way this technology doesn't work is if you're not wearing like your ID, which is how I would have it, or wearing what you're probably going to be required to wear, and it's not big, it's not bulky. Um, the simplicity of use in my opinion,
Zach Gramli
Unverified
1:40:18
is what really moves the needle, um, for safety in our
Speaker 234
1:40:23
school, she'd like to add something on February 14th, I texted Alyssa. I told that are running high that help was on the way, but unfortunately, that helped didn't get
Speaker 181
1:40:34
there fast enough. So, I mean, when we're talking, when we're talking seconds. Again, you know, this technology gains us. Description of Duke you recognize her question.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:40:49
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I just want to say I'm very sorry for what you've been through
and continue to go through because I know it's It's a daily thing for you. Thank you for advocating for kids and not using your heartache to try and help. Save other kids. So thank you, thank you for being here and thank you, Representative Bramley, for bringing this. I know. I had 2 teacher kids, which I think are aware and, um, I know the weight that they carry.
And the way that you must carry, knowing that you are, you oftentimes are the line of defense between your students and potentially somebody. So I, I do greatly appreciate that, um. I think many of us on here, I know many of us on here served on school boards and have different connections, part of the reason why we're in education and. The, um, I just want to say before I get to my questions, um. The weight that you carry on a school board. I, I think, equally as great, just different as you do as a
teacher sitting there because we're painfully aware of COVID. I, I sat in those meetings and I've sat in security meetings, trying to figure out how to keep those kids safe and, and, um, it's, it's heavy and it's heavy, hard discussions like we're having now, and it has to be that way because it's the most important thing in protecting that life. is the most important thing that we're trying to do. So I'm saying all that because I don't want my questions. I don't want any of our questions. I think we're all very conscious that we don't want it to be perceived at all that because we have to talk about the money part of it or the the responsibility in districts, what that looks like doesn't mean that there is.
Not the absolute regard for the protection of life being the number one thing that we're trying to do. So, um, they've already kind of hit the funding piece and
I think that that is a super important piece because you mentioned in here, I think I may have misheard you, but that the panic button, let me get my glasses back on so I can read my own handwriting. Sorry, um, the panic button became unfunded, so it went away. And I think that you can see that's a big If I understood you correctly, that that is a Big concern I think a lot of us
have is you invest in it and then it goes away and so I'm gonna get to what you agree in a second. Um, my concern on this as well is it this bill very feels very restrictive, very detailed
in, and there are my experience has been in education and in this world as well, and it's been a while that there are often lots of um innovations that are happening in this world. We did some pilot programs and our district coming right after some of these things ended up
not going anywhere, but we, there was a lot of, there's a lot of innovation going there, so I'm concerned with how detailed this is. It's, it's, I'm not a big fan of it when we get so detailed that I think your words were if a vendor meets these requirements. Then there are the options for it, so to represent McCollum's point, there
are possibly other ways besides just the lanyard type button thing out there. I don't know because I haven't done this research in a while, so that is a concern that I have on is how detailed it is and. Would you
There are a lot of districts that have invested a lot of money on their own, and I don't know if I'm sorry that maybe things haven't gone all the way in some of the other districts, but they've invested a lot because those kids, they know those kids, right? I mean they. There's a very personal relationship. It's not just names, it's not just numbers. They have personal relationships with these teachers and with the staff that they're trying to protect. So. The concern I think that I have is what about those district plans? How does that fold into this and
the investments that they have. I'm a big believer that the local school districts. Know what's best for their kids and how to protect their kids and the funding piece of it, they would greatly appreciate. Is there anything that precludes those local school districts from doing this right now on their own. Without this being in statute that they can. Choose to use Be this methodology right now, and are there any in the state that are doing this right now. Two questions. First one, I don't think there's anything
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:45:01
that precludes the school district from doing this. Uh, second one, I don't know if there's any in the in the state that are doing this, um, but, um, I think a very just whispered in my ear that Little Rock does do this, um, so this is, this is being done, um. I have no report on how effective it is in Little Rock, but in my opinion, I think it's This is, this is my, we talk about like technology and stuff like that and this is education, so this my my find funny, but like what is, what's the, what's the calculator we've been using for the last 30 years in
education, TI 84. We do it because it's the exactly what we needed to do. We, it has the perfect functionality. This is kind of a similar thing. It doesn't have a lot of extra bells and whistles, but it's going to work and it's gonna be solid and it's
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:45:45
gonna save lives. And I appreciate, I think I like this technology piece of it. I think that it is very impressive. Again, my concerns. So that whenever you're looking through
this, is not whether the technology is good technology or whether it, it, it's one, the freedom for the school districts to adapt and pick, whether it's this one or somebody else that
may fit their world better or fold into the plan that they already have going, right? Or the contract that they've already signed. They may be a part of this, but how does this look later? And so I think it's all of that's great. I mean, I, I, the, the precision in this, I think is remarkable. The fine tuning it together is remarkable. I just think those are pieces that as you work through. we can all help work together to get this to where we're all comfortable with it and all the districts that are already maybe ahead of the game on some of this. We might be surprised at,
I don't know, you know, but I think that those are pieces that would be helpful to know as well as what our districts using and with some of those may fold in, or would we preclude some of them from being able to use this money if they don't do it exactly the way it's written in this bill. Sure. Thank you. Represent Beck you recognized. Thank you,
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:46:55
Mr. Chair. And Representative Duke, I'm going to You start a little bit I thought but it's good
because as an engineer, when you look at these things, I was thinking the same
thing. This thing is very detailed. And whenever you look at something like that, it almost like it's, you
can choose anyone you want as long as it's this one because I I I've done all, you know, and
that happens in in in necessarily that's not what you want to commit with the system because when you do that, then you're locked into that system and then, and then the next year, something comes along and it's the latest, greatest, and your system doesn't do so good and but, but you're locked.
So, but, so my point is this. I, I would feel better about a bill that had, and I agree with you on this one also. I would feel better about a bill that sort of quantified. What and, and, you know, the minimums of this, I think I, I think the notification is a great thing, you know, notification within 15 seconds or something like that that could reasonable, you know, that could be operated. Maybe, maybe it is you've heard some
people talk about that they want uh. Smartphones, you know, maybe that fits the qualification, but maybe it is. I do like the idea of just pushing the button. That, that's a good possibility too, but what this is doing right now is it really looks like it's pointing towards a system and, and so that's one of my concerns, uh. But is there, I would look for a higher level, how the system responds and then the other
question I would ask is this. Is there a standard protocol for these systems. Out there so that there are multiple vendors that are saying, OK, you know, we communicate on this frequent, you know, that, that type of thing, that communicate on these type of frequencies are they adjustable to these type of frequencies. So all these devices, you're not totally locked in. To a given system or something and it would allow the schools to adopt part of this or not. I, I, I don't know. I'm gonna have
Speaker 282
1:49:07
an expert come to the table. OK, great. If
Will Fullerton
Unverified
1:49:16
you would please, sir, introduce yourself for the record and then you're recognized. Uh, good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Committee members, my name is Will Fullerton. I'm the head of government affairs
Speaker 285
1:49:23
for a company called Synteix, um, so I am a vendor in all this. We try not to get too specific. Most of the wearables in the market operate on some form of Bluetooth, so everything that regulates those standards are the regulations as far as connectivity is concerned. OK. So,
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:49:39
So you're saying that a Bluetooth device
from this other company. would then communicate into another system, our system is, is a
Speaker 285
1:49:49
closed Bluetooth um connectivity, so you can't, couldn't discover it on your, you know, iPads here, your phones, um, other wearables are discoverable because that link to the phone is what creates the alert, um, our system operates completely independent of
Will Fullerton
Unverified
1:50:04
of internet and cellular, so, so we don't have some of those trip
ups, but, but plenty do, right? Um, it's it's an extension of the phone, um, there's, there's. A handful of of wearables out there. It's kind of where the iteration of, of Alyssa's law has led many states to go through rulemaking, procurement, and established kind of base standards, um, similar to, to fire alarms 50 years ago, right, like when the the nation and states decided that fire alarms needed to be in all schools. Um, that wasn't to call the fire department originally. It was to tell
everybody to get out of the building. Similarly, this is to create a campus. notification of a lockdown, independent of that fire alarm, so there's no confusion because most of those protocols, whether they're stop or I love you guys, they're pretty standard nationally. The, the tricky situation in, in the extreme emergencies like an after, uh, like an active shooter event is, how do you let everybody know to initiate the protocols, right? All the training and drills in the world are worthless if people don't know to go into lockdown. If they don't know to
get behind a locked door in something hard, um, because ultimately that's what saved. Lives in the extreme, um, in the everyday, he mentioned kind of the, the everyday activation, that's that's 99% of how a system like ours is used, um, children have cardiac events. No, I wouldn't say every day, but quite frequently. There are 7000 across K-12 education last year in this country, and if you don't get to that child with an AED within 3 minutes, the likelihood of survival is lower
than 10%. If you have that AED on site similar to a bill y'all were previously listening to, um, their likelihood of, of survival skyrockets up to almost 90. So it's, you know, multiple emergencies. Kind of different severity if you will, um, whether you need to lock down and notify the entire campus or just that localized response, um, so that folks can come running, the nurse, the SRO, whomever that might be for campus, um, and so I think that's, that's kind of at the crux of the conversation
is, is, um, you know, how are you how are you compressing time? How are you saving seconds, an active shooter event, um, rarely lasts longer than 5 minutes, um, there are outliers. that obviously, and so that that 1st 5 minutes and really it's the 1st 3, but, but none of that can go into, you know, your response cannot begin until everybody on campus knows it's time to respond. Um, I think it's how I would, I would kind of wrap that up and, and I, I would just say like why
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
1:52:38
this technology is nice again. It's like when we look at like apps on our phones, like it
is totally predicated on if you have service like when I was talking about this technology, and I was with some of my colleagues at My school, you know, they were talking like they've been in schools or they're like in these interior classrooms where they have no cell reception and they can't get on Wi Fi for whatever reason. And so like we've got this panic app, but it does not work and it cannot be informed. This, using the technology it uses like bypasses that. And so it's always connected and it, it can as well, as long as you're on campus, it's always connected as long as you're in range of
these Bluetooth um monitor's not the word, but these Bluetooth devices that pick up these sensor sensors. Are these sensors, I guess that pick up these signals then
Speaker 279
1:53:24
you know you can, you can send an alert and,
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:53:28
and I, I, I, I appreciate it. It sounds like you've got a great system, and I agree 100%. I think everyone here agrees that the second side with the notification are really critical. You, you mentioned that the iPhones used an open Bluetooth and I I think I know what that's about, but then you said your system uses a closed
Bluetooth. So my question is, are there other vendors out there who who manufacture. An an advice that you could alert with that will talk directly to your system. Are there other vendors that produce So in other words, you use,
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:54:07
put in fire alarm systems before and I, and, and, and they're very complicated and all that stuff like they're not as complicated, but I can buy.
Uh, uh, a station from one company that has nothing to do with another. There is a standard as to how those are connected and how they connect together. My question is, that's what I'm going after. Is there a standard, like you said yours was closed. Bluetooth is our standard in the industry where other vendors that have closed Bluetooth will communicate with yours, or is it sort of encrypted or something like that, I guess it's the question. I mean it is encrypted in the cloud, um, as we go
Will Fullerton
Unverified
1:54:49
through SOC2 audit right now, um, I the integration is key. I I think that is what I would say we integrate with camera company, everybody out there, so it is a, um, you know, I think as a vendor in the space, specifically with K-12 school safety, we're talking about, you know, keeping kids alive and safe. I, I think all of us have to work together, um, and it's so how do we, how does my product make yours stronger, because at the end of the day, um, as Secretary Aliva said, you
know, school safety is the most important thing on campus, um, making sure kids get home at the end of the day, make sure educators can come home at the end of the day, um, if, if we don't get that right. Um, then, you know, nobody's learning, nobody's teaching, and she'd like to. Um, after the tragedy,
Speaker 234
1:55:36
I ran for the Broward County School Board, and I've been on the school board for the last 7
Laurie Alhade
Unverified
1:55:41
years. We started with an app-based panic button, and we still have the app-based banner button today, but the school board decided to
also layer on the wearable panic button because we were having problems with teachers downloading the panic button, and even if they downloaded, they weren't signed in, so that became an issue and then they didn't have the, the Wi Fi or cellular service, so there. app wasn't working within their classroom, so we don't want a false sense of security, but to we layered on the wearable panic button. Thank you. I, and I, I'm, I'm
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:56:16
gonna step off here, but just
one I, I, my concern and the reason I spoke up was I think we're going to pull it down and try to do some those are my concerns with it right now. I just want to make sure we communicate those and I communicate those is that we want a system that, that, you know, like, like think about this, the, the mobile apps that we have right now that, that do apparently some of our schools have already adopted, we've already paid for. It'd be great if we could grab by your button. work with those mobile apps, but apparently we can't, we can't,
Will Fullerton
Unverified
1:56:51
we typically do um because we, we digitally, we we offer more than just a panic button, uh, the system does. And so, so typically if those vendors will integrate with us with our mapping systems and then it, it typically the conversations and kind of the inside baseball here is who controls the the alert when it's initiated and the way ours because we're the ones directing all that communication to the PSA, so you know with 911. dispatch receives in a digital message with a, you know,
digital blueprint in a room level location accuracy, bunch of assets tags so they know where the fire extinguisher's emergency exits, AEDs are, all of that, uh, I mean, we, we can integrate with apps and we have our own, um, that we can operate. Typically it's only for the responders, um, but it can be, you know, if, if, if there's an outcry from teachers who want an app-based button, our system does it and and like you said, there's there's a lot out there. Well, thank you.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:57:53
Representative Painter, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just quick, and I may have missed it. What is the backup system? Is there a backup system if, if, if the campus loses, you know, power or Bluetooth or whatever happens, what is that system? So our system
Will Fullerton
Unverified
1:58:11
operate completely wirelessly, so there's nothing hardwired outside of the gateways, um, in the building that are all on cellular backups and then all of our devices have 8-hour battery backups. So if
the power is lost, um, even if, if the, the, the lithium ion battery that's inside our strobes, our badges, even if those go dead, they're still back up. It's a system that was created with with so many redundancies. We operate push button help comes. um that's what we tell teachers, that's what we tell, uh, everybody, and so that can't not work. So the redundancy there is, again, it's cellular backup if there's not an active internet connection. There's uh and then those, those 8 hour backup batteries. The system itself is monitored 24/7. Um,
we're based in Atlanta and then we have a a distribution and kind of command center in Louisiana as well. Uh, and so we know if one device, because ultimately the badges are talking to those strobes and locating beacons so that we can get that location accuracy once they're activated, um, and so if, you know, if, if, if a strobe is low, or has a low battery, we are, we're notified in Atlanta, um, and we, we roll somebody out there if it's, you know, we need to fix the problem or if it's something we can ship them same day, next day, uh, and
have them, you know, the facilities team take care of it. What
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:59:27
is the, the, um, time something happens. I presses the button, what's, what's the time frame do you average time frame. So, so full scale
Will Fullerton
Unverified
1:59:36
lockdown would be a we take over the intercoms, um all these strobes that are typically about 2, they're in all the classrooms in about every 27 ft in hallways, um, and then desktop takeovers take over all the screens for the district devices with a lockdown message
that happens within the 1st 4 seconds. 911's called inside inside of 3 seconds, um, the, the one second delays. ADA and and fire code compliance when you have multiple strobes that flash in buildings, they have to be synced up. And so that extra second is aligning those strobes for the visual notification campus-wide to um To Standard Time. Representative Walker, you recognize for a question.
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
2:00:26
Being mindful of time, I'll try to do it all in one question. Um, but I agree 100% on the apps. I, I, with my having an app on my personal phone, I can barely find the app I'm looking for and just a normal environment. I can't imagine what it would be like in a panicking. Um, so I've got a few things that I'm hoping you would be willing to look at since you're
going to pull your bill. Um, the first one, the year that it's being implemented right now, 2025, 2026. I don't think it's
possible to do something on this magnitude in that sort of a time span, I think we should push it back, um, real response. We don't, since we don't know what this will cost on a statewide contract or whatever we end up doing. Um, I, I would like to see a compare. of what it would cost statewide to implement this and keep it active every single year and comparing that to putting a school resource officer in a in the rural areas because I don't
care if you have 200 people pushing the button 200 times. Um, we still have the same windy roads that the sheriff's offices or the deputies at the sheriff's offices are going to have to travel and it's still going to be 30, 40 minutes before we can get somebody there and that the button's not changing. in that. So I want to see a cost compared, or I'd like to see a cost comparison, um, by looking at staffing or at least our rural areas with more resource officers so we can have that response time down to 212
minutes, whatever it is, um, the language wearable, I would, I'm hoping that you can look at maybe changing it to where we'd say a device for this sole purpose or maybe an emergency purpose to address Mayberry's concerns about it being a button that's worn around the neck, um. Offer an exemption to schools that have equivalent in place if they've already got something and they don't want to follow this, maybe we can offer an exemption if it's equivalent or whatever. And the reason I throw in the exemption, I should have mentioned it, this first, the
funding side of it right now, this is an unfunded mandate. The funding side of it, I would hope that you would, you could look at would be, um, I think our, when we come to school, whenever we come to safety, we want to push it onto the school districts, let them figure. how to fund it. And on something like this, I, I agree. We need to do something because you never know if you're going to be next, but I also think our state needs to walk the talk. Um, so in my opinion, Or what I'd like to be looked at is having, having the Department
of Education or Department of Information Services, um, whichever one or maybe in conjunction with each other, be the ones that bid out the service, they're the ones that choose who the provider is, depending on a statewide contract because it would also address my earlier concern about small districts usually pay more per kid on these devices and what a large school would be if we had a statewide contract that did it all, it would be a fair price across the. board, they would also have the negotiating power to make it happen.
Um, so they would be the ones that would select the provider depending on cost and whatever every other metric they think is necessary, they would be the ones that would fund it on a statewide level. So as long as the funding's there, we do this and it keeps it from being unfunded mandate, and then the provider would be in charge of going out implementing the technology, installing it in the district, and then that's where the exemption would have came in if a district already has something that's equivalent, they want to do their own. They have that option to be exempted, so they. They're not forced by the state
to have somebody come in and do it, it would just be if they didn't have something equivalent already in it. Um, would you be willing to consider looking into those and maybe amending it before I'm sure we could look at some amendments and
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
2:04:15
you know, again, it does sound like the department's
interested in figuring out how to find a sustainable way to fund this, and so, you know, hopefully some of those concerns can, can be, can be alleviated so I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Barnett, I had you down for a question. Do you still have a question? Representative Brown, you're recognized?
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
2:04:35
Well, just briefly, um. This would be for Will, um. You just answered my question about I believe about the reliability of the system, so it's very reliable. You have, you have quick action. Yes, ma'am. Um, you just mentioned uh the sock 2,
what, what is that gonna verify for you? Anything that touches the
Will Fullerton
Unverified
2:04:58
cloud deals with cybersecurity, connects to the internet. It is a it is a federal standard um
Speaker 285
2:05:05
for the safety of your network or the security
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
2:05:08
I should say. So that you don't have other people penetrating your data. Thank
you. Final question on the board, we've got in
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:05:18
Mayberry, you're recognized. Thank you again, Mr. Chair. Um, I'm gonna try to put these two things, but while you're here, um. Well, is that is that your first name? Thank you, um, so what was mentioned is that it was about $8000 a year per campus, but when you were talking, you mentioned strobes and and all
this and I just can't imagine that that equipment is covered in that when we start talking about putting strobes in all the hallways, that right there has got to be more than $8000 so there's got to be some other upfront money that. There in year
Will Fullerton
Unverified
2:05:55
one, the way we would typically work a contract with a district, um, statewide's a little different, um, just because of, you know, size and scale, uh, in year one, there's, there's some installation fees
uh, if you, there's some powerSchool integrations there there's a few small one-time costs, but typically we like how, how much are we talking? It stills out to about $8000 a year per campus, um, because we do hardware as a service and all of that is. baked into. Typically, we operate in 3 to 5 year contract. So the whole campus would have these strobes
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:06:30
and everybody would get the lanyard we don't it by the badge or any of the equipment, um.
Will Fullerton
Unverified
2:06:42
Um, hospitals, healthcare, those are we price those on our square footage model that doesn't translate to schools, um. Primarily because of the density in devices that we install, but again, that's, that's not those, those strobes, they're on, I mean, basically commercial magnets, it's not, we install a large urban high school on Saturday night and about 4 or 5 hours, so it's, it's not a complex installation, um. Process or feed can go in old buildings that don't have a lot of.
Yeah, we do, we do, we're in all of the state buildings in Georgia, um, many of which are historical monuments. So we have to, um, and it requires a
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:07:23
3 to 5 year contract. So once you, you do this, I mean, we've got to make sure we've got the funds there to, to match for those 5 years. OK, and I'm sorry, one last question, please forgive me. I, I just, I just wanted to share this too and maybe you have some response to this, but um something else that hasn't been discussed is There are probably a lot of
people who will feel more secure by wearing something around their neck. Um, of, of, you know, OK, I know I can press this if I need help, but I do know that there are people who, when you put that around their neck, they're suddenly going to have anxiety because now it's a it's a conscious thought that, oh, it could be today. And I do know that there are some teachers, and this is kind of factored into why our school district has not said every teacher, every faculty member,
every employee has to wear it. There are some who, who might actually experience the opposite effect and will not want to wear this and, and by this law, it would say that they have to. And so I don't know if you could maybe address that. I can't
speak to how teachers feel. I, I'm holding
Zach Gramli
Unverified
2:08:32
myself to this expectation. This is something that we need to do. Like, and I understand, but every teacher at some point. Not,
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
2:08:39
I'm not every day, every week, but every year at some point it crosses to the back of their mind.
What am I gonna do? This answers that question for me.
Will Fullerton
Unverified
2:08:52
From a compliance standpoint, what we've seen, um, Florida passed it a couple of years and implemented it after after Marjorie Stowman Douglas, Texas, Utah, um, Well this's law has been filed in a couple dozen states by now, um, Utah codified wearable. Now, the way I would read the language, um. And I'm just a guy from Austin,
Texas, but the school district. Being forced to provide each teacher with one does not mandate that she she must or he must wear it, and, but in Florida with compliance, they're showing up in schools saying show me your Alyssa's alert. And if you don't, go find it now because the fact of it is there are emergencies every day in schools. Um, they might not be violent, they might be an opportunity for de-escalation, um, but you know, they're not going to be active school shootings, they are going to be potentially catastrophic.
catastrophic events that that are critically important for a critical response and Beyond that, it turns into muscle memory for those extreme Alyssa's law kind of if there's an active shooter, well, you know, you've been pressing it, you're used to it, um, and, and it states in Florida, Texas, we're running these drills every month, whether it's a weather drill or an active assailant drill. They're happening every month, so. I mean I would that I participate in code reds at least once a semester. I mean,
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
2:10:20
you know, it, it is, is, it is front of mind of all teachers, like this is a possibility someone could come into our school and something bad could happen, so I mean it's not like I every teacher has to experience this and every teacher has to think about it, and because the reality unfortunately is this is something that could happen, um, very, very, very slim chance, but it could happen and uh. Yeah. Thank you for your
questions. Seeing no additional questions bothering me. I'm sorry. Representative Garner, you do have a question.
Reckon I. Sorry, I didn't realize I wasn't still in
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:10:55
the queue. Um, I, I just have a a couple of questions as we've gone through this. Now I'm feeling like, are you the only company that does
Speaker 285
2:11:05
this? No, ma'am. We're, we're the largest footprint in the market on
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:11:09
wearable devices, OK, so, and so we have a contract for 3 to 5 years. And are there upgrades? I mean, I'm, I'm thinking of things like this or if, if other innovation comes about.
Then we're Duck, we are the, the,
Will Fullerton
Unverified
2:11:24
the company recently we switched over from, from what we would call a Zigby IOT system to a Laura WA um network. Um, we have been over the last year replacing um every district 11 at a time, one school at a time, uh, and, and that is part of that kind of hardware as a ser service fee as we have structured it, um, it, it in procurement at the state level or at the district level through
state dollars, um. A lot of times the school safety money is supposed to be used to to buy devices, but that's the way we worked this licensing agreement. Um, and again, it's not just the panic system. Our, our digital mapping system is updateable in real time at the administrative level every campus. You install a fire extinguisher, your facilities team or your principal can tag it right there so that the SRO or or the county sheriff EMS, whomever knows where it is. You tear down a wall, you update those blueprints in real time.
That's part of the, you know, having those up to-date maps for first responders is critically important. And so it's not just kind of the alert, right? It's, it's, it's a full kind of critical incident response, emergency response, um, when, when seconds matter, really inside this, you know, the 1st 3 minutes, you got about 180 seconds. Um and I guess my question was. Mainly if something were to
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:12:45
happen to this company. What happens to What happens to us if we
have invested in this company and then all of a sudden. Something happens or there's. Better innovation or, I mean, I,
Will Fullerton
Unverified
2:13:03
I can't speak to that. We're we're a company that's averaged 113% growth over the last 3 years, so if we're intimating um Insolvency, I, I
Speaker 307
2:13:12
don't know, but you know what happens when COVID happens and companies go bankrupt, I'm
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:13:17
just I'm asking if somebody else yeah yeah there's those kinds of things, the size of AT&T and Motorola
Will Fullerton
Unverified
2:13:25
offer systems like this down to, you know, localized, um, you know, dads like me in their garage who have a good idea. This wasn't my idea, but, um, but yeah, I think there's the scale out there in the market is significant. A couple of years ago, I don't know if we could have this conversation in as many states that are having these conversations just because the marketplace, I don't think the tech was ready, um. We're at a, we are the system that was used in Apalachee High School in Georgia, which has,
you know, since September of last year, created a lot of really great vibrant conversations at the state level, Policymakers and appropriators like yourself, and I think for me, I was chief of staff at Texas Education Agency. I like deliberative conversations with local control always in mind, but at some point the state has to decide its investment, both financially but also in establishing a standard, you know, just like algebra 3. Kindergarten readiness, 3rd grade literacy, um, school
safety as a country, you know, we just haven't lifted, elevated those standards, um, you know. Until fairly recently, really starting in 2018, 2019. Um. After a pretty significant catastrophe. And and so I think that's kind of the the state of play, um. It's good. Conversations are good. Debate is positive. Um, I've got a 6 and an 8 year old at home, uh, and I couldn't think of anything more horrible than them in danger at school. Um. But
I have to have the confidence that the principal, the SRO, um, and those teachers on campus are gonna take care of my babies when they're
with them. Seeing no additional questions represent Greenway just to clarify you're gonna pull down HB
1492 and we're gonna have discussions relative to an amendment on it, perhaps multiple minutes, OK. Uh, and just again, just to circle back around on the fiscal impact because I know that that is certainly something that's very important to a number of
members on the committee, this is not new money that's being appropriated, this money's already been appropriated for school safety. I think that's kind of our starting point of the conversation as we have additional conversations about ongoing costs down the road, uh, be they potentially unfunded ongoing costs down the road to school districts. The initial cost is, I'm just as a clarify. find and say the initial cost is part of what it's already been set aside, correct. So, uh, Graham, thank you for
your time. Uh I will uh yield for just a moment to Vice Chair McKenzie.
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
2:16:01
Hey, and, as a point of personal privilege, Rick, you don't need a comb over. I don't recommend that. So thank you for being a good circle back around to that.
Speaker 322
2:16:09
I mean. It's on camera, it's fine. Um, if you wouldn't mind, uh, I
had a conversation with BLR staff earlier at a different committee. if you mind just uh cleaning up your workstation as a thank you to Kristen who has to suffer through our, our debating and back and forth and not add
another thing to their list, I would appreciate it.
Thank you. And again, Laurie, thank you for your time. Thank
you for telling your daughter's story. Our hearts go out to you. Thank you for, for your, your passion of making life safer for students, uh, all across the country. Without seeing no additional business force house education is adjourned. All right.
Agenda
REGULAR AGENDA
HB1398 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO SUPPORT, ESTABLISH, AND IMPLEMENT A CARDIAC EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLAN THAT INTEGRATES NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED ELEMENTS.
HB1457 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO SUBMIT DATA AND OTHER INFORMATION RELATED TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENT'S INDIVIDUALIZED EDUCATION PROGRAM USING A UNIFORM STATEWIDE DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM.
HB1490 Wardlaw TO REPEAL THE REQUIREMENT THAT A PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENT RETURN TEMPORARILY ISSUED ITEMS, RESOURCES, MATERIALS, AND PROPERTY BELONGING TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL IN ORDER TO BE ELIGIBLE TO ENROLL IN A HOME SCHOOL.
SB135 J. Boyd TO AMEND ELECTION REQUIREMENTS IN THE CASE OF AN UNCHANGED RATE OF AN ANNUAL AD VALOREM PROPERTY TAX LEVIED BY A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
HB1601 L. Johnson TO REQUIRE STATE-SUPPORTED INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION TO PROVIDE CAREER COUNSELING AND OTHER RESOURCES TO CERTAIN STUDENTS.
HB1025 McGruder TO CREATE THE TEACHER FAIR DISMISSAL ACT OF 2025.
SB167 A. Clark TO AMEND THE DATES BY WHICH CERTAIN REQUESTS TO TRANSFER PUBLIC SCHOOLS OR PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS SHALL BE SUBMITTED.
HB1580 Gramlich TO REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO PROVIDE CERTAIN INFORMATION ON TYPE 1 AND TYPE 2 DIABETES WHEN OTHER HEALTH INFORMATION IS PROVIDED.
HB1633 Brooks TO AMEND ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATING IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES FOR CERTAIN STUDENTS WHO TRANSFER SCHOOLS; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
HB1492 Gramlich TO REQUIRE EACH PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT AND OPEN-ENROLLMENT PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL TO PROVIDE ALL SCHOOL EMPLOYEES WITH A WEARABLE PANIC ALERT SYSTEM DEVICE.
SB292 K. Hammer TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE DATE OF AN ANNUAL SCHOOL ELECTION; TO MOVE THE ANNUAL SCHOOL ELECTION IF THE ANNUAL SCHOOL ELECTION IS SCHEDULED ON A STATE HOLIDAY IN CERTAIN INSTANCES; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — EDUCATION COMMITTEE- HOUSE, Mar 6, 2025 | Agenda | 3 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Keith Brooks Chair
Unverified
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Representative Brit McKenzie Chair
Unverified
Speaker 28
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Speaker 36
Speaker 50
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
Speaker 64
Speaker 75
Speaker 72
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 49
Speaker 78
Representative Matthew J. Shepherd
Unverified
Speaker 52
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 125
Sarah Owen
Unverified
Speaker 135
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Zach Gramli
Unverified
Representative Zack Gramlich
Unverified
Rainie Wilkins
Unverified
Speaker 182
Speaker 188
Representative Austin McCollum
Unverified
Speaker 196
Speaker 205
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 223
Speaker 234
Laurie Alhade
Unverified
Speaker 240
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Speaker 235
Speaker 253
Speaker 181
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 184
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
Speaker 231
Speaker 218
Speaker 221
Speaker 282
Will Fullerton
Unverified
Speaker 285
Speaker 279
Speaker 307
Speaker 322