Chris Hamilton attended the meeting of the House Education Committee's subcommittee studying the home education bills. Here is her report of the proceedings.
Yesterday (9/6/11) the NH House Education Subcommittee to study three homeschooling bills voted unanimously to recommend to the committee as a whole that HB301 and HB595 be ITL'd, and that the committee move forward using HB545 as a basis for changes to the current home education law. Representative Ralph Boehm, chairman of the subcommittee, stated he thought the two discarded bills were too complicated. He expressed concern about moving forward with sweeping changes when there is not a consensus within the homeschooling community about any one proposal. HB545 seemed to address one issue where there was widespread agreement, that during the last round of rulemaking the DOE had overstepped its authority.
Rep. Boehm felt that the requirements of the current law had their functions. Notification helps public schools plan for enrollment and budgeting, and assists them in enforcing attendance laws. Representative Joe Pitre pointed out that the letter of intent serves as refusal of services when a child has an IEP. Evaluations help students who want to attend classes in public schools show that they meet course prerequisites. Representative Kathleen Lauer-Rago, a homeschooling parent, pointed out that students who want to access public school classes can take specific tests (presumably without requiring general testing of all homeschooled students). She also stated that she had fulfilled the requirements of the current law for many years, and did not find them burdensome.
Rep Rago read aloud her notes from the hearing on HB545 about how the department had tried to do an end-run around the legislature using the rules. Rep Boehm said that this problem was not unique to the DOE, that he thought that rule-making was "out of control" in other agencies, too. In response to a question by a committee member, Representative David Bates, who was in the audience, stated that current statutes prevent the legislature from granting the broad rule-making authority found in RSA 193-A:3, and that the speaker's office would not currently allow a bill with such a provision to be introduced. Rep Boehm believed that the statute (RSA 193-A) adequately defined what the legislature expected of homeschoolers, and that the rules were unneccessary, but later left room for writing into current law some of the specificity of the rules. Representative Barbara Shaw pointed out that having rules allows for flexibility, and allows small changes to be made without coming back to the legislature. Rep Boehm responded that he thought parties should be coming back to the legislature for changes.
Rep Rago expressed concern that rules were not reviewed sufficiently. Rep Shaw pointed out that all rules must be reviewed by JLCAR. Rep Boehm expressed skepticism that JLCAR had the expertise to adequately review rules, and supported a proposal for JLCAR to have "floating members" who would bring the expertise of their respective policy committees to bear on specific rules proposals. There was also some discussion about proposals to change JLCAR that I am not familiar with.
There was quite a bit of discussion about whether or not to eliminate the HEAC. The subcommittee was concerned that the role of the council was not defined in the statute, that it was up to the DOE to decide what its role should be. Rep Boehm believed that its current purpose was to write rules. He wanted to change its role to advise the legislature on needed changes to the law. In response to a question from a committee member, Abbey Lawrence, chair of the HEAC, explained some of the other activities of the council, and the role it plays in the resolution of disputes. She also stated that during the previous round of rule-making, the DOE had proposed changes to the rules that would have implemented policies that were overwhelmingly rejected by the legislature, but that indications from the DOE led her to believe that this would not be repeated in the current round of rule-making. Subcommittee members will review the duties of the council as they are described in Ed 315 before the next meeting, Tuesday, September 13, 10:00 AM.
After the meeting, there was a discussion that included Rep Rago, Representative Laura Jones, Abbey Lawrence, Michael Faiella (former HEAC member), and myself. Michael explained further some of the positive things the council had done. Later it was pointed out that the current law was written as a framework, and that it was assumed that rules would fill in the details. If the rules were removed, districts would write the details into policies. Then instead of one central place for providing input on proposals, homeschoolers would need to be attentive to hundreds of policies in local districts, including districts that were not friendly to homeschoolers. Rep Rago asked the three homeschoolers to come up with a list of things in the rules that they believed should be added to the law if authorization for the rules were to be repealed. That was later expanded to include any internal problems (i.e. inconsistencies) in the law. This last request had also been made by Rep Pitre at two previous HEAC meetings. It appears that minor changes to the current law will be considered.
Chris Hamilton
No comments:
Post a Comment