As we’ve been predicting over the past few days, Senate Education Committee Chairman John Goedde (R-Coeur d’Alene) announced today that he expects to introduce the revamped version of Tom Luna's Senate Bill 1113 for printing on Friday morning.
As we signaled in an earlier Hotline message, the new version of SB 1113 would not require the legislature to strong arm districts into eliminating as many as a thousand education jobs to pay for the plan. Instead, the difficult decisions about whether to cut salaries or lay off teachers would be dropped into the laps of local school administrators and school trustees.
Sen. Goedde also told reporters today that the requirement that students take online courses would be removed from the bill. Instead, the State Board of Education would be directed to draft rules outlining the role of the Internet in the classroom in coming years.
Under the new measure, students will still be expected to receive “mobile computing devices.” However, teachers would be first in line to get them—and training on how to use them—starting in 2013.
