Meetings
Transcript: Select text below to play or share a clip
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We're live. All right, welcome to House Education. This is our first meeting of this half of the biennium, it being January 2026. Today, starting at two, probably in a different video segment, we'll be having testimony from the Secretary of Education on developments at the Agency of Education in terms of their reorganization, their priorities for this season, etcetera. Just to sort of get ourselves oriented, we have significant follow-up, obviously, on ACT 73. We are going to do that, do it diligently. This is going to be a hard session for us. We are going to enter it with a philosophy of everything's on the table. That's been something that everybody has said, is that let's not necessarily adhere strictly to one thing or another. We need to have all options on the table for us to discuss. A lot of eyes are gonna be on us. A lot of emails are gonna be coming our way. And I think everybody needs to do what they can to sort of be sensitive to the input, but also be able to tune out the noise and focus here. I'm really going to lean on all of you because this is really gonna be about all of us being curious, asking questions and solving what is some serious challenges in front of us, trying to move forward with something. I've just sort of kind of gauged the input between being on the Commission for the Future of Public Education, just getting emails, those just running into people, kind of what I'm getting from vouchers. And it's all over the place. Just as I'm sure if you did a caucus survey, everybody in your caucus, our caucus, whatever it happened to be, everybody would be all over the place. And that's what we're gonna have to kind of negotiate and navigate through. But as we have witnesses, especially those who are deeply involved, ask questions, press for answers as needed. But let's do our best to be as sort of solution focused as we can. So I think I'm pretty good at tearing down anybody's ideas. I'm not too good at the opposite of that. So we're all gonna need to work on that as I'm gonna need to work on that. We're not going to get along on some things. We all know sort of the fork that is ahead of us. We have got a report that doesn't really lend itself to maps. And we've got a governor who says, I want maps, which was sort of the original direction we were going with. Perhaps there's a third in the middle path to go. Anyway, what I will say is that nobody has directed me as to here's where we want you to go, because nobody else really knows what the best path forward is. So it's really gonna be incumbent on all of us to try to help figure out what that is. We are obviously going to get significant testimony from the folks who put together the redistricting task force that will probably lead to other testimony. We're going to have people from the AOE that may have a differing opinion That's gonna lead to more testimony. But let's really try to make it a managed free for all as possible. And I would have to say that, know, anybody wants to stop and go, Well, hey, how about we do this or we look into this? Don't be afraid to, either here in public or catch me at some other point. That's kind of my intro to the session. Hopefully we will chew gum and walk at the same time, take up some other issues that are gonna come down our way. I have a bill on PCD funding. We're gonna have bills technology in schools. We're gonna have lots of other things probably headed this way. We'll do our best to do both. There's gonna be some interesting higher ed issues that are out there to think about. We'll have some testimony that on Friday. There's some interesting intersections instead of between the AOE, it's between higher ed and the Department of Labor. So a lot to learn there as well. And there are gonna be times where I'm gonna look at you and go, I'm stuck, where do we go next? Anyway, so that's that, questions, comments?
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Have an epinephrine bill. Alright. Epinephrine part two. Turns out K through pre K can't hold stock, so someone asked me to do think it's gonna be pretty easy, much like the last one, but it's coming.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's just changing. We may not have it come to us this time.
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Okay, we may be able to help you. It's just hard to have that same thing.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Any other bills anybody wants to talk about that you might come out our way?
[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I'll just mention, know I've sent it to you over the summer, but I found out that the inflator had 173, and so I had a bill drafted to this.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: There was
[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: but there was no it turns out there was not the inflator did not change. So there is no inflator and you know the cost of all that. So what I've done is just extend the mechanism that we used prior. So it's not anything new, but it is to extend The
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: agency is going come forward with some language, probably as we build a miscellaneous ed bill, dealing with the issues of chronic absenteeism and how it intersects with truancy, one being sort of a problem and the other one being actual criminal offense. So trying to modernize that.
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I just received a really interesting bill, although I think this might go to GovOps, so I don't know if you have any wasted any of our moments.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, you wait. Time to go.
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So I worked with Governors Institute students this last summer, I guess it was, and they wrote a mock bill that they asked me if I would sue through, which I have, about getting a ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade on for school boards. Probably it would go to the government, but they wrote up this bill and they're like making a push for it and I think they're doing a lot of social media work among their own age group to kind of talk about how they're getting involved in civics. That's just an interesting one. It might come up in this room.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think you'll see in the report from the Commission on the Future of Public Education that one issue being addressed as well.
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah, well here's the bill right here. Nice introduction.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All right, we'll stick with sort of typical committee etiquette. Let's do our best not to be on our phones. We have people testifying. I think that given the bill we passed last year, we need to live by our rules. Until Until September. And I understand that everybody has outside lives that need to be attended to as well. Let's do our best with that. Let's refer to each other as rep this and rep that while we're on camera, but please keep it all first name. Otherwise, and if you slip up, don't worry. At a certain point, we'll probably give that all up. Anyway, yeah, yes,
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Harple, yeah. Since you brought it up, I just wanted to make a plug looking at Jana's school at age 54 and how much difference it was made this year, the cell phone bill, like I have not had a single argument with student all year over cell phones.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The bill hasn't even come back for lunch yet.
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: No, a lot of schools.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So you jumped out.
[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And it's been, thank you. Thank you, you've made everyone's lives so much better. That's great.
[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I've been thinking a lot about it, just doing the same stuff, you know, this big stuff is important, but when you can make a little difference like that, it's It's a big huge. Something to do.