Education Committee assignments have been officially made in both the Senate and Assembly here in Tennessee. If you’re not an officiant of the legislative process, committee assignments are vitally important and can make or break legislation, so its vital to understand what we’re getting with in the committee members.

Quick note: we’ve had two new bills of note introduced since my last post. For an update on these bills make sure to read all the way to the bottom!

Committee’s are often the place where the real debate takes place. Bills that don’t make it through committee don’t make it to the floor and don’t get a vote by the whole legislature. Often the shaping and the crafting of the bill happens in the committee rather than the floor. The way bills are assigned also matters. For example, a pro-common core bill assigned to a committee chaired by a common core opponent has a better chance of dying quietly than if it were assigned to a pro-common core legislator.

With that in mind its vitally important to predicting the outcome of any given bill to identify who is on each committee, where they stand and what impact that might have on impending legislation.

The Senate

Here’s the committee assignments for the State Senate  and the committee assignments for the assembly for the 109th general assembly. However, we’re specifically interested in education, so here’s the education committee assignment.

The Assembly

Here’s the committee assignments for the Assembly education committee’s. Given the number of bills facing the committee’s, they’ve been split into two separate committees. Here are the committee’s and subcommittees for each:

Impact

Given the legislation that is pending for this session, how might different bills fair when they come before these senators? I’ll be working on a comprehensive breakdown of each senator and assemblyman and woman over the next week or so, but here’s some quick thoughts based on what’s been introduced for legislation so far:

• We’ll see a strong push to repeal common core and create Tennessee specific standards from the Instruction and Programs Committee in the Assembly. Two of the three committee chairpersons have introduced legislation aimed at creating new curriculum standards (Fogerty and Gresham). Gresham has no co-sponsors on her committee (they are all on other committees) but Fogerty has three (Lollar and Byrd). I would presume that this bill will be referred to this committee and given the concentration of sponsors here, I’d presume it will likely make it at least out of committee and to a floor vote.
• We’ll see the voucher debate go down in the Senate committee. Brian Kelsey introduced the Tennessee Opportunity Scholarship (read: vouchers) in the Senate and I haven’t seen a companion bill yet in the assembly. Given the increased advocacy for vouchers in Tennessee from groups like BAEO and The Koch Brothers, its likely that this is where the debate will go down.
• The Virtual Schools Act will be debated in the Education Administration and Planning Committee.This bill would extend the contract of Tennessee’s first virtual school, which is set to expire at the end of this year. The school has come under fire because its shown some of the lowest scores in the state. Brooks introduced the bill and chairs that committee, so one would presume it would be referred there.

Additionally, here are some updates on legislation that’s been introduced since my last post:

•  Rep. Hardaway (D) filed a bill last Friday that would prevent the closure of charter schools on the priority list until 2017. That would keep the three charters slated to be closed in Memphis from being shuttered at the end of this year.
• Rep. Tate (D) filed a bill last Saturday that would require the ASD to hire any teachers that are rated as level 4 or 5 and are currently teaching in a school that is to be taken over IF that teacher wants to stay. However, the ASD would not need to hire any more than 30% of its teachers for any given school this way.

More updates as the session progresses!

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