You asked for summaries of legislation that originated in the Education Committee and was enacted in 2009.

As of the date of this report, six public acts that originated in the Education Committee have become law. Five were enacted during the regular 2009 session and one was enacted in the June 19^th special session. We expect the General Assembly to pass additional education-related legislation later this summer in conjunction with the state budget act for the FY 10-11 biennium.

PA 09-45 — An Act Concerning the Recommendations by the Legislative Commissioners for Technical Revisions to the Education Statutes

The act makes technical changes to the education statutes.

EFFECTIVE DATE: Upon passage

PA 09-81 — An Act Concerning Green Cleaning Products In Schools

By July 1, 2011, this act requires local and regional school boards to implement a green cleaning program to clean and maintain their schools. The program must provide for procurement and proper use of environmentally preferable cleaning products in schools.

Under the act, school districts must provide an annual written statement notifying staff and, if they request it, parents or guardians of enrolled students of the green cleaning program. Districts must publish notice of the program on the board of education's and each school's website or, if there is no website, publicize it in another way. They must also notify parents or guardians of transfer students and newly hired staff of the program.

The act also expands an existing biennial report each school district must make to the education commissioner on the condition of its school facilities and the implementation of its indoor air quality program in those facilities to cover implementation of the green cleaning program in each school.

EFFECTIVE DATE: October 1, 2009

PA 09-82 — An Act Concerning Readmission Of Students

The act prohibits a school district from preventing the return of, or expelling for additional time for the same offense, a student who committed an expellable offense and who seeks to return to a district after having been in a residential placement for at least a year.

Under existing law, boards of education can expel students whose conduct (1) on school grounds or at a school-sponsored activity violates a publicized board policy, is seriously disruptive of the educational process, or endangers persons or property or (2) off school grounds violates board policy and is seriously disruptive of the educational process.

EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009

PA 09-143 — An Act Concerning the Reporting of Truancy Data and the Reduction of Certain Duplicate Reports by the Department Of Information Technology

The act requires boards of education to include truancy measures in the strategic school profile reports they must submit annually to the education commissioner. They must include these with the data about student and school performance that is already required. The act specifies that the measures include the type of data the State Department of Education (SDE) is required to collect on attendance and

unexcused absences to comply with federal reporting requirements (i.e., the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act). The act further specifies that that data is a public record under the Freedom of Information Act.

EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009

PA 09-241 — An Act Concerning Longitudinal Studies of Student Achievement

Existing law requires SDE to develop and implement a state-wide public school information system. The system must provide for tracking individual students' performance on each of the state-wide mastery tests. This act requires SDE to assign a unique student identifier to each student before tracking him or her.

Starting August 1, 2009, the act requires SDE to provide data maintained in the system to full-time permanent employees of nonprofit organizations exempt from taxation under Internal Revenue Code § 501(c)(3) and organized and operated for educational purposes. SDE must respond to these employees within 60 days of their written request for data and in the order it receives the requests. The act specifies that the requestor is responsible for the reasonable cost of the request. It requires the Department of Information Technology to ensure that fees are reasonable and consistent with other state agency charges.

Existing law specifies that the database of student information is not a public record for Freedom of Information Act purposes. The act provides that this does not prohibit SDE from providing information as described above.

EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009

PA 09-1, June 19, 2009 Special Session — An Act Concerning Educator Certification and Professional Development and Other Education Issues

The act makes several changes in teacher training, qualifications, and professional development. It establishes new teaching certificates and permits and creates waivers from Connecticut's teacher testing requirements to allow teachers from other states or those whose qualifications do not coincide with Connecticut's existing teacher training requirements to teach in public schools. It requires local school boards to take the State Board of Education's (SBE's) priorities into consideration when developing professional development activities for certified employees.

The act (1) adds to the crimes requiring automatic revocation or denial of teaching credentials, (2) requires student teachers to undergo the same criminal background checks as other school personnel, (3) requires school districts to notify the education commissioner when they dismiss

a person with a teaching credential for moral misconduct, and (4) bars anyone whose teaching credential is revoked from working in any public school in any capacity while the revocation remains in force.

The act extends for an additional year, until July 1, 2010, the temporary certification that overrides dual certification requirements for bilingual education teachers. It gives the education commissioner flexibility to join interstate teacher certification agreements, eliminates his authority to waive a requirement that substitute teachers hold at least a bachelor's degree, and transfers authority to grant extensions of time to complete provisional and professional educator certificate requirements to the commissioner from the SBE.

The act allows certain towns to amend adopted local budgets for FY 10 to reduce their education appropriations by up to the amount of funding their local or regional boards of education will receive directly from the federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund program according to the 2009 federal stimulus act. It also:

1. allows boards of education to agree to establish cooperative arrangements to provide special education and health care services;

2. allows charter schools to participate in cooperative arrangements in the same way as boards of education;

3. requires each interdistrict magnet school operator annually to notify school districts, in writing, of the estimated number of students from those districts who have been placed at the magnet school for the following school year;

4. establishes a pilot program to allow students to complete courses at J.M. Wright Technical High School for college credit at Norwalk Community College;

5. requires the attorney general to report to the Education Committee by January 1, 2010 on recommendations arising from his investigation of behavioral analysis services provided to children with autism spectrum disorder; and

6. establishes a five-year pilot program to allow students who live within a half-mile radius of a New Haven charter school to attend the school.

Finally, the act eliminates obsolete language and makes technical and conforming changes.

EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009, except for the sections allowing towns to amend FY 10 education budgets and the Wright Tech-Norwalk Community College pilot program, which are effective on passage.

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