Weekly Recap - Week 6
Including this week, there will be only three weeks of the 2021 Legislative session remaining. Wednesday of this week is the last day to move the required delivery of bills or resolutions by a committee to the House of origin, meaning all House or Senate bills must have their hearing in committee and passed on to the full body or be voted down in committee. Thursday is the last day to pass bills or resolutions by the House of origin, meaning Thursday is the last day for all Senate or House bills to be passed out of their respective House or be defeated. These next two weeks will typically be the two busiest weeks of the session. Not only will there be a lot of bill hearings, but the discussions around the budget also get to the point where spending bills get cut because there is always more way to spend money than there are funds available. It kind of sounds like the Federal Government, but in South Dakota, your Legislature passes a structurally balanced budget every year.
Last week we heard two bills on the Senate floor with a lot of interest - SB 183 and SB 177.
SB 177 - An Act to revise the provisions of parental choice regarding compulsory school attendance and matters ancillary thereto. Basically, this is the home school bill. This bill will make multiple changes to the statutes dealing with homeschooling/alternative instruction. Some of the notable changes would be;
Eliminating the Department of Education's ability to investigate and determine whether instruction is being provided to a student being homeschooled prevents a school board from revoking a homeschool exemption because a student is not receiving instruction.
Removes the requirement that a homeschool student take an achievement test of basic skills in grades four, eight, or eleven. This means a homeschooled student will no longer be required to take the same test as students who are enrolled in public school; actually, it means homeschooled students will not be required to take a test at all.
SB 177 would also remove a school district's local control when it comes to allowing a homeschool student to participate in sports or extracurricular activities. Now all homeschooled students will be able to participate regardless of whether the instruction being provided to the student is equal to what a public school district provides or the amount of time the instruction to the student is equal to the public school district.
I voted against the bill, and a person reading my article would think I am opposed to homeschooling, but I am not. I am concerned about everything stated above and the fact during the 2020-2021 school year, there was close to a 27% increase in homeschooled students. That kind of increase was not because many more people wanted to home school their child, but the increase was because of COVID-19 related issues. Parents who homeschool their children in a "normal" year do a great job, and some of those students are the brightest of the bright, but this school year is not a normal one. Even the proponents of this bill will not deny that there will be a huge problem with some students in this 27% who did not receive a proper education this school year. Next year, the public school systems will have the burden of educating the student who is now back in school, basically missing a year of school.
Even with all of that, the main item pushing this bill is not the fact that there will be students in that 27% not receiving a proper education but the fact that some school districts currently do not allow a homeschooled student to participate in sports or extracurricular activities. I wish all school districts would have provisions that would allow those students to participate, but we allow our school districts to make that decision; that's local control, which we love in South Dakota until we disagree with the decisions it brings. SB 177 passed off the Senate floor by a vote of 21 Ayes to 14 Nays and will now head to the House for its hearings.
SB 183 - An Act to declare certain provisions regarding abortion as deceptive acts or practice, started to have its hearing on the Senate floor but was delayed due to a pending amendment. SB 183 is a bill about contracts, surrogacy, and an abortion clause. I will give an update on this bill in next week's article.
Please contact me with your comments and concerns at herman.otten@sdlegislature.gov