Senate Finance Committee
On Monday and Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee met to finalize its portion of the budget. Among the committee’s recommendations is additional funding for community colleges; however, they also include provisions for proportionality.
Speaking of proportionality ...
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House Appropriations Committee
The House Appropriations Committee met yesterday and adopted the Education Subcommittee’s recommendations, which includes some additional funding for community colleges. The committee also stripped the strict definition of proportionality out of the base budget bill. As a result, we now have proportionality included on the Senate side of the budget and removed from the House side – which means that we now will have to deal with this issue in the Conference Committee.
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Proportionality Bill
We anticipate that next week the House Appropriations Committee will consider our proportionality bill - HB 2083. Members of the DCCCD Board of Trustees, Dr. Lassiter and staff members spent a great deal of time this week recruiting legislators to sign on as a co-author for this bill; several made that commitment. We recently activated some of our A-Teams to help recruit legislators in specific districts. Thanks to those of you who have participated. If HB 2083 makes it out of committee, we hope it will move quickly to the House floor for a full vote. At that time, we may need to activate additional A-Teams, so thanks in advance for your help.
- Additional details about HB 2083, including the current list of co-authors
- Additional details about the companion proportionality bill on the Senate side – SB 41
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House Higher Education Committee
On Wednesday, the House Higher Education Committee considered additional legislation related to establishing more Tier One research universities. The committee also moved legislation to amend the top 10 percent law.
The committee heard HB 2075, which would remove community colleges from the “six-drop rule.” The original author of the six-drop rule legislation passed during the last session is a co-author of HB 2075; he testified that it was not his intention for community colleges to be bound by this rule. The committee viewed HB 2075 favorably, so we are hopeful that this bill will move forward. [Read the text of HB 2075]
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Senate Higher Education Committee
The Senate Higher Education Committee met on Wednesday and focused primarily on bills related to establishing additional Tier One research universities.
We anticipate that the committee will hear testimony on bills related to developmental education during the next week.
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