The House Education Committee advanced two bills — continuing the Open Educational Resources grant program (11-2) and a BOCES executive director PERA fix (unanimously) — while hearing extended, contested testimony on a third bill that would make kindergarten Individualized Learning Plans optional for students meeting early benchmarks, with no final vote taken on that measure.
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Rep. Johnson voted no, stating the fiscal note was too large and warning that extensions for 'a fourth and a fifth and a sixth in unknown budgetary times makes it very hard.' Rep. Garcia Sander asked whether the program is 'a need or a nice to have' given an $850 million to $1 billion deficit. Chelsea Bowley countered that the program had already achieved more than 14 times its state allocation in student savings and that passing the bill would save students an additional $45 million through 2031.
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“After speaking with many current kindergarten teachers, none of them identified creating school readiness plans as a meaningful burden to be alleviated. Because this practice is so embedded in kindergarten teachers daily work that it doesn't feel like extra paperwork for them. It is the work. The readiness plan is simply the formal documentation of what effective kindergarten teaching already requires.”
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Sign in to subscribeRepresentatives Bacon. Excused. Bradfield. Here. Flinell. President Garcia. Sander. Present. Billchrist. Present. Amrick. Here. Hartsook. Johnson. Here. Phillips. Yes. Stuart. Kay. Here. Story. Here. Here. Martinez. Here. Madam Chair. Here. Okay. Today is our first Education Committee hearing of the 2026 legislative session. Welcome to the best committee and thank you all for being here today. We will, in this committee, we will traditionally do three minutes for testimony. But if we have a lot of witnesses, we will limit it to two. Today, we will do three minutes for testimony. So we ask that folks try to keep it to three minutes. There will be a red light on the dais that will alert you when the three minutes is up. And we will have 10 minutes for the committee to ask questions to each panel. And we are going to start with House Bill 1016. I understand that we have a lot of witnesses signed up today. So for folks in the room, if you are here to testify on House Bill 1016, you can stay in the room. And then once House Bill 1016, once we have moved through that bill, we ask that you give your…
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