The House Education Committee advanced HB 26-1146, which would allow approved facility schools to voluntarily affiliate with Colorado PERA, passing it to the Committee of the Whole with no opposition testimony and only one dissenting vote. A second bill, HB 26-1093, relating to College Opportunity Fund eligibility for incarcerated students, was laid over one week at the sponsor's request following a recent State Board of Higher Education vote that affected the bill's scope.
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Rep. Garcia Sander and Rep. Johnson both asked why facility schools had never been included in PERA. Andrew Roth stated he had only been at PERA for two years and did not know the answer; Michael Steppit explained that the statutory structure requires either a mandate by statute or opt-in eligibility, and facility schools had neither. Benjamin Teven explained the difficulty of placing educators and child welfare providers together under a traditional K-12 PERA bucket. No disagreement between parties resulted, but the historical gap was unresolved in the record.
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“Students with disabilities may regress when they're working with multiple teachers in one year. So when you have teacher turnover, this is something that's not good for students with disabilities. So if a teacher leaves in the middle of the year now, students have to go back and reclaim the relationship. The new teacher is going to have to learn the skill set and have to understand the students, et cetera. Relationships are critical and good teachers matter.”
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Sign in to subscribeThe Education Committee will come to order. Mr. Beck, please call the roll. Representatives Bacon. Excused. Bradfield. Here. Lanell. Present. Garcia Sander. Present. Gilchrist. Excused. Amrick. Here. Johnson. Here. Phillips? Yes. Stuart K. Here. Story. Here. Weinberg. Excused. Martinez. Here. Madam Chair. Here. Okay. Hello everyone. We apologize that we are starting late. We had to wait for finance committee to end today. We are starting with House Bill 1146 and our bill sponsors are here. Who would like to start? Rep. Phillips thank you, Madam Chair. Members HB 261146 the question is what is the problem that we are trying to fix in Colorado, Students can be placed by school districts, either on their own or through a legal process into a facility school. This is a CDE approved facility school. We have about 30 facility schools in Colorado. And they serve students with disabilities. It could be autism, emotional disabilities, intellectual disabilities, etc. The regular schools are unable to meet the needs of students with disabilities and this is why they would send them to a facility school because they have teachers there and they have specialists specifically to address the individual needs of students with disabilities. The…
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