Legislative Agenda 2007

The State School News Service reports that the Illinois State Board of Education is now considering a legislative packet for the 2007 session. It appears that many of the items on this agenda would serve to simplify existing rules and procedures and may actually be helpful to local school districts. Issues that appear on the ISBE agenda include:

Scheduling parent/teacher conferences at the discretion of the local school board rather than requiring a waiver.
Basing special education reimbursement on a 180 day school year calendar.
Requiring full General State Aide payments to be made in the fiscal year to which it applies.
Exempting the cost of repairing health-life safety violations from the local Property Tax Extension Limitation Law.
Clarifying school consolidation reform that was enacted last year.
Modifying the Reading Improvement Block Grant to require only one payment per year rather than the current two payments and direct accountability from grant requirements to meeting NCLB standards such as AYP.
Removing the need for waivers to hold school on state holidays.

Most of these items would benefit our school system. We will monitor the progress of the new Legislature when it begins the new session in January 2007.