AN ACT CONCERNING RELIEF OF STATE MANDATES ON SCHOOL DISTRICTS.

1. gives school districts an extra month to notify their nontenured teachers that their contracts will be not renewed for the next year;

2. for purposes of state school readiness grants, requires towns to report available school readiness program spaces to the education commissioner every other month;

3. eliminates a requirement that (a) school boards conduct an instructional time and facility usage assessment to allow maximum school learning and community use of facilities and (b) school superintendents meet regularly with town recreation department and library representatives to coordinate facilities availability;

4. eliminates requirements that, when a school board changes any public school textbooks, it (a) give notice of its intention to do so at a board meeting held at least one week before and (b) do so only upon a two-thirds vote of all the board's members; and

5. eliminates an explicit authorization for a board that changes its textbooks to donate the used books to another school board.

By law, if a school district decides not to renew an employment contract with a teacher who does not have tenure, it must give the teacher written notice of nonrenewal on or before a statutory deadline. Under current law, nontenured teachers must receive nonrenewal notices by April 1. This bill gives a school district more time to decide whether to renew by moving the mandatory notice deadline to May 1. Unless the district provides the required notice by the deadline, a nontenured teacher's contract must be continued for the next school year.

Towns must use the state school readiness grant to buy spaces in accredited school readiness programs for eligible children. Actual grant payments are based on reports on the availability and usage of school readiness spaces or “slots”. The State Department of Education currently requires these reports to be submitted monthly. This bill requires them to be submitted every other month and requires grant payments to be adjusted accordingly.

Yea

Nay

(04/01/2009)