Legislature(2007 - 2008)BUTROVICH 205
02/13/2008 08:00 AM Senate SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| HB192 | |
| SB14 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| HB 192 | |||
| = | SB 14 | ||
SB 14-RAISE COMP. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AGE
8:32:14 AM
CHAIR STEVENS announced consideration of SB 14 and invited
comments from the sponsor, Senator Davis.
SENATOR DAVIS said there have been many changes to this bill and
what was before the committee dealt with just one issue, the
compulsory age of 18.
SENATOR HUGGINS moved to adopt the proposed committee substitute
to SB 14, labeled 25-LSO134, Mischel, Version L, as the working
document. There were no objections and it was so ordered.
TOM OBERMEYER, staff to Senator Davis, said there was a new CS
to SB 14 labeled CSSB 14( ) 25-LS0134\O.
8: 34 at ease 8:36:04 AM
CHAIR STEVENS called the meeting back to order at 8:36:04 AM.
MR. OBERMEYER said the only change in Version O deleted
subsection (2) on page 4 describing the requirement for a review
body in every school district. The current version of this bill
removed the mandatory truant officers and the required truancy
review bodies. The hope is that the compulsory school age
portion of this bill will solve some of the problems of truancy.
8:37:58 AM
SENATOR HUGGINS moved to adopt the proposed committee substitute
to CSSB 14, labeled 25-LSO134, Mischel, Version O, as the
working document of the committee. There being no objection,
the motion carried.
CHAIR STEVENS confirmed that the only change has to do with the
review body. He asked if there were other changes.
8:38:47 AM
SENATOR HUGGINS asked in which version of the bill the
transition away from truancy officers took place.
MR. OBERMEYER replied he thought it was in the K version.
SENATOR DAVIS explained that when these bills were first
introduced, they were two separate bills. She was asked by the
Special Committee on Education to combine the two. One hearing
was held and no action has been taken since that time. She
decided to postpone the truancy issue for another bill and asked
if she could bring forward a CS so she could address the
compulsory age issue, which is in this bill.
MR. OBERMEYER said truant officers were still in the K version.
When the bill moved to Version L, truant officers were removed.
The bill then went to Version O that removed the procedures to
prevent and reduce truancy in section (2) from page 4. He
explained that two control mechanisms were essentially taken out
of the bill - the mandatory truancy officers for a large
district of 1000 Average Daily Membership (ADM) or more which
produced only 13 truant officers throughout the state and was a
very expensive process, and the mandatory review body, because
districts were already working internally to deal with the
problem.
CHAIR STEVENS said for clarification that the current bill has
no truancy officers and no review body and that it primarily
deals with changing the age from 16 to 18.
8:41:53 AM
RICH PATTON, Superintendant of Instruction, Lower Yukon School
District, Mountain Village, AK, said he's been working in
education in Alaska for 12 years. His district's concerns might
not necessarily relate to this bill, but are more about
enforcing attendance laws that are currently on the books. A
fair percentage of younger children in rural Alaska don't attend
school as regularly as they should and there aren't sufficient
resources to help families deal with this problem. He informed
the committee that his district had recently hired an attendance
specialist to support families and perform the duties of a
truancy officer, but the main problem is enforcement.
8:44:22 AM
LAURIE SCANDLING, Principal, Yaakoosgé Daakahídi Alternative
High School and the HomeBRIDGE Home School Program, Juneau, AK,
said she has been with the school system for 15 years. She
shared that recently she had parents come to her office and ask
her if their kid knew he could drop out of school at age 16. She
replied of course not, she was there to encourage drop-outs to
remain in school. Both parents asked that he not be told because
they felt they had no power to stop him if he decided to drop
out after he turned 16. She also related that she worked at the
main high school for nine years and during that time had several
students bring her the drop-out form on their sixteenth
birthday.
MS. SCANDLING said brain research has shown that teenagers are
not hard-wired, particularly in the area of judgment, until
their early 20's. So it cannot be assumed that when they turn 16
they are suddenly ready to make life-changing decisions. She
said a similar bill two years ago attempted to raise the
compulsory age to attend school and it received the endorsement
of student government officers across the state as well as the
Alaska Association of School Boards (AASB).
She saw this as a bill for parent empowerment and emphasized
that "Right now parents have no authority to keep their child in
school past their sixteenth birthday; and it's very stressful to
meet with parents when their kid has in their mind that they are
going to leave school."
MS. SCANDLING stated that Alaska is sixth from the bottom in the
country regarding the on-time graduation rate. About one in
three students do not graduate on time; nationally about half of
those who don't graduate on time never graduate at all.
Nationally, the highest drop-out rate is among American Indian
and Alaska Natives and Alaska has the highest percentage of
these two groups enrolled in school. Twenty-six states plus DC,
American Samoa and Puerto Rico already have compulsory age
attendance until 17 or 18, according to the Education Commission
of the States as of last summer.
She stated further that dropping out perpetuates and correlates
directly to poverty, partly because drop-outs cannot walk into
life-long secure employment. Those who don't have a high school
diploma have a 50 percent greater chance of being unemployed.
One in four kids living in the lowest 20 percent income brackets
in the country don't finish high school and perpetuate the
poverty cycle. Data from the 2000 census shows those who don't
earn a high school diploma earn a quarter million dollars less
over their lifetimes than people who graduate. Non-graduates are
a drag on the economy in terms of public assistance and a
reduction in tax revenues, and drop-outs are three times more
likely to be incarcerated.
She encouraged the committee to raise the compulsory minimum age
to 18 rather than 17. A Canadian study showed that every year
the compulsory age was raised lowered the probability of being
unemployed and boosted weekly earnings, which in many areas
increased tax revenues. She also felt the bill should make clear
that any alternative school, especially at the high school
level, should be an accredited alternative. She explained that,
as principal of the home school program, she guides parents to
choose accredited materials rather than unaccredited because it
assures quality, particularly in a time when online high schools
have proliferated across the nation without accreditation. She
also encourages them to insure that if someone is excused from
school because they are being educated at home, regular evidence
of progress is required.
MS. SCANDLING said the Juneau school district adopted a new
system which allows truant officers to issue tickets requiring
students to appear in court immediately rather than working with
the District Attorney's office, which was cumbersome, arduous
and was not a priority compared to other actual crimes that were
being committed in the community.
She concluded by urging them to change the compulsory age to 18.
CHAIR DAVIS said age 17 is in the bill because the drafters put
it in and she didn't know why. Her intention was that the
designated age be 18.
th
MS. SCANDLING said she thought it read "at the end of their 17
year they could depart school."
8:50:44 AM
CHAIR STEVENS asked Mr. Obermeyer to explain.
MR. OBERMEYER clarified that Senator Davis' intention was that
students be required to stay in school through age 18. However,
that required bumping into the majority age of 18; so Version O
says "under 18 years of age" on page 2. This age was in all the
drafts because the legislative legal staff indicated that was
the only option given the intention of the bill.
8:53:26 AM
SENATOR OLSON asked how a record of progress is implemented.
MS. SCANDLING answered that under Alaska law, which regulates
the state-wide correspondence school, regular evidence of
progress can be verbal, written or by telephone. Written
evidence is requested on a quarterly basis and can be a copy of
a received grade or copies of completed work. If nothing comes
in on a quarterly basis, the family is contacted.
SENATOR HUGGINS said the problem may be with the parents rather
than the children. Therefore, changing the age may not change
the behavior. He asked if there is any data that shows an
increase in the graduation rate in states with a higher
mandatory age.
MS. SCANDLING replied that a data clearing house may have that
information.
SENATOR HUGGINS said he had seen a study that said, although
more students were staying in school as a result of the age
change, the graduation rate remained relatively unchanged.
MS. SCANDLING replied that graduation in many states is defined
as on-time graduation, and what Senator Huggins referred to
could be affected by that definition. Extended research is
needed regarding who eventually graduates.
8:57:57 AM
JOHN ALCANTRA, Government Relation Director, NEA-Alaska, said
NEA-Alaska has supported the policy in this bill as far back as
1980. He said as a parent and uncle of 59 nieces and nephews, he
has seen in his own family how it's not a given that all
children have appropriate parental involvement.
9:00:26 AM
CARL ROSE, Executive Director, Association of Alaska School
Boards (AASB), thanked the sponsor for removing the review
committee, which would have been a very cumbersome requirement.
Age is the most important issue he said, and asked the members
if they thought they could have made an important decision at
age 15. The longer the legislature can keep kids in school and
give parents something to help them enforce this, the more
successful the kids can become. He said AASB supports the bill.
9:02:14 AM
MR. OBERMEYER said he would check on Senator Huggins' question
about higher graduation rates. He said New York had a similar
problem and it created four new "graduation-plus" high schools
to get kids through age 18 and through the process. Their
success rate is going up, but he could not say what their
overall graduation rate was. He also pointed out that on page 2
of the sponsor statement is the definition of "graduation rate"
in Alaska and that there are different definitions of this term
throughout the country.
9:04:07 AM
DEBBIE JOCELYN, President, Eagle Forum Alaska, Eagle River, AK,
opposed SB 14 because changing the compulsory age was not the
answer to the problem. She related that she home-schools her
four children, who are all doing well in school and have
aspirations of going to college; but she recognizes that is not
the case with many children in Alaska. Many children in the
situation the bill attempts to address come from broken
families, don't have fathers at home and/or live in situations
where education is not highly valued. These children are not
getting the encouragement they need at an early age. She was not
sure that government could fix the root cause of their problem,
but it could encourage society to value education more.
CHAIR DAVIS said she appreciated the caller's comments and
agreed there is no single thing that will resolve these
problems. She said this bill is just one tool that might help.
CHAIR STEVENS thanked everyone for their testimony and adjourned
the meeting at 9:08:13 AM.
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