During markup of H.454 draft 4.1, committee members debated a proposed statement of policy about school construction and the modernization and reuse of existing infrastructure. Some lawmakers recommended keeping a short, high‑level sentence about encouraging efficient use of public funds to modernize school infrastructure and removing more detailed prescriptions that could constrain rulemaking by the Agency of Education.

One senator said the draft’s longer paragraph may be inappropriate as an overarching policy directive because it could direct the Agency of Education during future rulemaking. Committee counsel advised that the statement of policy should provide direction but cautioned against overly prescriptive language that might force specific outcomes.

Members discussed whether language should explicitly encourage considering public buildings that are not currently schools for conversion and whether to refer to "public infrastructure" or "school infrastructure." The committee tentatively agreed to retain the first two sentences on lines 7–13 of page 22 and remove the rest of the paragraph so the policy statement stays focused and non‑binding. No formal rulemaking was initiated in the session; members instructed staff to reflect the narrower policy statement in the next draft.

The committee also discussed facility‑level data requests that appear elsewhere in the bill, such as five‑year facility condition indices and existing PCBs testing scores; members noted collecting both data elements could increase administrative work and that Agency of Education already may hold some of the data.

Staff will return with a revised version that preserves the concise intent sentence and removes the more directive language.