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Committee delays final action on bill altering local school adoption language after competing amendments
Summary
The committee discussed multiple amendments to House Bill 343 addressing whether school district trustees "may adopt" materials; members approved a conceptual change but committee staff said multiple amendments conflict and the committee passed consideration to revisit the bill at a later meeting.
The House Education Committee discussed competing amendments to House Bill 343 and opted to pass consideration so staff and members can reconcile conflicting amendment language.
Vice Chair Greg moved that House Bill 343 do pass, and members considered at least two amendments (labeled dot‑1 and dot‑2). Representative Tillman proposed a conceptual amendment to change wording on page 1, line 10 to align language so that school district trustees "may adopt" rather than "to adopt." The committee approved that conceptual amendment by voice vote; Representative Seekins Crowe's proxy vote was recorded as "aye." Representative Romano said he would be a "reluctant no" on the amendment for entanglement concerns tied to the constitutional prohibition on using public money for religious instruction (page 1, line 24), citing lines later in the text that require districts to evaluate courses.
Committee counsel explained that the two pending amendments (dot‑1 and dot‑2) were in conflict in subsections 5–7 and could not be combined as written. Counsel said the clerk's office typically combines multiple amendments into a single instrument if they are compatible; because these were not, staff recommended the committee reconvene to reconcile language. "My job is to combine them into a single amendment," counsel said, "but because there's still language that exists in sub 5, 6, and 7 with dot 1, dot 2, it just comes like, the combination of trying to combine those don't work."
With that guidance the committee passed consideration — meaning it paused final action and left the bill on the committee's docket for future action — and instructed members and staff to reconcile the language. The sponsor and vice chair were asked to rework the draft: "I guess what I would take from that is that I would go back and I would amend dot 1 to dot 2 to incorporate the conceptual amendment because the committee passed that," counsel said. The committee did not adopt a final amendment or advance the bill to the floor during this meeting.
