Committee sends House Bill 224 to Senate floor after lawmakers clarify background checks and school emergency plans

The Senate Education Committee voted to send House Bill 224 to the floor with a due‑pass recommendation after the bill’s sponsor told members it modernizes a poorly written subsection of current code.

Representative Chris Mathias (R‑District 19) said House Bill 224 is a housekeeping measure that clarifies three elements of the existing statute’s subsection 16: background checks for persons who have unsupervised contact with students, school emergency operations plans approved by the local board and developed with local emergency responders and school staff, and required initial and annual training on those plans.

“...the first thing that, that that is in subsection 16 currently references the need for school boards to develop a system that cross checks all contractors or other persons who have irregular contact with students against, the statewide *** offender registry,” Mathias told the committee, and he said the proposed language replaces a frequency‑of‑contact standard with a focus on whether access is unsupervised.

Why it matters: The change makes the legal requirement about unsupervised access explicit, which the sponsor and questioners said will close gaps where contractors and other adults with unsupervised access could move through schools without appropriate background checks.

Questions from members: Senator Zito asked whether the bill would prevent a plumber who is listed on the *** offender registry from working in schools; Mathias replied that existing law should already prevent that in many places but that the bill would clarify the policy and require districts to cover “all people who have unsupervised access to children.”

Vote: Senator Ward Engelking moved to send the bill to the Senate floor with a due‑pass recommendation; the motion was seconded and carried on a voice vote.

Next steps: The bill will proceed to the full Senate for further consideration.