Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the School Staffing Flexibility topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee approves RS 32-458 to restore staffing flexibility for districts
Summary
Representative Sonia Galaviz brought RS 32-458 to the committee to remove a statutory provision that reduced districts' staff-allowance flexibility; the committee voted to introduce the request and the sponsor said reporting and allocation processes would remain unchanged.
Representative Sonia Galaviz presented RS 32-458 as a clean-up to statutory language governing staff allowance, seeking to restore a district-level flexibility that had been reduced in 2016.
Galaviz said the current law had allowed districts a flexibility equal to 9.5 percent fewer positions than the allocated full-time equivalent (FTE) and that a 2016 change began reducing that flexibility by 1 percentage point for districts whose class sizes exceeded statewide averages for districts of similar size. She described the provision's effect as a one-way reduction that "penalized" some smaller districts and nicknamed that part of the code "use it or lose it." "With restricted flexibility, they find themselves either losing the money ... or they have their hands tied," Galaviz said.
Committee members asked technical questions about reporting and how divisors are applied to compute statewide class-size averages. Representative Harris asked how striking a reporting requirement on page 2 would affect districts' ability to reallocate funds. Galaviz answered that districts would still be required to report staff-allowance and staff-hiring numbers to the state Department of Education; the struck reporting language related to the mechanism that reduced flexibility, not to the department's overall reporting.
Representative Clow moved to introduce RS 32-458; members spoke in support and asked the sponsor to refine the statement of purpose before a full hearing. Representative Garner, a former school board member, said he supported restoring flexibility and described "use it or lose it" funds as a driver of waste at the local level.
The committee voted to introduce RS 32-458. Galaviz said she would revise the sponsor's statement of purpose (SOP) language before a formal bill hearing. The draft carries no fiscal note and, according to the sponsor, does not change the allocation calculations or the divisors used to determine statewide averages; it removes the one-way reduction of flexibility enacted in 2016.
