Committee reports three other education bills favorably, including associate educator age change and digitized student IDs

The Senate Education Committee reported multiple bills favorably after brief presentations and adopted technical or author-requested amendments where appropriate.

SB 28 (sponsor: Senator McMath) lowers the minimum age for the associate teacher position from 25 to 21 to enlarge the recruitment pool; the committee adopted the motion to report favorable without objection.

SB 198 (sponsor: Senator Mizell) — which addresses historic-preservation-district commission powers and certificate-of-appropriateness procedures — was narrowed by an author-requested amendment (Amendment 10-26) to apply only to new construction in historic districts and added an exception for state infrastructure projects (DOTD). The amendment was adopted and SB 198, as amended, was reported favorably.

SB 353 (sponsor: Senator Selders) authorizes digitized student identification credentials at state universities. An adopted amendment clarified the bill applies to each postsecondary system’s management board and removed an automatic end date; Mitch Rabolais (LSU system) testified that initial fiscal-note assumptions about campuswide hardware replacement were overstated and that LSU will work with the author and fiscal staff to revise the fiscal note.

Each of these bills was reported favorably to the Senate floor; the committee read in several green-card supporters across these items.

What’s next: Each bill will proceed to any required fiscal committees and to the Senate calendar for further consideration.