On Wednesday, Legislative Counsel reviewed the Senate Education Committee’s, S.304, dealing with the state's Career and Technical Education programs.

Relevant sections of the bill are as follows:

• Information about secondary student tuition.
• Responsibility of local school boards in sending districts.
• Development of a comprehensive career development policy.
• Construction aid for Career and Technical Education (CTE).
• Responsibility of the Secretary of Education for CTE.
• Minimum standards and measurement of those standards.
• CTE Center performance evaluations.
• Course of Study evaluations.

One section of the bill speaks to how Supervisory Unions (SU) will work with CTE centers and other supervisory unions in the CTE regional to develop common and joint courses and approaches to career development, career exploration, and CTE exposure. Each SU board is required to develop, adopt, and ensure implementation of a policy and plan for comprehensive career development that is consistent with and at least as comprehensive as the model policy developed by the Secretary of Education. 

The Committee also wants to ensure that CTE Centers and their associated facilities are appropriately and equitably included in future updates by the State’s construction aid program.

The Committee also reviewed new sections of the bill that would:

1. Transfer CTE rulemaking authority from the State Board of Education to the Agency of Education.
2. Require the State Colleges to maintain program and course articulation agreements with all secondary CTE Centers. The idea here is that CTE students would receive credit for the work they complete in CTE.

The Committee also talked extensively about the Agency of Education’s capacity to accomplish all that is identified in this bill.