One health bill dies, one lives for now

A bill to require that high schools students learn CPR was politely killed in one Senate Committee Thursday while another measure to ban – sort of – trans fats in school food squeaked out of another panel.

Democratic Sens. Evie Hudak of Westminster (left) and Linda Newell of Littleton had a tough time in the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 16, 2012.

The Senate Education Committee also sparred for a few rounds with a complicated school discipline bill but declared the match a draw and delayed a vote for another day.

All that happened during what turned out to be a very long afternoon – extending into the evening – in the Senate education and agriculture committees.

Senate Education spent about an hour listening to witnesses testify in favor of Senate Bill 12-098, which as originally introduced would have required high schools students to learn CPR as a requirement for high school graduation.

The committee patiently listened to pitches from sponsor Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, and from doctors, paramedics and heart attack survivors about the need for the bill and the importance of immediate intervention for heart attack victims.

A school principal and a superintendent testified against the bill as an unnecessary mandate on school districts already struggling with budget cuts and education-reform mandates.

Williams offered an amendment that made CPR training advisory, not mandatory for school districts, but the committee wasn’t persuaded. The panel rejected the amendment and then killed the bill on a 5-0 vote.

Trans fat ban has better luck

Another health-related mandate, Senate Bill 12-068, was on the agenda of the Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee, meeting in another wing of the Capitol Thursday afternoon.

As originally introduced, the bill would have banned the serving of any food containing trans fats at schools. School district lobbyists opposed the bill as an unnecessary and potentially costly mandate on hard-pressed districts.

Some of those lobbyists testified against the bill, but there was a parade of supporting witnesses, including a beefy school chef, a chiropractor who said he specializes in anti-aging measures and a heart-disease survivor.

Sponsor Sen. Lucia Guzman, D-Denver, offered three amendments that weakened the bill, and the committee approved those. The amendments would delay the effective date of the bill until Sept. 1, 2013; exempt food provide at fund-raising events and exempt schools with fewer than 1,000 students from the bill.

The bill now goes to the Senate Appropriation Committee. If it survives that review and the full Senate, it still has to go through the House, and school district lobbyists are still gunning to kill the bill.

Discipline bill flummoxes Senate Ed

Senate Bill 12-046 is one of those big, years-in-the-making bills that is very complicated – and that proved to be a problem on Thursday.

The heart of the bill would roll back existing “zero-tolerance” policies that drive student arrests and suspensions and give schools more discretion in dealing with students missteps and make suspensions, expulsions and police citations that last resorts in student discipline.

The bill came from a study committee that was created by the 2010 legislature, but reaching agreement among school administrators, police, district attorneys, youth advocates and other interest group has been an onerous process.

The bill went through seven versions before being presented to Senate Ed on Thursday.

But that proved to be not enough, and committee Chair Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins – more than four hours after the committee convened – laid the bill over for later discussion. He told the sponsors, Democratic Sens. Linda Newell of Littleton and Evie Hudak of Westminster, to come back with a new, clean version.

Committee members didn’t have a problem with the concept of rolling back zero-tolerance laws, but they had a lot of concerns about the bill’s detailed requirements for reporting and compiling of data about student arrests and disciplinary actions.

For the record

The full Senate Thursday morning gave final, 33-0 approval to four education-related bills, including:

  • Senate Bill 12-067, requiring all charter schools to be non-profit organizations.
  • Senate Bill 12-061, establishing new requirements for charter school operations and authorization.
  • Senate Bill 12-045, creating a mechanism for students to combine community and four-year college credits to earn associate’s degrees.

Senate Bill 12-036, updating state law on the requirement for parental consent to certain kinds of school surveys and questionnaires.
Use the Education Bill Tracker for links to bill texts and status information.