WVEA

The West Virginia Legislature's Special Session is over after a disagreement arose between the State Senate and the House of Delegates over the Governor's education agenda.

Both chambers moved to end the session Wednesday after the Senate refused the House's amendments on Senate Bills 2004 and 2008 bringing the total failed education reform bills to four.

SB 2004 would have required compulsory health screening for school children, but the House amended the bill to only make the screenings recommended.

That took the bite out of the original intent of the bill. However, House Education Committee Chair Mary Poling (D-Barbour) defended the amendment on the House floor Wednesday afternoon.

"This is a public education policy statement. Out of it comes the desire to say a child's education is affected by that child's health," said Delegate Poling.

However, Ritchie County Delegate Woody Ireland (R) criticized the education committee for the amendment. He also got a shot in about the intent of this education session.

"What we did was take a ridiculous bill and made it worthless. I think that applies to a number of these as a matter of fact," said Delegate Ireland.

He also said the bill's passage would only help the conscious of the lawmakers not the people of the state.

"Let's not do something that allows us to go out of here this evening and say, 'Look what good boys and girls we are! We passed a health screening bill.' When in fact we didn't do jack-nothing."

The other bill in question, SB 2008, would have changed the way teacher's evaluations are conducted in the state. The House amended version would have limited classroom observation time and also reduced the number of evaluations for new teachers.

In addition, the House also removed a provision from another bill that would have given incentive pay to teacher's in low income or minority schools. The Senate ended up accepting that bill, SB 2009, as amended. The main intent of that bill is to establish a pilot program to increase academic achievement at such schools and monitor it for five years.

Overall, 11 bills were passed with only four going back to the legislation that came out of the education reform working group established this summer. Many of the passed education reforms deal with establishing pilot programs to be studied only for a short time.

The rest of the successful legislation related back to state appropriations, establishing the upcoming U.S. Senate race, and removing the sunset provision for the family court of appeals.