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Minutes for HB2143 - Committee on Education
Short Title
Establishing requirements for school district bullying policies and procedures for investigating complaints.
Minutes Content for Wed, Feb 1, 2023
Chairman Thomas opened the hearing on HB2143.
Jason Long, Revisor, gave an overview of the bill. (Attachment 1)
Proponent (Oral)
Dr. Walt Chappell spoke as a proponent. He has many years of experience in this area and in the effort to create legislation. He urged the Committee to understand that district wide policy is ineffective and that school building level policy is needed. In his long years of teaching, since 1963, he believes the situation has become much worse. Now he sees bullying is moving beyond students and is affecting teachers and principals. The schools are becoming a melting pot of issues that must be addressed. He noted this bill has been introduced, refined and reintroduced a number of times, since 2012, and the legislature has been trying to get a hand on this, but the policies are on the district level only. He urged the Committee to take serious action and there must be serious consequences, and not to get caught up in turf wars between the legislature and other institutions. (Attachment 2)
There was a time of questions and answers.
Neutral Conferees (Oral)
Esau Freeman represents service employees for the International Union Local 513 which includes USD 259 (approximately 2800 employees) in Wichita. His union represents everyone who is not a teacher. He supports the bill but he has a lot of unanswered questions. He feels this adds too much extra work for the administrators, and it might be better to have a different process than just have the principal handle it. From his perspective this bill seems to be a mandate with no funding. Freeman stated that the situation in the schools are difficult and there is violence that needs to be stopped. If a staff member is being bullied they need to be protected. Mr. Freeman submitted text messages, letters from custodians and other pertinent documentation to support his concerns about the difficulties with bullying and violence in the schools he serves. (Attachment 3)
Jim Karleskint, United School Administrators of Kansas, stated the choice of neutral is primarily because at the present time there are policies and procedures in place for dealing with bullying. He noted that there is a problem with bullying in Kansas and across the country. As an administrator he dealt with this problem throughout his career. He clarified that this is a local control state, and this bill is not going to change the deeper problems from which bullying arise. Karleskint emphasized his life long observation that bullying is part of our world. He believes we can work at correcting it, but we need to work together, and he doesn't think the language in this bill is going to change things. (Attachment 4)
Scott Rothschild, Kansas Association of School Boards, believes this is a very important topic. The state has worked hard in this area and KASB has developed a plan for districts, offered lots of resources, and focused on social and emotional learning. They are neutral out of a concern that some of the language in this proposed legislation conflicts with other laws that have been passed previously. He brought up the issues of timelines, privacy issues, anonymous complaints, and the diversity of schools statewide. (Attachment 5)
A time of questions and answers ensued.
Opponent Conferees (Oral)
Lauren Tice Miller, Kansas National Education Association, stated KNEA is a member driven organization and the opinions of the Association are based on teacher experiences. She explained KNEA is not opposed the effort to support bullying, however they do not support this bill because the problem this bill is focused on is (and she believes this is a misperception) the response of schools, or lack of response to the allegation of bullying. KNEA believes this is legislative overreach. The State Board of Education and the local school districts are the right places to deal with these policy issues on bullying. KNEA respectfully asks that the Committee do not pass HB2143. (Attachment 6)
Deena Horst, Kansas State Board of Education (KSBOE), shared the history of bullying policy, including the task force and resulting legislation. HB2143 does not provide for many of the task force's recommendations. Rather this legislation is an over reach into local school boards and individual schools. There are statements which the KSBOE feels are unnecessarily prescriptive. Updated definitions need to be made. KSBOE asks the Committee to vote no on this bill because it duplicates requirements already in place. She shared a resource (bullying toolkit) to show what is already in practice. (Attachment 7) (Attachment 8)
Opponent (Written Only)
Ron Hobert, American Federation of Teachers - Kansas (Attachment 9)
There were questions and answers.
The Chairman closed the hearing on HB2143 and adjourned the meeting at 3:00.
The next meeting is February 2, 2023.
