Full Schedule.  There was a full slate of education-related committees today, starting with the House Education Innovation Policy Committee this morning.  The committee heard testimony from the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts on how they are working to improve student discipline issues with positive interventions.  The committee also heard the recommendations from the Student Discipline Working Group that met during the interim.  The House Education Finance Committee heard three bills that would expand Minnesota's private school choice programs by expanding the education tax credit to include private school tuition and increasing the tax deduction for private school tuition.  The bills heard were HF 255 (Representative Sarah Anderson), HF 386 (Representative Ron Kresha), and HF 387 (Representative Jim Knoblach).  It will be interesting to see how the session continues to play out on this issue, but it would not be surprising if there were a showdown on this issue.  The House included Representative Knoblach's bill in their 2015 tax bill and I can easily envision either that exact language or a hybrid of that language and Representative Kresha's bill in the House tax bill (and probably the bill the Legislature puts together and sends to the Governor).  The Senate Education Policy Committee heard a presentation from the Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius on plans for the World's Best Workforce moving forward.

I will post the list of bills introduced today on tomorrow's blog.