Two-Bill Tuesday.  The House Education Funding Committee was the only education-related committee that met today and they covered two bills during their hearing.  The first bill--HF 1024 (Pinto)--would create a cabinet-level Department of Early Childhood.  The new department would transfer some employee complement from the departments of Human Services, Education, and Health and put them under one administrative roof.  If the bill is passed and signed by the Governor, the new agency would take effect January 1, 2023.  While few, if any, of the current legislative roster were around in the early-1990s when the Department of Children, Families, and Learning was created and many of the same employee transfers took place.  That agency last about a decade before it was split apart during the Pawlenty Administration with the various employees and state program jurisdictions returned to their original agencies.  This initiative somewhat deviates from that effort in that it creates a single new agency instead of adding onto an existing agency (Education) from other agencies (Human Services and Health).  A case can be made that creating an agency that would give parents of young children a one-stop agency instead of having to deal with programs that are funded in one budget and administered by a different agency is a good idea, but there will also be pushback from those who believe these programs can be streamlined (or reassigned) to cut through some of the confusion that is currently experienced.  The committee approved the bill and sent it on its way to its next committee.

The committee then turned to a bill that is already moving in the Senate.  HF 288 (Edelson) would create a grant program that would allocate $1 million in each of the next two years to school districts to provide staff development in the LETRS (Language Essentials for Teacher of Reading and Spelling).  The success of this scientifically-based reading program is well documented and it appears to have strong support in both the House and Senate.  I neglected to include the LETRS website when I wrote about the Senate hearing on this bill, so I will do that here:  LETRS