Update: Amendment to HB1403! (3/5/24)

Yes, that's the next step. It's already been sent in messages to the House. They could vote to pass it as-is right away, or refer it to a session later this week. We are watching it to see what happens. So far, everything is going as we expected based on what Speaker of the House Paul Renner described would happen.

I also just think that the fact that they felt the need to change the wording to "must" indicates a weaker requirement for the obligations with a sentance of "shall". Just like they (SUFS) interpret Digital devices as ineligle solely because it is left out of the PEP section when it's written in for UA, I'd just worry they would see that as a non-obligation on their part and an interpretation of "shall" as "may"

I can't speak for certain, but I think that the exclusion of digital devices was done intentionally to prevent parents purchasing the devices for the purpose of reselling them. Essentially, to prevent fraud since it was a new program and they weren't sure what was going to happen with it the first year. (I'm saying that because that is a concern I have heard expressed.) Sort of the same reasoning for why they were trying to restrict equipment with this bill.

Our reason for such major concern about the equipment wording in HB 1403 was that if they started adding new restrictions so soon into the program, It would be doubly hard to get them removed in the future. And that was not a direction we wanted to see things go, especially with such a broad and sweeping restriction when the program is still in its first year.

We consider it a win that they have amended it to remove that restriction, but there are other things we also wanted to see in this bill that unfortunately just didn't happen this year. Alongside fighting the restriction in HB 1403 on equipment, we have also been advocating for digital devices, among many other things that need to be tweaked and updated with the PEP statutes, like clarifying the way that PEP funds can be used for classes at school districts, getting a definition of home education instructional programs in statute, and some other things. I know I mentioned at some of the committees the need for things like printers and laptops for PEP parents, and Brenda and Jason have discussed it with many people as well. So it's an issue that we've brought to their attention, and will continue to do so as we have discussions throughout the year and leading up to next year's legislative session. But the severity of the restriction on equipment and the difficulty we had in initially getting heard on that issue meant that it became the central focus of many of our discussions.

As Brenda has said, changes to statutes and legislations often don't happen quickly. It took years for Brenda to convince them to create the Gardiner scholarship to help families of kids with disabilities. The home education statutes themselves were a long time in the making. But we are striving for continual protection of parents rights and freedoms, and improvements and clarifications to the statutes where needed, so year after year that is our focus and our mission and our goal.

that's interesting that that idea has kind of morphed into this idea of preventing fraud, because when I emailed representatives last fall about the exclusion of digital devices from PEP I had several email back that it was an oversight on their part and not an intentional exclusion. And it's unfortunate that we couldn't really advocate harder for the addition of these things when we had to just focus to not have things removed. Absolutly there's always next year, and the following...and I appreciate all of you and your dedicated work to the homeschooling community