June 10, 2013

Carpino Champions Relief Of Educational Mandates

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HARTFORD, CT) – According to State Rep. Christie Carpino (Cromwell & Portland), Governor Malloy has signed Public Act 13-108, An Act Unleashing Innovation in Connecticut Schools into law which includes an amendment (LCO 6387) co-introduced by Rep. Carpino that gained unanimous bipartisan support in both chambers of the General Assembly and addresses the subject of education mandate relief.

“Governor Malloy said today that he doesn’t think the bill goes far enough in removing barriers to continued success in our schools. I agree. While it requires firm mandate relief options to be provided by October, I would have preferred for them to be already in place by the end of this session. Thanks to the amendment, at least the process will keep going. I am proud we were able to achieve support from both sides of the aisle on this common sense amendment,” said Rep. Carpino, a three-year member of the legislature’s Education committee.

The language focuses on one of the original six objectives set by Governor Malloy and accepted as a bipartisan framework for the 2012 education reform bill. When he first articulated these objectives in December 2011, one of them included administrative and mandate relief for high-performing schools: “Unleash innovation by removing red tape and other barriers to success, especially in high-performing schools and districts”.

Now Section 4 of the new law, it requires the appointment of a task force that must deliver by October 1, 2013 a list of concrete recommendations for mandates and routine requirements from which high-performing schools can choose to be relieved. Implementing the amendment entails no state spending and may help school districts save money. The schools affected include both consistently high-performing schools and those that have demonstrated rapid, significant progress.

A Red Tape Task Force formed by the governor last year to define mandate relief options did submit a report with a limited number of recommendations, and these were included in the governor’s initial version of the bill today signed into law, but they were struck from the bill in substitute language which did not address mandate relief at all when it was passed out of committee in March to the House floor.