As the legislative session winds down, committees are making their suggestions for what areas need more focus during the summer. Members of the Senate Education committee discussed possible studies for about an hour Tuesday morning. Topics ranged from mass customized learning as proposed in Senate Bill 96 this year, to collaboration instead of consolidation for schools with declining enrollment, to Native American education. Committee members decided to propose settings for dialogue, rather than a specific area of study. Senator Deb Soholt says communication is important to look at issues in new ways.
“It’s complex what we’re talking about, it has many moving parts. I think the summer study focus is like we have a problem and now we’re going to study it and we’re going to get data and we’re going to come up with a solution. This is at a point of transformation, we’re not really ready to say this is the one problem that we’re going to study and now we’re going to come up with a solution. Maybe one thing that could come out of this committee as a recommendation to the E-Board is it’s not a study per say, because it’s more we have to go to a higher level of different kind of way of being together in dialogue about this issue and taking the real issues that we need to tackle will start to emerge if we can spend time together around concepts,” Soholt says.
Other committee members agree that this strategy is a responsible way to move forward to address the state’s education concerns. Secretary of Education Melody Schopp suggested education summits and conferences for legislators to attend this summer that focus on technology in classrooms.
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