To establish criteria and procedures for dissolving a school district that has become so fiscally unviable that it can no longer educate students, and for attaching the failed district’s territory to one or more nearby school districts.   Official Text and Analysis.

With the recommendation that the substitute (H-4) be adopted and that the bill then pass.

To require that in assigning students to a nearby school district consideration be given to how many student both districts are in “special education” programs, in addition to free lunch programs for students from low income households.

To not include for three years the test scores of newly transferred students under the bill in the performance evaluations of the teachers to whom they are assigned.

To require that for two years any new teachers hired by the districts to which the students from the fiscally failed district are transferred be ones who worked in that district, in order of seniority, and that they get any seniority-based rights and benefits in the new district as if they had worked there all along.

To give the local intermediate school district the power to decide which of the failed district's buildings will become part of which receiving district.

To revise details of how the new school district boundaries would be drawn, explicitly taking into account the relative pupil counts of all the contiguous districts.

To establish that buildings and property of the dissolved district automatically become the property of a receiving district in which they located.

To clarify that the "debts" of the dissolved school district also include any amounts payable to the school employee pension system.

To include in the criteria that must be met for a school district to be dissolved a requirement that there had been a 10 percent drop in the number of students over the preceding year.

To restrict using the test scores of newly transferred students under the bill in the performance evaluations of the teachers to whom they are assigned.

To establish criteria and procedures for dissolving a school district that has become so fiscally unviable that it can no longer educate students, and for attaching the failed district’s territory to one or more nearby school districts. The bill was introduced after the Buena Vista and Inkster school districts reached this state shortly before the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

To require that in assigning students to a nearby school district consideration be given to how many student both districts are in “special education” programs, in addition to free lunch programs for students from low income households.

To require the local intermediate school district to be consulted before dissolving a fiscally failed school district.

To require the "individualized education plan" of a high school student in the failed school district (which allows a student to avoid harder courses required by the state graduation requirements) to be maintained by the student's new school.

To require that for two years any new teachers hired by the districts to which the students from the fiscally failed district are transferred be ones who worked in that district, in order of seniority, and that they get any seniority-based rights and benefits in the new district as if they had worked there all along.

To require a special election be held to elect a new school board covering the expanded area of jurisdiction of the school districts receiving the students from the failed district, and that this take place before the receiving district starts educating any students from the failed district.

To place a school district whose enrollment has declined 75 percent in the preceding fours years under the governance of the local intermediate school district.

To require U.S. Department of Justice to pre-approve the dissolution of the Buena Vista school district, because it is a "protected jurisdiction" under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

To provide an appeal process and "full due process protections" for the fiscally failed school districts being dissolved.

That the bill be given immediate effect.

To concur with the Senate-passed version of the bill.