I just spoke with Chris Hamilton who sat in on the SEC Executive Session this morning. The following are notes from our conversation, which she asked me to post for the sake of fast information dissemination.

According to Senator Bragdon, the Senate leadership is pushing committee leaders to Exec all bills that need to go through the Finance Committee, which SB268 definitely will have to do. For that reason, SB268 and a number of other bills were supposed to be voted on in SEC Exec Session today. However, Senator Bragdon postponed the vote on SB268 until next week because Senator Eaton wanted to be there for the vote but was unable to attend today.

Senators Bragdon and Eaton are likely to vote ITL on SB268 when it does come up for a vote in Exec Session next week.

The word is that Senator Johnston supports SB268, including raising the compulsory attendance age. However, if the alternative education programs in SB268 are not put in place by 2008 he will personally lead the charge to repeal the raise in compulsory attendance age.

Independently, and for her own reasons, Senator Estabrook is likely to submit an amendment to SB268 that would change 193A to cover homeschoolers up to age 18.

Amy Gall