Associated School Boards of South Dakota | 2016 Legislative Session

June01: Required suicide prevention training available

SafeSchools Training provides a state approved Youth Suicide Awareness and Prevention training, which becomes a certificate requirement effective on July 1, 2017. The Youth Suicide Awareness and Prevention training requirement comes from the passage of 2016’s Senate Bill 129, which establishes certain suicide awareness and prevention training requirements for certain school employees. South

May19: 2017 Conflict of Interest Q and A

A bill updating the conflict of interest statute was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Dennis Daugaard during the 2017 legislative session. To assist school district officials understand the updates made to the law, ASBSD has put together a Q and A document to help you navigate through the law,

May18: Policy Alert: Updated Conflict of Interest sample policy

Policies of a school district, especially those negotiated with bargaining representatives for the protection of teachers, have the full force and effect of law, and legally bind the school district. By Gerry Kaufman, ASBSD Director of Policy & Legal Services ASBSD recently wrote a new sample policy: AH Conflict of Interest Disclosure and

May16: Sales tax talk at Legislative Exec Board meeting

What’s going on with sales tax revenue was once again a topic of discussion during the legislative interim. “We’ve got to keep this issue front and center if we’re going to keep funding public education and social services,” Rep. Mark Mickelson said during Monday’s (5/15) Legislative Executive Board meeting. Legislative Executive Board members

May01: Legislative comm. requests SFAB add appeal process to rules

The South Dakota Legislature’s Rule Review committee reviewed the rules of the School Finance Accountability Board (SFAB) and asked them to review their rules again to make some additions. On a 3-2 vote, Rules Review committee members sent the SFAB rules back to the board with the request to add an appeals process, which

April28: Revenue collection remains major issue

Since the start of 2017 revenue reports have not been rosy. That tepid trend continued during the April meeting of the legislature’s Executive Board. S.D. Legislative Research Council Fiscal Analyst Jeff Mehlhaff informed board members the state’s general fund revenue is down $3 million from “where we anticipated being” based on the restructured revenue estimates

April18: Free webinars covering SafeSchools courses

ASBSD and SafeSchools invite you to an informative webinar session to learn how you can access hundreds of school focused courses for your district at no charge! SafeSchools Training, which partnered with ASBSD last fall to bring all member districts access to a market-leading training system, is a web-based training and compliance system designed

March31: Is your district meeting accountability requirements?

Is your district in compliance with the school finance accountability requirements established through the 2016 education funding package? Download the S.D. Department of Education’s Information on Accountabilities sheet here. For fiscal year 2017, school districts had two accountability targets to meet related to teacher compensation: Total Compensation Accountability – requiring districts to put

March31: Appropriators review role in waiver process

Legislative appropriators recently discussed their role in the accountability waiver process. “We’re walking in some new ground here,” Sen. Larry Tidemann, Chair of the Appropriations committee, said during the committee’s first interim meeting of 2017. The Appropriators reviewed the School Finance Accountability Board’s adopted accountability rules and how the committee fits in the

March23: SFAB adopts rules, hears teacher pay accountability report

School Finance Accountability Board members met for the first time in 2017 and adopted a slightly amended version of the board’s rules. SFAB’s rules outline the different facets of the board’s work including the waiver request process, which requires waiver requests be submitted to the board before the first Friday in November, the documentation school