2026-SB26-103-At-Risk Public School Program and Public School Accountability

To receive a special services license with a school counselor endorsement, the applicant must have a master’s degree or higher in school counseling of at least forty-eight graduate semester credit hours from an accredited institution of higher education.

The statute calls out educational institutions, for our purposes, charter schools, under the discrimination in places of public accommodation statute. Specifically, discrimination occurs when:

This bill targeted several needless or redundant regulatory burdens and eliminated them.

This legislation redefined the term testing entity. The definition continues to contemplate state and local government agencies but now also includes persons and broadens the definition to include any “business.” To be considered a testing entity, each listed category — business, government, or person — must be offering one or more of the following: “examinations, courses related to applications, licensing, certification, or credentialing for secondary or postsecondary education, or for professional or trade purposes.”

This statute allows preschools to forgo individualized readiness plans when the student, through assessments, demonstrates proficiency on the kindergarten reading assessment and each domain of cognitive, physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, language and comprehension development, literacy, and math.

This statute incorporates into state law core disability rights protections for students established in federal law by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (“Section 504”) and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“Title II”). The statute applies to public elementary and secondary educational institutions and covers school districts, local charter schools, Charter School Institute (“CSI”) charter schools, as well as CSI itself.