SB 167

Requires the State Board of Education (State Board), for the 2025-27 fiscal biennium, to develop guidelines for identifying and providing services to students with limited proficiency in the English language, as follows: (1) requires allocating these funds to local school administrative units and to charter schools under a formula that takes into account the average percentage of students in the units or the charters over the past three years who have limited English proficiency and requires allocating funds to those schools only if average daily membership of the unit or charter school includes at least 20 students with limited English proficiency or if students with limited English proficiency comprise at least 2.5% of the average daily membership of the unit or charter school; (2) requires local school administrative units to use funds allocated to them to pay for classroom teachers, teacher assistants, tutors, textbooks, classroom materials/instructional supplies/equipment, transportation costs, and staff development of teachers for students with limited English proficiency; and (3) requires a county in which a local school administrative unit receives funds under this section to use the funds to supplement local current expense funds. Requires the Department of Public Instruction to prepare a head count of the number of students with limited English proficiency by December 1 of each year and requires those students to be assessed at least once every three years to determine English proficiency.