{"id":16002,"date":"2017-01-30T16:44:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T23:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16002"},"modified":"2017-01-30T16:44:22","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T23:44:22","slug":"legislative-update-monday-jan-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/01\/legislative-update-monday-jan-30\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative Update: Monday, Jan. 30"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_16003\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"addboard wp-image-16003 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sarah-Cobally.png\" alt=\"Corbally\" width=\"336\" height=\"444\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Freddy Monares\/UM Community News Service<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies representative Sarah Corbally spoke in favor of House Bill 303.<\/p><\/div>\n<h4>Commission would track child abuses cases<\/h4>\n<h6>By Freddy Monares<\/h6>\n<p>In the wake of reports of an increase in child abuse and neglect cases, lawmakers in Helena are considering a bill that would create a commission to review trends and patterns to share with policymakers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/leg.mt.gov\/bills\/2017\/billhtml\/HB0303.htm\">House Bill 303<\/a> also aims to educate the public and service providers about child abuse and neglect. The commission would provide analysis of information to further improve prevention.<\/p>\n<p>Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies representative Sarah Corbally says the bill echoes federal efforts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt needs to be a proactive approach to prevent them, not this reactive approach to find new and greater punishments for these types of cases,\u201d Corbally said.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Kathy Kelker, D-Billings. is the sponsor of the bill.<\/p>\n<p><b> <\/b>\u201cAltogether we\u2019re talking about a fairly large commission, but the point is to be multidisciplinary with a lot of different viewpoints being represented,\u201d Kelker said.<\/p>\n<p>The commission would be made up of 17 members.<\/p>\n<p><i>Freddy Monares is a reporter with the UM Legislative News Service, a partnership of the University of Montana School of Journalism, the Montana<\/i><i> Broadcasters Association and the Greater Montana Foundation.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>Stipends for top teachers proposed<\/h4>\n<h6>By Cole Grant<\/h6>\n<p>Montana teachers who are certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards receive a one-time $3,000 stipend.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/leg.mt.gov\/bills\/2017\/billhtml\/SB0115.htm\">Senate Bill 115<\/a> would make that payment annual. It would also double the stipend if the teacher worked in a high poverty level school, or one that was affected by a critical shortage of high-quality educators.<\/p>\n<p>Mary Moe, a former Democratic senator from\u00a0Great Falls, said the incentive would be\u00a0a good way to get qualified teachers in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne, we know it\u2019s an indicator of quality, and two, if we want to attract teachers, salary is a big way to do that,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>According to the bill\u2019s fiscal note, 87 teachers in Montana are nationally board certified, and 20 of them would be eligible for the doubled stipend.<\/p>\n<p>Moe was carrying SB 115 until she resigned last Friday. Now Sen. Frederick Moore, R-Miles City, is carrying the bill.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate Finance and Claims Committee will hear the bill Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p><i>Cole Grant is a reporter with the UM Legislative News Service, a partnership of the University of Montana School of Journalism, the Montana Broadcasters Association and the Greater Montana Foundation.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Commission would track child abuses cases By Freddy Monares In the wake of reports of an increase in child abuse and neglect cases, lawmakers in Helena are considering a bill that would create a commission to review trends and patterns to share with policymakers. House Bill 303 also aims to educate the public and service [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1122],"class_list":["post-16002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-montana-legislature","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}