SPEAKERS BUREAU
House Bill 4776
Sponsor: Rep. Larry Julian
Committee: Veterans Affairs
Complete to 10-29-99
A SUMMARY OF HOUSE BILL 4776 AS INTRODUCED 6-10-99
The bill would create a new act to establish a veterans speakers program in the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. More specifically, the bill would create the program within the veterans' affairs directorate of the department. The director of the veterans' affairs directorate would be required to report annually on the merits and use of the program to the committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate having jurisdiction over veterans affairs.
The program would have to do all of the following:
(1) Contact veterans of military service and create a list of veterans who would be willing to visit local schools and make presentations of their military experience. The list would have to include the length of service, geographical area of service, and the rank of each veteran.
(2) Encourage veterans' organizations to participate in the program.
(3) Create a pamphlet that encouraged schools to use the experiences of veterans in the course of their educational instruction. The pamphlet would have to include the names and ways of contacting appropriate veterans from the above list of veterans who had indicated a willingness to participate in the program.
(4) Distribute the pamphlet to all of the school districts in the state.
(5) Provide a system of receiving evaluations of the speakers and the program from teachers and students who used the program.
(6) Update the list at least annually, and make it available on the Internet through the department's website.
The speaker's program created by the bill would not be a replacement for any instruction required by any other law. The bill would not require any teacher to participate in the program, and would allow teachers who chose to participate in the program to tailor the subject matter and select the veteran that the teacher deemed most appropriate for the students.
Analyst: S. Ekstrom