My Response to Governor Markell’s Veto Statement of House Bill 130

Below is a letter that was sent to Governor Markell in response to his veto of House Bill 130. As I stated in an earlier post, the Governor did not give me any indication that he had any intentions of vetoing House Bill 130. The first time I knew he had issues with House Bill 130 was when I received the call from his office stating the Governor was vetoing it. Click here to read his veto statement.

This bill creates a felony level offense for a person that is a health professional and in the course of providing professional health services to the victim, intentionally has sexual contact with the victim.  This bill adds to the existing crime of unlawful sexual contact in the second degree and makes the conduct described therein as a felony offense, rather than a misdemeanor, due to the vulnerability of the victim as a patient seeking services from a health professional.

View this document on Scribd

Some Examples of Why House Bill 130 is Necessary

In August, Governor Markell vetoed a bill that I sponsored, House Bill 130. These two articles really show why House Bill 130 is necessary.

A Michigan Doctor faces prison time for trading drugs for sex and Doctor’s license pulled for sex with patients

This just absolutely makes me sick what this doctor did to these two women. The doctor prescribed highly addictive drugs to at least two of his patients, there could be more victims. Once the women became dependent on the drugs, he demanded sex and money in exchange for new prescriptions. Not only were these women raped by this doctor now they are addicted to drugs.

In the other article, the doctor admitted to sexual encounters with three different patients he treated, with a resident he supervised and with an office assistant who worked for him. He further admits that his sexual behaviors persisted even after he knew he was under investigation by the Board.

The Medical Board of Ohio has suspended the license of Dr. Johnson for an indefinite period of no less than two years. The Medical Board of Ohio should be revoking his license forever.

I am still baffled as to why the Governor vetoed House Bill 130. I did forward a letter to him in response to his veto statement, I will share the letter in another post.

How many Delaware students with disabilities are also low income students?

In 2014, the Department of Education reported on DOE’s School Profile Page 35% of our Delaware public school students are low income and another 13.9% are students with disabilities. The September 30th Enrollment number for the 2014-2015 school year reported that 134,932 students were enrolled in Delaware public schools.

The total number of students attending public school in Delaware is reported to be 134,932 with 47,226 being low income students and 18,756 students being students with disabilities.

I asked the Department of Education how many of the 18,756 students with disabilities are low income and their answer was 45% of the students with disabilities are also low income students 8,440.

Delaware provides additional funding for students with disabilities, there are three categories: Basic Special Education, Intensive Special Education, and Complex Special Education. Currently, Delaware does not fund a Basic Special Education student who is enrolled in Kindergarten through 3rd grade, go to § 1703 Unit of pupils for more details.

• Preschool — 12.8
• K-3 — 16.2
• 4-12 Regular Education — 20
• 4-12 Basic Special Education (Basic) — 8.4
• Pre K-12 Intensive Special Education (Intensive) — 6
• Pre K-12 Complex Special Education (Complex) — 2.6

January 2015, I introduced a bill, House Bill 30, which would add Basic Special Education funding for grades Kindergarten to 3rd grade. The House Education Committee released it and it was assigned to the House Appropriations Committee in March.

This bill provides State funding to kindergarten through third grade for basic special education. State funding already occurs for intensive and complex special education during these grades. Currently the basic special education funding runs from fourth through twelfth grade. This bill is an effort to promote earlier identification and assistance for basic special education needs which should then mitigate costs over the long term.

• 81% of our enrolled pre-k students were identified with a disability.
• There are currently 5,843 students (pre-k thru 3) identified last year in special education.
• In 2013-2014 67.89% of 3rd grade special education students were below standards compared to 24.34% of general education 3rd grade students.
• US DOE issued a report in June 2014 stating that Delaware was one of three states that was identified as “Needs Intervention” with respect to special education. The US DOE has targeted Delaware for federal intervention.
• 3rd grade is an important year for reading; this is the year that students move from learning to read, decoding words using their knowledge of the alphabet – to reading to learn.
• 3rd grade students who lack proficiency in reading are four times more likely to become high school dropouts.
• 3rd grade proficiency is crucial for continued academic success.
• House Bill 30 would add 136 more special education teachers to charters and district schools.
• Delaware school districts every year have to apply for a class size waiver Title 14 – Chapter § 1705A (c) if their Kindergarten thru 3rd grade classrooms exceeds 22 students on the last school day in October in ELA, Math, Science and Social Studies. The local school board may vote to waive this at a public meeting before December 1st of each year. This bill would help to reduce class size in grades Kindergarten through 3rd grades.
• The extra teachers will also help with Response to Intervention.
• RTI is a practice of providing high quality instruction and interventions matched to a student’s need.
  • Tier 1 includes all students,
  • Tier 2 students with insufficient progress in Tier 1 in reading.
  • Tier 3 students are students who have not made progress in Tier 1 or Tier 2.
• I surveyed the 5 school districts with regards to their RTI numbers. A total of 23,550 RTI students including 3,346 students with a disability are either in Tier 1, 2 or 3. No additional resources are given to the districts in order to support this initiative.