On Tuesday, Senator Justin Eichorn (R-East Grand Rapids) was appointed to serve on the legislature’s conference committee for House File 890, the Omnibus K-12 Education Bill.  Senator Eichorn will join four of his Senate colleagues and five members from the House, who will work collaboratively over the coming days to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate versions of the Omnibus K-12 Education Bill.

“I’m honored to be assigned to the legislature’s K-12 Education Conference Committee,” said Senator Eichorn. “I look forward to using my experience from Senate’s E-12 Committee during negotiations to ensure that our state makes critical investments in our K-12 educations systems to best prepare our children for the future.”

The Omnibus K-12 Education Bill was passed by the Senate earlier this month and invests an additional $1.1 billion in education over the next biennium. In additional to increasing our state’s investment in education the bill implements several policy reforms which target items like teacher licensure and reading proficiency.

Conference committees will begin meeting in the next few days, and will continue negotiations until an agreement is reached. Once the conference committee report is passed, the report will head back to both the Senate and House to be voted on. If passed by both bodies, it will be sent to Governor Dayton for his signature to become law. The legislature has five weeks of session left under the state’s constitution and must have all bills submitted to the Governor by Monday May 22.