Legistrivia: Less Testing, Land for Sale, Foster Child Placement, Backwalking…

The early entrants in the Legislative hopper include a lot of seemingly small provisions. Here’s a Friday snack platter of nibbles around the policy edges:

1. HB 1013 would free homeschool second-graders from standardized testing requirements. Hooray! More time for reading and art!
2. The State Historical Society currently controls a 98-acre tract of land on the banks of the Missouri west of Onida. HB 1014 puts that land up for sale. Developers, boaters, hunters, start your bidding!
3. Currently, when courts determine that abused or neglected kids should be placed permanently with someone other than their parents, the courts can order adoption, guardianship, placement with another fit and willing relative, or an alternative planned permanent living arrangement. HB 1022 would restrict the latter catch-all alternative to children age 16 or older.
4. HB 1027 puts “feet” alongside “hands” and “devices” to the items one can use to provide “therapy, relaxation, or education” under the statutory definition of “massage” (see SDCL 36-35-1). Look out, all you unlicensed backwalking parlors! The State Board of Massage Therapy is onto you! HB 1027 also adds “vibration” to the “Pressure, friction, stroking, rocking, kneading, percussion, compression, or stretching” that hands, devices, and now feet may do to count as licensable massage.
5. We don’t do criminal background checks on teachers and other employees at our postsecondary vo-tech schools unless they also work in elementary or secondary schools. SB 8 says we ought to check ’em all.
6. SB 28 adds meningitis to the diseases against which your kids must get shots before we let them into school. It also strikes the clause that allows parents to opt their kids out of shots by writing that they can’t afford the shots… because the very next statute says the local board of health will pay for those shots. (Hmm… South Dakota appears not to require homeschoolers to get shots. Perhaps there’s a topic for an amendment to SB 28—fair trade for getting out of those second-grade tests?)