A bill advancing to the Senate floor would cause 176 Oklahoma school districts to add instructional days, a top legislative leader said.

The Senate Education Committee voted 7-3 on Tuesday in favor of a measure to increase the schoolyear minimum to 173 days, up from 166, for districts that use an hours-based calendar.

The legislation, House Bill 3151, would take effect for the 2027-28 school year as long as the state Legislature increases public education funding by $175 million by then. A proposed state budget for the 2027 fiscal year would increase education funding by $232 million, though much of that money is earmarked for teacher pay raises and specific programs.

Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, said the Legislature would more than exceed the funding trigger with the $232 million investment and could add even more money in future years.

He said 176 districts, out of 540 in the state, would have to increase school days if HB 3151 becomes law. The affected schools are all in rural areas, Senate staff confirmed.

Paxton, the bill’s Senate author, blamed Oklahoma’s poor academic results on students receiving too little instructional time in classrooms. He said state lawmakers have already begun to address that issue with a new law curtailing use of virtual school days, a measure he co-wrote last year.

HB 3151 would be another step toward improvement, he said.

“We have great teachers in Oklahoma,” Paxton told the committee. “We fund them adequately. We’re just not competing because we’re not in school enough.”

Oklahoma requires a minimum of 181 school days or 1,086 hours per academic year in public schools.

Under current law, districts that use the more flexible 1,086-hour calendar must be in session for at least 166 days. They would have to meet a minimum of 173 days under HB 3151.

Parent-teacher conferences and staff professional development days still would count as instructional days. An earlier version of HB 3151 would have changed that, but House lawmakers scrapped the idea before advancing the bill to the Senate.

House legislators also proposed the $175 million trigger for the measure to take effect in the 2028 fiscal year. That equals $25 million for each of the seven added school days.

Last year, the Legislature increased the minimum school year by one day for all districts, not only those with an hours-based calendar. Lawmakers increased public education funding by $25 million solely to add the extra instructional day.

Although lawmakers aim to increase instructional time again with HB 3151, this year’s budget agreement between the House, Senate and governor doesn’t include funding specifically for adding school days.

Rather, the budget deal would add $100 million to increase teachers’ minimum salaries by $2,000, less than $80 million for reading and math initiatives, $50 million for school security and $25 million to increase tax credits benefiting private school families. Another $23 million would support the rising cost of school employees’ insurance benefits.

Senate panel advances changes for state testing, adjunct teachers Also on Tuesday, the Senate Education Committee unanimously approved a requirement that state testing for grades 3-8 take place in the last four weeks of the school year — a measure lawmakers said would maximize instructional time by pushing the testing window later. HB 4359 is now eligible for consideration by the full Senate.

The bill’s author, Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, said teachers have complained “there’s not a lot of learning that occurs at the end of the year” once state tests are finished.

A former teacher on the committee, Sen. Carri Hicks, D-Oklahoma City, echoed frustrations with the current structure of the school year. Teachers currently have three quarters of the academic year to fit in a full year’s worth of learning, said Hicks, who taught elementary math and science.

“Once you broke for spring break, you had about two weeks of review, and then it was testing time,” she said before the committee vote. “And so, I think that this also prioritizes instructional time and gives kids longer to retain and really relearn (and) spiral back on information that was introduced in the first nine weeks.”

The committee also approved new limits on adjunct teachers, who aren’t required to have a teaching certification nor a college degree to begin working in public schools.

HB 4427 would prohibit adjunct instructors from teaching core-curriculum courses — such as math, reading, science or social studies — for pre-K through fourth grade unless granted a waiver from the Oklahoma State Board of Education.

To receive a waiver, the adjunct instructor must have previously taught core-curriculum courses to students in pre-K through fourth grade and have completed training in the science of reading.

Adjunct teachers could work in public schools for no longer than five years unless they earn a teaching certificate, under HB 4427.

The bill is now eligible for a vote by the full Senate.