Rep. Kendra Johnson

The Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline and the Board of Nursing are responsible for establishing continuing education requirements for medical professionals licensed by these Boards. This Act adds a requirement that practitioners licensed by these Boards who treat adults must complete one hour of continuing education in each reporting period on the topic of diagnosis, treatment, and care of patients with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias. This bill also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This Act establishes the Racial Equity Consortium (“Consortium”) for the purposes of studying and making recommendations to address the disparities and inequities faced by persons of color in this State. The African American Task Force, established by Senate Bill No. 260 of the 150th General Assembly (§ 39 of Chapter 243 of Volume 82 of the Laws of Delaware), recommended that the Consortium be established. The Consortium is charged, in part, with working to implement and continuing to study the findings of the Task Force. The Consortium’s membership includes representatives of organizations that are currently working on issues of racial justice to leverage existing resources and efforts, and to promote collaboration.

This Act recognizes advancements in the science of reading and literacy instruction by requiring that all public school students in kindergarten through grade 3 participate in a universal reading screening 3 times each year to identify potential reading deficiencies, including dyslexia, and allow for early intervention and prevention. The Department is tasked with compiling a list of reading screeners as well as literacy intervention approaches that are aligned with the science of reading that charter schools and districts may use. The Department will take into account the science of reading and evidence-based research in creating the list as well as the alignment of screeners and interventions with a multi-tiered system of support. The Department is also required to consider the burden on schools to administer screeners and the amenability of the screener to being incorporated into ongoing instruction. Charter schools and districts are additionally required to provide the results of each screening to a student’s parent – which may be done by adding it to existing communications such as report cards or progress reports. Finally, charter schools and districts must report, by grade, the number of students in kindergarten through grade 3 determined to have potential reading deficiencies and what intervention approach is being used, as well as the number of students receiving dyslexia specific interventions. The Department of Education is tasked with compiling this information into a report for the General Assembly, the State Board of Education, and the Governor.

This Senate Joint Resolution designates August 31, 2022, as "International Overdose Awareness Day" in the State of Delaware and directs the State flag to be lowered to half-staff at State facilities and encourages local governments, businesses, and Delawareans to do the same.

This Act amends the Delaware Code relating to financial assistance for education in order to promote and support the state’s high demand career fields and reduce student debt for Delaware residents. The Act clarifies the Delaware Higher Education Office’s role in administering programs. Professional incentive scholarship loan programs will generally be replaced with the career-based scholarship program and the educator support scholarship and mental health services scholarship programs will be established. In addition, a loan repayment program is created for speech-language pathology and mental health professions to attract and retain these professionals in Delaware schools. Career-based and educator support scholarships will be made to Delaware students who intend to pursue careers in specific fields identified as areas of need in Delaware. Academic scholarships will be awarded to Delaware students in memory of elected officials and other distinguished citizens. Need-based scholarships will be awarded to Delaware students so that they will not be denied the opportunity of an education because of financial need. The Act also clarifies the programs that are not administered by the Delaware Higher Education Office.  The Education Endowment Fund and the Michael C. Ferguson Achievement Awards will be repealed because they are no longer funded.  The Delaware College Investment Plan has been renamed the DE529 Education Savings Plan, and conforming changes are made to other parts of the Code.  The Ivyane D. F. Davis Memorial Scholarship program is updated.

This Act expands the scope of the sexual extortion law to include: a) compelling or inducing another person to produce a visual depiction of the person or another who is nude or who is engaging in sexual conduct, and b) threatening to reproduce, distribute, exhibit, publish, transmit, or otherwise disseminate a visual depiction of a person who is nude, or who is engaging in sexual conduct.

All too often, persons who produce or transmit images of partially nude children cannot be prosecuted under our current statutes because our current statutes only criminalize images of a child engaging in a sexual act or if the child is nude. This bill seeks to remedy this problem by adding “partial nudity” to the definition of “prohibited sexual act”. By doing so, this bill criminalizes the photographing or filming of a partially nude child as well as the production, publication, transmission, selling, distribution, and dissemination of photographs or images of partially nude children if the child in such image or photograph is scantily clothed, posed provocatively, or otherwise posed with the obvious intent to arose, and such image of photograph is intended for the purpose of sexual stimulation or gratification of any individual who may view such image or photograph. Under this bill, such crime would be a class D felony punishable by up to an 8-year jail sentence.

This bill reflects the reality that “grooming” children for the purpose of committing crimes of sexual violence against them is often preceded by conduct that perpetrators know will make the child particularly susceptible to abuse. The bill requires proof that a person has engaged in three or more specific instances of conduct proscribed by the statute. Each of these predicate acts would not otherwise be considered criminal conduct, so the bill requires proof of a pattern of conduct aimed at a specific outcome. By outlawing “grooming,” the State will be explicitly empowered to stop a predator who engages in certain conduct with the intent to entice, persuade, induce, or coerce a child into participating in a sexual act with the perpetrator. A conviction for “grooming” is a stand-alone offense and is a felony punishable by up to 3 years in jail.

The Consumer Protection Fund covers a substantial portion of the costs and expenses to run the Department of Justice’s Fraud and Consumer Protection Division, which serves all Delawareans, handles hundreds of consumer complaints every year, and is continually taking on more cases on behalf of Delawareans who have been victims of fraud and deceptive business practices. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period of dramatically increased scams against Delaware's most vulnerable populations, including our seniors, the Fraud and Consumer Protection Division has been on the front lines. The Division brings money into the Consumer Protection Fund by investigating and enforcing Delaware’s consumer protection and financial fraud laws, and the amounts obtained, often through settlements, can be large but are unpredictable. Despite a significant expansion of the work and jurisdiction of the Fraud and Consumer Protection Division, the Consumer Protection Fund retention cap has not been increased since 2014. This Act increases the maximum amount of money the Department of Justice can keep in the Consumer Protection Fund at the end of each fiscal year from $3 million to $10 million. Increasing the retention cap from $3 million to $10 million will promote greater stability in funding the Division’s operations even during periods of volatility in the amount of money the Division brings in through its investigation and enforcement work, and will reduce the risk that the Division needs to seek funding for its critical operations out of General Fund appropriations. Increasing the retention cap will not affect ASF spending authorization for the Consumer Protection Fund, which will remain subject to the existing appropriations process.

This Act, modeled on similar laws in Virginia and Maryland, requires a health-care provider to provide notice to a patient at the time blood is drawn to perform a laboratory test for Lyme disease that explains the limitations of the test and instructs the patient to see their health-care provider if the patient continues to experience unexplained symptoms. This Act was previously passed by the 150th General Assembly in Senate Bill 15, and is the same except for the removal of the sunset provision.