Testimony has wrapped up this afternoon on school science standards at the Senate Education Committee. Nearly two dozen people spoke, ranging from young students to university professors, parents to scientists, and all but one spoke out strongly in favor of adopting the proposed new school science standards in full – not deleting the five portions that refer to climate change as the House Education Committee did.

“We have had a good day of testimony - it’s been long, we’ve had a lot of input,” said Chairman Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls. He noted that it’s also been “quite instructional” as questions from the senators to state administrative rules director Dennis Stevenson pointed to the consequences of various approaches.

“As I’ve listened to those options, I think one of those options of course would be to actually make a motion that would adopt the motion of the House so that we had something in place,” Mortimer said. “Another option would be to say we want to adopt them in their entirety, and in that case we would not have any standard, and we would go clear through the process again, as I understand it. And there is one other option. This is the option the chairman is going to make, that because of the lateness of the time, and because of where we’re at, the chairman is going to hold the rule until Monday, in our committee meeting on Monday. There will not be any new public testimony on the rule. I think that we’ve had that. But that will allow time for there to be discussions between the House and the Senate, and it will give us as a Senate committee the opportunity to see if there are any other options, just to make sure that we’ve covered all of them, in regards to the testimony that we’ve heard.”

With that, the committee adjourned. The final count on the testimony: Twenty-two people spoke in favor of adopted the standards as proposed. One opposed them in full. No one spoke in favor of the House’s position.

Asked after the meeting how he’ll convince the House to change its position, Mortimer said, “I’m not sure I know that answer, but it’s worth the try.”