At its March 7, 2016, meeting, West Virginia's Senate Education Committee revised House Bill 4014 to require only the review, not the repeal, of the recently adopted state science standards, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail (March 7, 2016).
As NCSE previously reported, the version of House Bill 4014 which passed the House of Delegates in late February 2016 would prevent the state board of education from implementing the state science standards adopted in 2015, and there were indications that the treatment of climate science in the standards was part of the motivation.
The Senate Education Committee's version of the bill, however, would establish a panel appointed by deans at Marshall University and West Virginia University and supervised by the Chancellor of the Higher Education Policy Commission to review the standards "and recommend revisions that it considers appropriate."
The bill will proceed to the floor of the Senate, where it might be accepted, amended further, or rejected; differences between the House and Senate bills might then have to be reconciled. The legislative session ends on March 12, 2016.