130th MAINE LEGISLATURE
		LD 880		LR 1015(03)
	An Act To Protect School Employees from Workplace Bullying
	Fiscal Note for Bill as Engrossed with: C "A" (S-276)
	Committee: Education and Cultural Affairs
Fiscal Note
State Mandate - Funded
			FY 2021-22	FY 2022-23	Projections  FY 2023-24	Projections  FY 2024-25
Net Cost (Savings)
	General Fund		$26,308	$0	$0	$0
Appropriations/Allocations
	General Fund		$26,308	$0	$0	$0
State Mandates
	Required Activity				Unit Affected	Local Cost
	Requires school boards to adopt and implement a policy to address the negative impact of bullying and cyberbullying of school employees by administrators, school employees, parents, students or any other individual associated with the public school.  The policy must include the following:				School	$29,231
	~ provision identifying the responsibility of all school employees to comply with the policy;
	~ provision outlining the responsibility of a superintendent to implement and enforce the policy;
	~ procedure for school staff members to report incidents of bullying or cyberbullying; and
	~ procedure for promptly investigating and responding to incidents of bullying or cyberbullying, including written documentation of reported incidents
	The bill also makes workplace bullying policy subject to the dispute resolution process if an affected employee is covered by a collective bargaining unit.
	The required local activities in this bill may represent a state mandate pursuant to the Constitution of Maine. If the bill does require a local unit of government to expand or modify its activities so as to necessitate additional expenditures from local revenue, the state mandate provisions of the Constitution of Maine require either: (1) General Fund appropriations be provided to fund at least 90% of any additional necessitated local costs of the mandate; or (2) a Mandate Preamble be added to the bill and two-thirds of the members of each House vote to exempt the mandate from the funding requirement. If the bill does represent a state mandate and neither one of these actions occurs, the local units of government will not be required to implement the mandated activities.
Fiscal Detail and Notes
	This bill includes a one-time General Fund appropriation of $26,308 in fiscal year 2021-22 to a newly created State Mandate Reimbursement - Workplace Bullying program within the Department of Education to reimburse local school administrative units for 90% of the cost of adopting and implementing a policy to address the effects of bullying on school employees.