The Senate Democratic Caucus announced today they have elected Sen. Kay Floyd (D-Oklahoma City) to serve as Senate Democratic Leader for the 57th Oklahoma Legislature.

Floyd, who currently serves as Senate Democratic Caucus Chair, will succeed Sen. John Sparks (D-Norman) in January of 2019. Sen. Floyd will be the first woman to lead a caucus in the Oklahoma Senate.

State Sen. Kay Floyd has been awarded the 2017 Guardian Award by the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women (OCSW). The presentation took place Wednesday at the state Capitol. The award is given each year to an elected official who has made significant governmental contributions to guarding, protecting and preserving the rights of women and families.

According to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, more than 1,900 rapes were reported in the state in 2015 alone. Sexual assault forensic evidence kits help collect and preserve evidence following an assault, but there is no law in Oklahoma requiring these kits to be tracked or tested, and national data suggests some kits may never be tested. It’s an issue Sen. Kay Floyd has been working to address this session.

One in every 30 children in the U.S. are homeless, and Sen. Kay Floyd wants to ensure that Oklahoma’s children don’t fall through the cracks of society but have all the services they need to grow up healthy and independent. Senate Bill 511 instructs the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth, which is the agency that serves at-risk youth, to include recommendations for the development and improvement of services for homeless children and youth in their annual report.

State Sen. J.J. Dossett has cleared the first hurdle for legislation banning vaping in school. The Senate Education Committee on Tuesday gave unanimous approval to Senate Bill 33, a measure to expand the Tobacco-Free Schools Act to ban the use of any vaping products, including noncombustible devices as well as the cartridges, whether or not they contain nicotine. The ban applies to any public or private school buildings and vehicles.

State Sen. J.J. Dossett has filed legislation to assure students, parents and educators that the results of a single high-stakes reading test won’t cause children to be held back. Dossett, a former teacher, said when the Reading Sufficiency Act (RSA) was originally approved in 2011, the idea was to use a federally-mandated reading test to determine whether kids could continue to the fourth grade.

Oklahoma has a ban on tobacco products for public and private school buildings and vehicles. After conducting an interim study this fall, state Sen. J.J. Dossett has filed legislation for the 2019 session that would extend that ban to vaping.

The Oklahoma Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to legislation that preserves and strengthens landmark workers’ compensation reforms adopted in 2013. House Bill 2367 passed unanimously and now goes to the governor’s desk for consideration.

Senator Julie Daniels, Senate Judiciary Committee chair, is the Senate author of the bill and said HB 2367 clarifies and secures the reforms while addressing a number of issues that have arisen since passage of the original bill.

Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat criticized the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s use of the “special law” provision of the Oklahoma Constitution to strike down the non-economic damages cap of landmark lawsuit reform laws.