A novelty in Connecticut

Connecticut's Senate Bill 345 would, if enacted, require the teaching of climate change "consistent with the Next Generation Science Standards" in the state's public schools, and would also task the state department of energy and environmental protection with helping local and regional school districts develop appropriate curricula to do so.

If the bill is enacted, Connecticut would apparently become the first state to require the teaching of climate change in the public schools by law. (Many states already require the teaching of climate change in effect, through its inclusion in their state science standards, but not as a matter of statutory law.)

Connecticut adopted the NGSS, where global climate change is presented as one of four sub-ideas in the core idea of Earth and Human Activity in the earth and space sciences at both the middle school and the high school level, in 2015, so presumably the bill is aimed at helping to bolster climate change's presence in Connecticut science classrooms.

Senate Bill 345 is a "raised" bill, meaning that it was introduced by a committee rather than by any individual legislators. It was introduced by the Joint Committee on Environment — in Connecticut, all legislative committees contain members of both chambers of the legislature — where it is currently awaiting a hearing.