The three days of hearings that had been scheduled to start Monday on controversial education bills introduced yesterday have been called off. "We decided to hold off on the hearings for a week, refine some numbers and see if we can reach a consensus on what we're going to do," House Speaker Lawerence Denney said. "We may have a better picture of what the federal government is going to do." A new version of the bills, which proposed permanent changes in state law to allow school budget cuts and also proposed putting all teachers on one-year contracts, likely will emerge, Denney said, or amendments to the current bills. "What we were interested in looking at is a sunset or some type of trigger mechanism in the bill," he said. As for the contracts issue, he said, "That's still up for negotiation."

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