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By Otto Fajen
MNEA Legislative Director

URGE LEGISLATORS TO ATTEND “FIRST FREEDOM EVENT”
Missouri NEA is helping to sponsor an important legislative event concerning legislative religious liberty issues. The First Freedom event will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007 at 5:30 p.m. at the First Baptist Church, 301 East Capitol Ave., Jefferson City, MO. Religious liberty issues affect the very cornerstone of democracy in America and continue to be debated in the legislature, year-after-year.

Please help support this important event by contacting your senator and representative to urge them to attend. The event will provide both new and experienced legislators an opportunity for dinner and relaxed dialogue about legislative religious liberty issues with leaders from a number of interested groups.

The event is sponsored by: Missouri National Education Association; Americans United for Separation of Church & State; Baptist General Convention of Missouri; Jewish Community Relations Council, St. Louis; Women’s Voices Raised for Social Justice; Seventh Day Adventist Iowa-Missouri Conference; Christian Science Committee on Publications For Missouri; Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Missouri; Anti-Defamation League Missouri & Southern Illinois; The Ethical Society of St. Louis; and, Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee-Kansas City.

NEW TAX CREDIT VOUCHER BILL FILED: THIS YEAR’S 65% DECEPTION
Rep. Ed Robb recently filed House Bill 498—the new version of the tax credit voucher bill. This year, the bill is known as the “Milton Friedman 'Put Parents in Charge' Education Program.” Serving as this year’s version of the “65% Deception,” the bill would create a 65 percent tax credit for donations to private scholarship funds providing payments for low-income students in unaccredited or provisionally accredited districts to attend private or religious schools or out-of-district public schools. House members are under intense lobbying pressure to support this bill.

The bill allows up to $40 million per year in tax credits for “contributions” to scholarship funds to be used to fund private and religious school tuition payments for low-income students in St. Louis City, Wellston and Kansas City. One new wrinkle for this year allows nearby school districts to volunteer to accept students prior to allowing students to choose non-public schools. As in previous years, however, this bill does nothing to fulfill the state’s primary duty: to establish and maintain quality public schools. The credits would reduce state revenues by a like amount, reduce funds for the affected public schools and force the state to forego real opportunities to help all public school students or to fund specific programs to help struggling students in urban public schools, such as early childhood education or after school programs.

Missouri NEA strongly opposes any measure to transfer state funds to private, religious or home schools that are not accountable to the standards placed on public schools. With the growing efforts of extreme, out-of-state interest groups such as All Children Matter, these new efforts to enact tax credit vouchers present an extra challenge. MNEA needs active participation of members speaking to legislators, fellow educators and the public on the importance of this issue to all Missourians.

STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS
Gov. Matt Blunt delivered the State of the State Address at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 24. The full text of the address is available at: http://gov.missouri.gov/State_of_the_State_2007.htm.

Gov. Blunt spoke about a number of topics, including healthcare and education. He also called on the legislature to cut taxes to return the budget “surplus.” His tax proposal is a reduction of personal income taxes on Social Security income. This proposal, unfortunately, will primarily benefit wealthy seniors. Also, the proposal will permanently reduce state revenues at a time when that revenue is needed to restore public investment in underfunded services, such as K-12 education, higher education and health insurance for the working poor.

Blunt’s budget will continue to fund the seven-year phase-in of the Senate Bill 287 (2005) formula for K-12 education. S.B. 287 locks the $800 million in underfunding of the old formula in place. This conveniently removed the proration factor, since the low proration was a dead giveaway to a court that the state is underfunding education, even by its own funding standards. Next year’s formula aid will still be 70 percent determined by last year’s massively underfunded formula and, yet, if the legislature appropriates the estimated $133 million needed to fund the second year phase in, the formula will continue to be “fully funded.” MNEA believes that common sense, data-driven revisions to the state’s school funding formula are still needed. The Augenblick adequacy study shows that Missouri’s current formula was more than $900 million short of adequate funding when it was last fully funded in F.Y. 2001. The new formula base level funding and at-risk, special education and ESL aid should be raised to research-based figures, and the new formula should be funded within three years.

SCHOOL RETIREMENT LEGISLATION
Sen. Rob Mayer filed Senate Bill 244. The bill will enact a five-year extension for two key provisions of PSRS law: the “25-and-Out” option and the enhanced 2.55 percent benefit factor for retirees with 31 years of service or more. Rep. Tom Dempsey plans to file similar legislation very soon. Both provisions will expire on June 30, 2008, if not re-enacted prior to that date.

Missouri NEA strongly supports this legislation. A logical system for teacher retirement must take several factors into account. Teaching is demanding and requires teachers to have a positive attitude in order to deal well with public school children. Teachers and other education employees who have 25 or more years in the profession should continue to have the option of retiring with a fair return for their years of service. At the same time, educators who choose to give more years of service, from 30 to 35 years, should be rewarded with even higher levels of retirement benefits.

The Association will need active involvement of members to support passage of these provisions this session. Active employees nearing eligibility for retirement need to have these provisions renewed this session so they can make appropriate plans for future employment with an accurate knowledge of whether these options will be available after June 30, 2008.

HOUSE COMMITTEES
Standing and special House committee rosters been completed and are available at:
http://www.house.mo.gov/default.aspx?info=/bills071/commit/commlst.htm.

NEXT WEEK’S HOUSE APPROPRIATION–EDUCATION COMMITTEE
The House Appropriations–Education Committee will meet on Jan. 29 and 30 to hear a presentation from DESE on the school aid formula. The role of the committee has changed from previous years. Traditionally, the Appropriations–Education Committee would perform “mark up” of the originally filed appropriations bills for K-12 education (House Bill 2) and higher education (H.B. 3). Mark up means making detailed revisions to the specific appropriations levels through a formal amendment process. This year, the Appropriations–Education Committee will not perform mark up, but will, instead, make recommendations to the Budget Committee regarding programs, that is, recommend funding of new programs, elimination of existing programs and other program changes.

SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE
The Senate Education Committee met on Wednesday, Jan 24 and heard the following bills:

1. Senate Bill 6 (John Loudon) establishes the "Safe Schools Fund" and allows school districts to use $9 million per year in per pupil funds to be used on a variety of safety-related expenses. The Association supports the additional funding in the bill and suggests the committee consider options to more equitably and efficiently target some of the funds to districts with higher school safety expenses, rather than relying solely on pupil attendance count.
2. Senate Bill 64 (Jack Goodman) establishes new limits on school term starting dates. The bill requires the State Board of Education to establish a range of dates when school districts may begin their regular school term. The range may extend no earlier than 10 days before Labor Day. Districts may start up to seven days earlier than the earliest date set by the state board, after holding a public hearing on the proposed date. Missouri NEA opposes the original bill. Sen. Charlie Shields suggested a compromise during the hearing. Shields compromise proposal would allow districts to set any start date, but would require a public hearing first if the proposed date is more than 10 days before Labor Day.
3. Senate Bill 106 (Chuck Graham) adds voting student members to the governing boards of the University of Missouri, Missouri State University and Truman State University.

CAPITOL ACTION DAYS
MNEA’s Capitol Action Days offer a chance to educate legislators about public education issues. Capitol Action Days will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays starting with the first week in February and continuing through the first week of May. Your MNEA calendar includes the dates that MNEA Board of Directors members selected for your governance district. If you are not able to attend on these designated days, feel free to contact Otto Fajen (otto.fajen@mnea.org) to arrange to attend a different Capitol Action Day. Each Capitol Action Day will start with a briefing at 10:00 a.m. to provide you with the most up-to-date information.

PLAN TO ATTEND YOUR MNEA LEGISLATIVE BRUNCH
Legislative involvement is close to home at your MNEA Legislative Brunch. The brunch is a great opportunity to visit with local area legislators and hear a legislative briefing.

Area legislative brunch schedule:
Kansas City – Jan. 27, 2007
St. Louis – Feb. 10, 2007
Jefferson County (Festus) – Feb. 24, 2007
St. Charles – Mar. 3, 2007

Legislative Update 2007
Missouri National Education Association
1810 East Elm Street
Jefferson City, MO 65101-4174
(573) 634-3202 or (800) 392-0236

Greg Jung, President
Ben Simmons, Executive Director
DeeAnn Aull, Director of Programs and Public Relations
Leila Medley, Political Director
Otto Fajen, Legislative Director
Judy Glover, Secretary