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LEGISLATURE
RETURNS FROM SPRING BREAK
The legislature took off the week of Mar. 17-21 for
spring break. The legislature returned to session on
Tuesday, Mar. 25 after taking Mar. 24 off for the Easter
Holiday.
SENATE
DEBATES SPECIAL EDUCATION VOUCHER
The Missouri Senate spent several hours on Mar. 26 debating
Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Bills 993 &
770 (Jason Crowell). Sen. Crowell offered a Senate Substitute
on the floor. Several amendments were offered, but the
bill did not come to a vote and was laid over.
The bill
would create an 80 percent tax credit for donations
to private scholarship funds providing payments for
disabled students to attend private or religious schools
or out-of-district public schools. The bill allows an
unlimited total amount in tax credits for “contributions”
to scholarship funds, but arbitrarily limits participation
to 10 percent of disabled students.
Several Senate
Amendments were offered:
1. Sen. Chris
Koster offered S.A. 1. The amendment provides that the
public school district where a child using a scholarship
was enrolled prior to using the scholarship shall continue
to count the child for school formula aid purposes for
each year the child receives the scholarship. The amendment
was adopted.
2. Sen. Tim
Green offered S.A. 2. The amendment allows the state
auditor to audit any school district if an audit is
requested by the school board. The amendment was adopted.
3. Sen. Tim
Green offered S.A. 3. The amendment would require the
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to
recalculate state school aid for the 2006-07 school
year and succeeding years for any district that erroneously
placed part of its tax rate in capital projects rather
than the operating levy in the 2005-06 school year.
The amendment was ruled out of order and sent back.
4. Sen. Jeff
Smith offered S.A. 4. The amendment would require qualifying
schools where scholarship funds could be used to employ
at least some teachers certified in special education.
Sen. Wes Shoemyer offered Senate Substitute Amendment
1 for S.A. 4. The SSA requires parents to expressly
waive their participating student’s right to a
Free and Appropriate Education under the federal Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act if the student receives
a scholarship under the act. The SSA also requires qualifying
schools to employ certified special education teachers
and comply with several of the requirements applied
to public schools, including background checks for employees
and biennial audits. After extensive debate, the bill
was laid over with the SSA pending.
The use of
special education students to further the school privatization
agenda is an emerging trend across the nation. As with
school privatization efforts in previous years, these
bills do nothing to fulfill the state’s primary
duty: to establish and maintain quality public schools.
In particular, the bill does nothing to build the capacity
of public schools across the state to offer high quality
programs to disabled students.
One sinister
effect of the bill is to create a state-supported incentive
for disabled students to enroll in nonpublic schools
where they will forfeit their entitlement to district-funded
Free and Appropriate Public Education determined by
an Individualized Education Plan. This is especially
troubling since many private schools lack the capacity
to provide special education services and rely on local
public schools to provide special education services
for their disabled students. However, private school
students do not have an IEP and have no entitlement
to specific services under IDEA nor any right to appeal
any particular lack of special education service from
a school district.
Another troubling
feature of the bill is that the credits would reduce
state revenues by nearly a like amount and force the
state to forego real opportunities to help all public
school students or to fund specific programs to help
disabled students attending public schools. 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.
MSTA
ANTI-BARGAINING BILL FOR TEACHERS
The House Special Committee on General Laws heard House
Bill 2059 (Kevin Wilson) on Mar. 25. The Missouri State
Teachers Association urged Rep. Wilson to file the bill.
H.B. 2059 discriminates against teachers by treating
them differently, denying them their right to select
a single representative with a legal duty to represent
all employees. Missouri NEA spoke in strong opposition
to the bill.
An effective
bargaining process must have a unified employee voice.
Piecing a bargaining team together from various groups
builds a communications gap into the process and leaves
teachers scrambling for a cohesive voice. H.B. 2059
would force teachers to form a representative council,
an extra layer of bureaucracy, which would make reaching
agreement within the employee group nearly impossible.
More importantly,
the bill fails to provide a ratification step for teachers
in the agreement process. Once the “council”
reaches an agreement, the teachers represented by the
council do not get to vote to approve or reject the
agreement. This bill would make collective bargaining
a more difficult and less effective process for teachers
than for other employees, and it leaves them, once again,
with fewer rights than other public employees. Unlike
an elected representative, whose right to represent
employees can be removed if it fails to represent them
fairly, the council cannot be held accountable, disbanded
or replaced with an elected representative organization,
even if the council is totally dysfunctional.
Of the 35
states where teachers bargain collectively, no state
uses a process similar to the one proposed in H.B. 2059.
The bargaining model that has proven effective over
time in state-after-state is the exclusive representation
model. In a historic decision in May 2007, the Missouri
Supreme Court restored the right of all public employees
(including teachers) to bargain collectively with employers.
MSTA fought against collective bargaining for years
and filed a brief last year urging the Supreme Court
to deny teachers a voice in the collective bargaining
process,
Missouri
NEA believes that H.B. 2030 (Jenee` Lowe) and S.B. 1115
(Joan Bray) will treat all employees affected by the
court decision fairly. H.B. 2030 and S.B. 1115 were
built on consensus among public employee groups, including
teachers. Missouri NEA believes every child has the
basic right to attend a great public school, and nothing
should dilute the voice of teachers in how that is accomplished.
ABCTE
The House Special Committee on Student Achievement will
hear Senate Bill 1066 (Luann Ridgeway) at 3:00 p.m.
on Mar. 31. The bill requires the State Board of Education
to certify teachers passing the test established by
the American Board for the Certification of Teacher
Excellence.
The bill
passed the Senate after several additional changes were
negotiated by Sen. Joan Bray and Sen. Luann Ridgeway.
Sen. Ridgeway agreed that, if the bill was allowed to
proceed to a vote, she would seek to have those improvements
incorporated in the House committee: requiring successful
teaching evaluations each year to maintain the certificate,
using a state-approved district mentoring program in
preference to an ABCTE mentoring program and requiring
all ABCTE certified teachers to pass the Praxis II exam
on pedagogy to maintain their certificate.
While MNEA
continues to have concerns that ABCTE testing does not
fully evaluate both content knowledge and teaching competency,
these concessions will help make sure the ABCTE certificate
functions more like other alternative certification
routes. All of the improvements and safeguards included
or proposed for the bill: limiting of subject areas
to exclude elementary and special education, inclusion
of a sunset clause, requiring the Praxis II test and
requiring successful evaluations each year to maintain
the certificate are primarily the result of Missouri
NEA’s legislative leadership and effort in standing
up for higher standards of teacher quality.
Several amendments
were adopted last week before the bill was perfected.
Senate Amendment 1 (Luann Ridgeway) adds a sunset clause
to terminate the ABCTE certification process in 2014
unless reapproved by the legislature. S.A. 1 also clarifies
that the ABCTE process cannot be used for early childhood
certification. The bill already excludes elementary
education and special education. S.A. 3 (Tim Green)
allows the state auditor to audit school districts.
S.A. 4 (Maida Coleman) provides that the commissioner
of education must get the approval of the Joint Committee
on Education for the expenditures of the $18 million
allocated annually to address statewide areas of critical
need.
SPECIAL
COMMITTEE ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
The House Special Committee on Student Achievement heard
House Bill 1544 (Kenny Jones) on Mar. 26. The bill requires
companies publishing or selling print instructional
material to provide, at no cost, electronic files of
the material when requested to do so by schools that
purchase it for use by students with print disabilities.
The bill will help public schools provide textbooks
in alternate formats for students who are unable to
use standard print documents. MNEA went on record in
support of the bill.
The committee
also voted out two House Bills:
1. H.B. 2191
(Jamilah Nasheed) was voted “do pass.” The
bill allows unaccredited school districts to apply for
participation in the A+ Schools Program.
2. House
Committee Substitute for H.B. 2159 (Jason Grill) was
voted “do pass.” The bill creates penalties
for fraudulent use of a diploma. The HCS focuses the
penalties primarily on the person using the fraudulent
diploma for personal gain, rather than the manufacturer
that produces the fraudulent diploma.
BUDGET
The House completed Third Reading (final passage) votes
on all budget bills on Mar. 27. The House budget has
reduced the governor's recommendations by a total of
more than $100 million, leaving at least another $100
million in reductions for the Senate to make to bring
the budget in line with next year’s revenue estimate.
CAPITOL
ACTION DAYS
With the shortened week following the Easter holiday,
Capitol Action Days will resume on Apr. 1, 2008.
A series
of Capitol Action Days throughout most of the session
will allow planned, face-to-face contact with legislators
throughout the session. Capitol Action Days will be
on Tuesdays and Wednesdays continuing through the first
week of May. Your MNEA calendar includes the dates that
members of the MNEA Board of Directors 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.
FINDING
INFORMATION ABOUT BILLS
To find out more about legislation this session, go
to: http://www.mnea.org/capitol/legissues.htm.
This page contains numerous links, including the NEA
Legislative Action Center, which addresses key education
issues at the federal level, and the Missouri NEA Legislative
Action Center, which will address key education issues
at the state level. This page also will contain links
to legislative updates, the MNEA Legislative Platform,
legislative priorities and other policy-related links.
To
find information about a specific bill currently pending
before the Missouri General Assembly, go to:
http://www.house.mo.gov/billcentral.aspx.
Type the bill number (example: HB1000) or sponsor name
in the “search” box to find a link to the
bill. This link will take you to a “home page”
for the bill that provides bill text, bill summaries,
fiscal notes and information on legislative action on
the bill.
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