2009 legislative session wrap up
Missouri NEA fought throughout the 2009 legislative session
for its priorities for children and public education. A key
focus was to protect and expand collective bargaining rights
for all education employees. The other key effort was to maintain
and improve funding for public education and to ensure the
state maintains a fair, adequate and sustainable tax policy
to support investment in public education and other vital
services.
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protects bargaining rights for employees
Missouri
NEA supports collective bargaining rights for all education
employees. An effective bargaining process must have
a unified employee voice. MNEA supports legislation
that would treat all public employees fairly and that
is built on broad consensus among public employee groups
and public employers. An effective bargaining law must
ultimately provide for exclusive bargaining representation,
a duty for both employees and employers to bargain in
good faith, binding agreements with a clear ratification
process and a fair process to resolve impasse and grievances.
Senate
Bill 473 (Joan Bray) and House Bill 1159 (Tim Meadows)
would establish a comprehensive bargaining law for all
public employees, including all school employees. The
bills provide a simple, clear framework for a discussion
of all the key elements of a collective bargaining law.
MNEA supports both bills.
S.B.
486 (Tim Green) and H.B. 1006 (Jeff Roorda) provide
access to forming labor organizations and election of
exclusive bargaining representation for all public sector
employees, including K-12 and higher education teachers.
The bills also reflect MNEA’s work in coalition
with other public sector labor organizations and have
the support of some public employer organizations. MNEA
supports this bill as an important first step in fulfilling
the constitutional collective bargaining rights of all
public employees. S.B. 486 was heard in the Senate Small
Business Committee but was not voted on.
MSTA
again supported legislation that would have denied all
Missouri teachers the opportunity to select a bargaining
representative of their choosing through a free and
uncoerced election. H.B. 805 (Kevin Wilson) specified
that school boards would establish a policy to determine
who represents teachers in a district, but a majority
of teachers would not be guaranteed the right to elect
a unified employee voice. MNEA opposed the bill. H.B.
805 was amended onto another bill but was not included
in the bill that eventually passed.
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.
MNEA believes every student has the basic right to attend
a great public school, and nothing should dilute the
voice of teachers in how that is accomplished.
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MNEA members built relationships with legislators in support
of a consensus to support children, adequately fund public
education and respect the rights of education employees. More
than 1,000 MNEA members supported the Association’s
efforts by keeping up to date on legislative events via the
daily Legislative Update, coming to MNEA Capitol Action Days,
calling legislators or sending e-mails in response to legislative-action
alerts.
What passed?
For public education, the session was good from a
policy point of view but not so good from a funding point
of view. Following are the most important education-related
bills that passed.
Omnibus Bill
The main education bill that passed was Senate Bill
291 (Charlie Shields). This omnibus bill comprises nearly
40 separate bills in one. Key positives include district-level
teaching standards, better accountability for charter schools
and their sponsors, modest improvements to the school funding
formula, better support for students in foster care and new
programs for student mentoring, persistence to graduation
and volunteer support.
The provision of greatest concern is a mandated merit-pay
program for St. Louis City, which requires participating teachers
to permanently give up tenure in the district. The bill also
adds another alternative teacher certification specifically
for personal-finance instructors.
Other provisions will raise the compulsory attendance requirement
to 17 years of age or completion of 16 credit hours, increase
required physical activity in elementary schools and allow
school districts to choose a four-day school week.
Budget
The K-12 education budget will continue the phase-in of the
new formula. Federal budget stabilization revenues were used
to fill in the gap in state general revenue, rather than increase
funding for public education. Targeted federal stimulus funds,
primarily in Title I and special education programs, will
see significant increases for at least the next two years.
Funding for professional development, on the other hand, was
cut radically, from $15 million for the current year down
to $7 million for next year.
What didn’t pass?
Beyond the failure to use stabilzation revenues to
improve funding for public education, perhaps the greatest
disappointment is the defeat of proposed improvements to early
childhood education. Bills to establish a Quality Rating System
for early childcare, S.B. 4 (Charlie Shields) and House Bill
387 (Wayne Cooper), and to increase the childcare subsidy
eligibility for poor working parents, S.B. 94 (Jolie Justus),
were stopped this session.
Bills to allow substantive due process for teachers, S.B.
287 (Kurt Schaefer) and H.B. 1030 (Rick Stream), made more
progress this session but did not pass.
Numerous attacks on public education, in the form of mandates
for tax credit vouchers, open enrollment, weakening accountability
for discrimination in the workplace and imposing unfair provisions
that stigmatize innocent education employees accused of child
abuse or neglect were all defeated.
A host of harmful tax policy proposals that would make Missouri’s
tax policy less fair, less adequate and less sustainable were
debated but did not pass. These include eliminating the corporate
income tax, cutting income taxes mainly for the wealthy, wiping
out the income tax and imposing a massive sales tax hike,
undermining the fairness of property tax assessments and restricting
state appropriations to a consumer price growth factor that
doesn’t keep pace with the economy as a whole. None
of those provisions passed this session.
A number of joint resolutions were proposed to try to put
constitutional amendments on the November 2010 ballot. Among
these, MNEA fought the anti-union resolution known as the
“secret ballot” provision, House Joint Resolution
37 (Mike Cunningham). The resolution passed the House but
did not pass the Senate.
Learn more
For a more comprehensive list of bills that passed and those
that didn’t and for more detailed discussion on key
topics, please consult the final Missouri NEA Legislative
Update #18 (dated May 20) at www.mnea.org/publications/legislative/index.htm.
Supporting details about any specific bill can be found at
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.
by Otto
Fajen
MNEA legislative director
sb,
summer '09
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