From board (bored?) meetings to House bills… this blog gets drier and duller as the weeks go by. I’m inside looking up House bill 1410 and Senate Bill 5444 and the boys are outside playing catch… little league draft is only three weeks away. Yes, here in the Kirkland Little League we start the draft in third grade. Ostensibly it is to “even up” the teams; and everyone is placed, but the pressures for the parents who say things like “it’s just a chance to show the coaches that you want to be there” in their sleep and pop Prilosec by the dozen, well it’s just plain crazy.
I received the following e-mail from a respected friend and felt that I owed her the courtesy of seriously looking into these potential new laws. And I am in over my head. Here is the e-mail; straight from the League of Education Voters website, ready for you to send out to friends and family, with a topical rant from my MSW friend and Seattle mother of two:
Sorry for the following rant, but I'm horrified at what might happen to our public K-12 education if these education finance bills do not make it out of committee. Our state is ranked the 8th worst in providing education dollars per student - and to think of all the wealth (think Microsoft, Amazon etc.) in the Puget Sound area - it is shameful, really.
There is House Bill 1410 and Senate Bill 5444 - they adopt the recommendations made by the Basic Education Finance Task Force. It provides a comprehensive plan for building a K-12 system that prepares our kids for life well after high school, and it asks for some profound changes to our state's education system. Apparently, the word in Olympia is that they are not hearing much from south end parents (Seattle), and thus our reps are not assuming much responsibility for this legislation, and certainly are not taking any leadership role (except Senator Adam Kline - he decided to sponsor the bill after hearing from constituents).
It takes 2 minutes to call - that is what I did. However, I just received an email (excerpt below), that states legislators are counting the # of emails they receive, so that may be a better way for you to act. I think it is easy to feel like you have no influence, but let's face it, politicians are, well, politicians, and they want to get re-elected, so your tiny phone message or email to them is a real threat to their political career, and they just may listen to it. Please take a minute to email or write. If you want more info, a good website is www.educationvoters.org - they even have a "Talking Points" link, as well as the bills in their entirety. Oh, after you call/write , insist your partner do the same, then send this out to others you know who give a damn about a free and adequate public education system.
(Excerpt from League of Education Voters letter below):
The momentum is building to change the outcome of children's lives across our state—and it's all because of you. Your attendance at the hearings and your e-mails are making a difference. But I bet you're asking, what's next?A legislator told me this week that our House and Senate leaders are counting the number of e-mails in support of Senate Bill 5444 and House Bill 1410.Please take just a few minutes to send a message to our state lawmakers so our Governor, and Senate and House leaders can see just how much support is behind these bills.Here's how you can take action today:
· Send your state lawmakers an e-mail. Legislative e-mail addresses arelastname.firstname@leg.wa.gov. If you don't know your legislators' names, click here to find out.
· Or, call your state lawmakers via the legislative hotline at 1-(800) 562-6000.
· Send Gov. Chris Gregoire a message.
· Tell them you support Senate Bill 5444 and House Bill 1410 and include a personal reason why you support these bills.
For more information about SB 5444 and HB 1410, click here.
Peter Callaghan, a writer for the Tacoma News Tribune, had this to say about the bills and the hearings: “The report of the Basic Education Finance Task Force called for a new way of paying and promoting teachers, the first foray into performance pay and for limiting the money flowing from local levies to salaries – issues of concern to the teachers union.
But it also had lots the union should like, especially a proposed 54 percent increase in state support for schools with a good chunk going toward increased teacher pay.
It also would add all-day kindergarten for parents who want it, provide 10 professional training days, provide more-generous, more-certain and legally defensible funding to districts and make early learning part of the constitutionally protected definition of basic education. It likely would lead to higher pay for teachers in high-cost-of-living districts.
Did I mention a 54 percent – at least – increase in state funding? That’s $3.53 billion more each year for K-12 education. All that was enough for the League of Education Voters, Stand for Children, the American Association of University Women, the superintendents of the big Puget Sound-area school districts, the chairwoman of the state School Board, early learning advocates and many parents to give the proposal enthusiastic support.´´
Who doesn’t support these bills? The WEA. Washington Education Association. I barely even know who they are, but in their own words: “WEA is the state's largest public employee union, along with being the dominant professional union for Washington's public school employees. WEA leaders and staff work passionately to attract and retain great teachers and support employees, to strengthen the profession, to shape education policy and to provide a unified voice in support of stronger schools.
The mission of the Washington Education Association is to advance the professional interests of its members in order to make public education the best it can be for students, staff and communities. Our goal is to build confidence in public education and increase support for Washington's public school system. WEA works to increase WEA members' professional status and job satisfaction, improve the quality of and access to public education for all students, and to forge partnerships with parents, business, other unions and community groups.”
Why is the WEA against HB 1410 and SB 5444? Some bloggers, Callaghan included, believe that it is too much change, too fast and that the teacher’s union prefers to defend the status quo, with a sedate march towards full funding for programs ALREADY on the books. Okay, that is a salient point, you much admit. They also suspect that the fact that teachers have moved heaven and earth to get their masters, doctorates and professional certifications in order to comply with current salary standards and that they will not be grandfathered into the new salary standards (if they become law) is a sticking point.
Here is what the WEA says: “HB 1410/SB 5444 is a 111-page bill that dramatically alters all aspects of K-12 public education, including certification, compensation and collective bargaining and it ignores the funding crisis facing our public schools. HB 1410/SB 5444 is a divisive distraction at a time we should be coming together to protect the basics: good teachers, reasonable class sizes and well-rounded education.
HB 1410/SB 5444 replaces the current teacher certification system with a complicated, three-tier system and it dramatically changes teacher evaluation policies. HB 1410/SB 5444 eliminates the current salary allocation model. HB 1410/SB 5444 severely limits the ability of school boards and associations to negotiate local salaries (TRI) to meet the needs of their students.
Kinda makes you feel for the legislators, doesn’t it? Folks so passionately disagreeing on educational reform and these are the education specialists! Will these bills immediately take the funding away for smaller classroom size? Seems like that should be a simple yes or no question but in the blogs, and especially the comment sections there is a rapid fire debate on just that.
Representative Ross Hunters group put out a 17 page summary of the 111 page bill; it can be found at http://whatittakesforkids.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/hb-1410-section-by-section-opr.docx.
It should be noted that this bill; 1410, came about in a bi-partisan manner, and encases the recommendations of the task force that studied Washington education matters for two years. That task force was also bi-partisan.
I’ve written too much; and not thought nearly enough about what more there is to say regarding these bills. After a two year study and bi-partisan support, as well as the support of many education groups in Washington, I still pause when presented with the bill. Where will the money come from?
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WOW. How did you have time to even look at all of this? Thank you so much for breaking it down for all of us. I just sent my email!!
ReplyDeleteI think that it is interesting how it came about, and the bias' that folks interpret different groups as having. No one that I spoke with was surprised that the WEA was against this bill; and that did not deter any of them from supporting it. Curious.
ReplyDeleteThere is fair amount of concern in higher ed, also, about this bill.
ReplyDeleteA two-year "study" means that the group met over two years, but it's not clear what information they drew from or how they sorted it out. The changes in how teacher ed would be done are very sweeping and very different from what's being done in any other state. I'm all for innovation, but I guess that I'd like to see some evidence that in the area of teacher ed a) what we're doing now is broken and b) the alternatives are going to be effective. Districts, for example, have very uneven access to technology, no access to academic materials, and are pretty uneven in how they now support new teachers.
So how did the board decide that so much more of teacher ed would be better done in districts?
And why are all of these things folded into a funding bill?
And why aren't the addressing the very very basic questions of how to better fund schools. EVERY state is grappling with alternatives to the basic property tax for school funding, yet over two years, they just didn't go there? They propose different ways to spend money on schools and they propose spending more money, but the very basic question of where stable sources of funding may come from are unaddressed.
So I was disappointed when I first saw the preliminary report.
And I wonder about the levels of funding they're talking about. They're estimating $200/student for technology, for example. That wouldn't come close to paying for basic wiring and the most basic basic equipment, let along maintenance and ongoing teacher training. I would love to know where they came up with that figure. To me, it suggests that they're not very in touch with what's going on in the worlds of tech.
There is a ton here on how teachers will be prepared, evaluated and rewarded. A ton. And there were no teachers on the board -- they were all legislators except for a superintendent, a school board member, and a governor's staff person.
So I do think that it's ok for teachers to be asking for some caution and for more discussion-- because this really isn't a funding bill. It's a bill that recommends far-reaching changes, and I'm not clear how they made some of these decisions, and I'm especially disappointed that they haven't addressed the basic question of where the money might come from.
But that's my option.
Kristin: How's the reading going for you?
Opinion. That's my opinion, not my option!
ReplyDeletepausing now before I hit "post"...!
ahh. the reading. it's all in tiny print and makes me uncomfortable. I wake up in the middle of the night and think "where am I going to get someone to speak about Martin Luther King Jr. who has the right to interpret and continue that legacy? If the teacher is a role, then how can you connect with students in a meaningful way? If it's dangerous to teach to your talents (or preferences) then where is the fun?" and other more rediculous and more immature questions.
ReplyDelete