ISTA reacts to passage of HB 1005
03/10/2016
In the closing day of the 2016 General Assembly, the Senate heard the controversial bill, HB 1005, for a final vote. The Senate voted 33 – 17 to send the bill to Gov. Pence, but not before a dramatic and contentious debate on the Senate floor.
ISTA quickly became the target after challenging Senate leaders on their promises last week to work with teachers to discuss options to alleviate the teacher shortage. Sen. Carlin Yoder (R – Middlebury) used his time on the floor to accuse ISTA of being liars and spreading misinformation.
“I am fed up, frustrated and done,” said Sen. Yoder.
ISTA challenged Conference Committee members yesterday once the Conference Committee Report containing the supplemental pay issue. Language allowing superintendent supplemental pay for Advanced Placement teachers did appear in both SB 10 and HB 1004 and reappeared in the Conference Committee Report breaking last week’s promises.
After killing HB 1004 earlier this session, Sen. Long told his hometown newspaper that the issue of administrators giving supplemental pay was dead for the session:
“It has been misconstrued or misperceived as something that is actually anti-teacher. That’s not the case,” he said. “But I think the perception of it is negative at this point in the teaching profession.”
Long said the concept was meant to help with the state’s teacher shortage, which he called a real problem.
“We need to solve it. We tried to do a market-based approach on that and it was perceived as upsetting the entire apple cart of teacher salaries,” he said.
As passed, HB 1005 will allow administrators to give supplemental pay bonuses to Advanced Placement teachers outside of collective bargaining. In addition, it expands the parameters around Indiana's costly private school voucher program by allowing any eligible student to apply for a second semester voucher. Lastly, it will allow a school administrator and two teachers the ability to create a career pathway and mentorship program that would create salary differences in the teaching workforce, depending on roles and responsibilities. These decisions and salary differentials will be outside of the collective bargaining process, and therefore, outside of deficit finance restrictions.
ISTA will continue to be an advocate to ensure that all students have a qualified and caring teacher in EVERY classroom because we are Indiana’s teachers—and no one is fighting harder every day, for the best public schools for our kids.