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Take Action: Tell legislators to work with local teachers to create career pathways
01/29/2016

 

Oppose%20HB%201005%20-%20FB.pngHB 1005 (Rep. Dale Devon, R-South Bend) creates a career pathways and mentorship program to provide salary supplements for teachers who take on additional responsibilities and who are effective educators. ISTA certainly supports, and has advocated for, increased professional wages, more adequate career earnings and greater respect for the profession overall. In fact, there are examples all over the state where these kinds of arrangements have been negotiated. Testimony in committee bore this out as well.

 

However, HB 1005 gives less than a handful of people (2 teachers and a principal or a superintendent) the authority to change the landscape for every teacher.

 

Supporters of the concept touted programs already in existence created through bargaining with local educators. Outrageously, they want to take from the successes already seen in school districts and remove the collective voice of the teachers so that a few can work their personal agenda on others.

 

There is also no way to sustain an embedded program like this into the future without additional state dollars. At its core, this bill is about removing local teachers from decision-making, not infusing it.

 

Additionally, the bill does provide that an elementary or high school teacher who receives a rating of ineffective or improvement necessary is not prohibited from receiving a raise or increment from the following year as current law regulates. But middle school teachers are still omitted and there are other bills fixing this problem. There is no need for HB 1005 to move forward.

 

Please tell your legislator to vote “no” on HB 1005.

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