UPDATE: Eight bad bills for education
02/04/2016
Earlier this month, ISTA identified seven bad education bills we planned to track this legislative session. During the legislative process, we have added an additional bill and have actively lobbied on all eight bills. Much work lies ahead as the legislature moves into the final half of the 2016 session.
SB 10 – Teacher Salary Supplemental Payments
Sen. Jeff Raatz, R – Richmond
In its original form, SB 10 would have allowed teachers with fewer than 10 years of teaching experience to factor up to 58 percent of the calculation to determine a teacher’s salary increase or increment. For teachers with at least 10 years of experience, it would become 33 and one-third percent. The bill would have decoupled experience from educational attainment providing an additional factor for salaries. ISTA supported the original bill.
However, the bill was significantly amended in committee. As it stands now, SB 10 would give administrators the authority to pay certain teachers more, at the expense of every other teacher. The language is so broad as to render it meaningless in its implementation—giving the administration the ability to take funds off the top of already constrained budgets.
As amended, salary bonuses can be handled in executive session—obscuring that information from the public’s knowledge at the school board’s discretion.
ISTA opposes this bill in its current form.
STATUS: Referred to the House
SB 379 – Individual Teacher Contracts
Sen. Pete Miller, R – Avon
SB 379 would have given a teacher licensed in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) the option of individually negotiating a separate contract, negating the collective bargaining unit within a school and pitting teacher against teacher. The bill would have created winners and losers—contrary to the motivation many individuals have when entering the profession and devaluing most subject matters and grade-level teaching. To advocate for greater pay for STEM teachers may sound plausible, but it doesn’t work in the real world, nor is it fair. If we start cherry-picking certain teachers to pay more, the majority of other teachers will be paid less. Making non-STEM teaching jobs less desirable would no doubt further exacerbate the teacher shortage and further harm students.
Thanks to advocates who contacted Senate Education Committee members opposing the bill, SB 379 was never heard in committee.
STATUS: Dead
HB 1004 – Stipends for a Few Individual Teachers/Defined Contribution Plan
Rep. Bob Behning, R – Indianapolis
HB 1004 would allow school administrators unilaterally, and behind closed doors, to offer extra pay to certain teachers. The extra pay will come out of the pockets of every other teacher as this bill does not include funding.
HB 1004 also would include a new 401(k)-style defined contribution (DC) teacher retirement program as an alternative to the existing defined benefit (DB) pension/annuity plan. Supporters of this plan released a letter from the Indiana Public Retirement System (INPRS) purporting to relieve everyone from concerns that this proposed DC plan would not negatively impact the stability of Indiana’s current retirement plan for teachers. The letter gave little relief to those who understand the true impact of divesting from our healthy retirement fund.
Soundness of the fund is always a concern, of course. What the INPRS letter doesn’t directly say is that this new DC plan will cost about $1 million in upfront costs incurred by INPRS and could cost employers--our local school districts--even more as they try to fund the existing defined benefit (DB) retirement plan. If the employer contribution rate rises, that leaves fewer dollars on the table with which to bargain salary and wages for school employees. Less funding results in suppressed career salary earnings, which directly impacts a teacher’s pension, because one’s pension is partly determined by one’s highest five years of salary.
HB 1004 doesn’t address what might happen to a teacher who opts into a DC plan in one school district, but then moves to another where the DC plan is not offered. Legislators haven’t spent a moment studying the creation of a voluntary DC plan for teachers, nor its true short- and long-term consequences.
ISTA will continue to oppose this bill as it works its way through the Senate.
STATUS: Referred to the Senate
HB 1005 – Career Pathways
Rep. Dale Devon, R – South Bend
HB 1005 would create a career pathways and mentorship program to provide salary supplements for teachers who take on additional responsibilities and are deemed 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 would give less than a handful of people (two teachers and a principal or a superintendent) the authority to change the educational and salary 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, as a result of bargaining, 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 would 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.
An amendment would establish the System for Teacher and Student Advancement performance model (TAP) administered by the State Board in consultation with the Indiana Department of Education. Additional pay for additional roles and responsibilities is currently bargainable under the existing TAP model. HB 1005 would not allow these salary supplements to be bargainable, despite second readings of House amendments to allow the local association a seat at the table.
ISTA will continue to oppose this bill in its current form as it works its way through the Senate.
STATUS: Referred to the Senate
HB 1311 – Education Savings Account Program
Rep. Tim Brown, R – Crawfordsville
HB 1311 would establish an education savings account granting parents of eligible students the ability to access to public tax dollars diverted from school corporation funding to seek out private education service providers for education expenses – a widespread expansion of voucher-like entitlements to virtually any student statewide that meets income and certain other eligibility requirements.
This bill never made it out of the House Education Committee.
STATUS: Dead
HB 1325 - Early Retirement
Rep. Wes Culver, R – Goshen
The bill would replace the rule of 85 with the rule of 95, thus ending early retirement options for most eligible employees in Indiana’s public retirement system. The bill would give public employees, including teachers, until July 1 (six months) to retire under the current Rule of 85.
Many emails were sent to legislators opposing this bill, prompting the committee chair to pull it from consideration.
STATUS: Dead
HB 1394 - Education Matters/Expansion of Innovation Network Schools
Rep. Bob Behning, R – Indianapolis
The bill would require an Innovation Network School (charter school) must give preferential treatment for admissions to students who live within the attendance area. A school board is authorized to contract with a charter school to reconstitute a community-based public school as an Innovation Network Charter School. The original bill before amendment would have allowed essentially any school to reconstitute as an Innovation Network School and have the clock reset for purposes of A-F grades and consequences.
ISTA successfully lobbied to add language mandating that a charter school may not suspend or expel a student from a charter school for the purpose of forcing that student to transfer to another school. The amendment clarified disciplinary action that is allowed by charter schools so as not to discriminate against students.
Thanks to advocacy efforts, this bill has improved significantly.
STATUS: Referred to the Senate
HB 1395 - ISTEP Rescore
Rep. Bob Behning, R – Indianapolis
The bill would require ISTEP test scores to be reported to the State Board of Education no later than July 1 of the year in which ISTEP is administered. The Indiana Department of Education would be required to release sample essay questions to show best student responses.
The bill would also establish a committee to examine Indiana’s current system of measuring student performance.
An amendment to the bill would provide that the ISTEP expire July 1, 2017. The amendment also included that a rescore of the 2014-15 ISTEP shall be decided upon by the State Board of Education. The original bill would have mandated a rescore of ISTEP at an estimated fiscal of $10 million or more in taxpayer dollars. This merely would have given a veil of legitimacy to a flawed test. Now the decision rests with the State Board. With the new federal ESSA law (reauthorization of No Child Left Behind), discussions about student testing are likely to continue this legislative session and beyond.
Thanks to advocacy efforts, this bill has improved significantly.
STATUS: Referred to the Senate