What does SB 8 mean for you?

Senate Bill 8 passed during the June 2011 special session. The bill makes significant changes to teacher benefits and legal protections. Gov. Rick Perry has until July 19 to either veto or sign the bill; if that date passes without action from the governor, SB 8 will become law.

Salary

• Your district can lower your salary below current (2010-11) levels.
• The current state minimum salary schedule remains in place, so your salary cannot go below the state minimum for your salary step.
• Most likely (although it will probably be subject to litigation) any reductions in salary from your 2010-11 compensation will not happen for the upcoming (2011-12) school year, since the law will not go into effect until this fall, after teachers are working under the terms of an existing contract.
• Your district can choose to implement a furlough program, which is another method of lowering salaries. A furlough program would mean that the district could reduce your required days of service by up to 6 non-instructional days, unpaid; a 6-day furlough would have the effect of lowering annual salary by 3.2%, for a teacher on a 187-day contract. Any reduction in salary under the furlough program must be equally distributed over the course of the contract.
• If your district lowers salaries or implements furloughs, administrators and other professional employees must also be subject to the reductions/furloughs at the same level.

(Support personnel are not subject to the salary schedule, are not on contracts, and are not included in the provisions above that apply to professional employees. However, districts already have the flexibility to lower salaries or implement furloughs for these employees, and could choose to include them in a general salary reduction/furlough program.)

Legal rights/protections

• Your district can now wait until near the end of the spring semester – 10 days prior to the last day of instruction – to notify you whether your contract will be renewed for the upcoming school year. Under current law, the notice deadline is 45 days prior to the last day of instruction, which is generally in mid-April.
• If your district declares a “financial exigency” (for which there is no definition in law), it will be much easier to terminate teacher contracts mid-year. Under current law, there is a higher level of teacher due process because the district is essentially breaking the contract (and a teacher doing the same would be subject to certification sanctions). The revised law makes it as easy to terminate mid-year under a financial exigency as it is to nonrenew a contract at the end of the term.
• For teachers in a district with more than 5,000 students, the district can choose to hold hearings (for nonrenewals or when a teacher appeals a mid-year termination) before an attorney hired by the district, instead of before an independent hearing examiner or having the full hearing before the school board.
• The hearing process for those teachers who do get a hearing with an independent hearing officer for a contract termination for good cause was made less fair (and will probably be more susceptible to litigation): School boards will now be allowed to change a determination by the hearing officer regarding whether there was good cause to terminate the contract.
• If you are a teacher employed under a continuing contract (most teachers have a term contract), your seniority will no longer protect you if the district implements a reduction in force for a financial exigency. And a provision was added to specifically require that these continuing contract terminations be based primarily on teacher appraisals.
• A teacher facing potential contract termination for good cause can, under current law, be suspended without pay instead of termination. The new language will also allow suspension without pay while the termination is pending.

Other provisions

• The “driver” that exists in current law to ensure that the state minimum salary schedule automatically rises with increases in state funding formulas was retained, thanks to language proposed and drafted by TCTA.
• Some protections were put in place in districts considering a furlough program:
  • If a district adopts a furlough program after it is too late for teachers to resign without penalty (45 days before the first day of instruction), the law that allows the district to request that the teacher’s certificate be sanctioned for contract abandonment will not apply.
  • The district must involve professional staff and provide employees with an opportunity to express opinions at a public meeting.
  • At the public meeting the school board must present information regarding options for managing available resources, including consideration of a tax rate increase and use of the available fund balance.
  • The board must also provide an explanation of how implementation of the furlough program is intended to limit the number of contract nonrenewals or terminations.
  • Furlough days will not constitute a break in service for TRS purposes, but also will not count as days of service (an issue when calculating the 90 days of service needed to obtain a year of service credit).

• Candidates for teacher certification must complete 15 hours of field-based experience in which they are actively engaged in instructional or educational activities.
• A superintendent’s contract can be amended by the district in the case of a financial exigency; in such a situation the superintendent can resign without penalty by providing reasonable notice.
• School districts are required to assess physical fitness only for those students in grade three or higher who are enrolled in a PE course.
• The bill requires the commissioner to establish minimum criteria to be met before a district can declare a financial exigency.

NOTE: In various incarnations, SB 8 and other “deregulation” bills included additional provisions, including class-size expansion and others, that did not end up in the final version of the bill.