Deregulation bill advances
Most of the legislative action took place in the Senate today as two education-related bills modified by the House came back for consideration. SB 8, the “deregulation” bill, returned to the Senate with more than 20 House amendments. Sen. Florence Shapiro moved that the Senate not concur in these amendments. Sen. Wendy Davis, who filibustered the school finance bill that did not contain any deregulation measures at the end of the regular session, called a point of order on three amendments. These were amendment #18, replacing seniority with teacher appraisal results as the chief consideration for districts in deciding which teachers holding continuing contracts to include in a reduction in force; amendment #20, allowing school district boards of trustees to accept, reject or modify an independent hearing examiner’s conclusions of law regarding good cause in cases involving suspension without pay or termination of teachers’ contracts; and amendment #25, requiring that individual employees be provided with written notice by their organizations of the amount of dues to be payroll-deducted from their checks before the organization would be eligible to receive these funds from the district. After a private conference at the lieutenant governor’s desk, Sen. Davis agreed to withdraw her points of order on amendments #18 and #20, in exchange for an agreement to instruct the Senate conferees not to include amendment #25 in the negotiations. The compromise was accepted by Sen. Shapiro. The Senate agreed not to concur with SB 8, and the conferees representing the Senate will be Senators Florence Shapiro, Robert Duncan, Jane Nelson, Dan Patrick and Kel Seliger.
Also on the Senate side was SB 6, which relates to instructional materials including textbooks and technology. Sen. Shapiro raised a point of order on amendment #1, which was proposed by her House counterpart Public Education Committee Chair Rob Eissler and would have delayed implementation of the end-of-course exams approved by legislators in the 2009 session. The parliamentarian indicated that the amendment was not germane to the bill, thus removing it from consideration in conference committee. The Senate refused to concur with SB 6 and named Senators Florence Shapiro, Chris Harris, Jane Nelson, Dan Patrick and Leticia Van de Putte as the Senate conferees on this bill.
The House voted to postpone until Wednesday HB 20 and HB 21. HB 20 modifies the law relating to contract nonrenewals to require that notice be delivered personally or by certified mail to the individual whose contract is recommended for nonrenewal, not later than the 15th day before the last day of instruction (current law provides for notice not later than the 45th day prior to the last day of instruction). HB 21 provides that for those districts offering continuing contracts (rather than term contracts, which are far more common), the provision in current law governing continuing contracts be modified to delete the requirement that reductions in force take place in reverse order of seniority. Both of these issues are encompassed, though in slightly different forms, in the House version of SB 8.
What’s Next?
The House will now name its conferees for SB 6 and SB 8, and the five representatives from the House and the Senate will convene to negotiate the differences between the House and Senate versions of these two bills. Assuming that an agreement is reached, what is known as a conference committee report (which reflects the negotiated terms) will go back to both the House and the Senate for an up or down vote, with no amendments. If the same version of these bills is approved by both chambers via approval of the conference committee reports, they will be on their way to the governor’s desk.
Tomorrow’s update will include additional detail about some of the key differences between the House and Senate versions of SB 8 that will be the subject of negotiations.
