The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Both the Texas Senate and House of Representatives voted to accept the conference committee report for Senate Bill 8, the so-called “deregulation” bill, which will now be sent to the governor. The Senate vote was taken along strict partisan lines, while the House vote was more bipartisan. The House and Senate votes are available below. The bill will go into effect 90 days after it is signed or allowed to go into effect by the governor unless the bill is vetoed. A veto is possible but unlikely, given the fact that Gov. Perry specifically added the subject of school district efficiency to the call of the special session, and the proponents of the bill argue that it will make school districts more efficient by giving them more flexibility to deal with management and personnel decisions at the local level.
THE GOOD news is that the bill does not change class-size caps in grades K through 4, nor does it eliminate the state minimum salary schedule as had been proposed in previous incarnations of the bill. Language drafted by TCTA that will reformulate the driver creating the minimum salary schedule is included in both versions of SB 1, the bill that must pass for the state to be able to fund public schools and amend school finance formulas in order to distribute about $4 billion in cuts to those formulas.
The path of SB 1 remains uncertain, though it is “must pass” legislation. It was the filibuster of this bill at the end of the regular session that triggered the immediate special session. Once again, legislators are running out of time with the special session scheduled to end at midnight on Wednesday.
THE BAD news is that SB 8 would make several permanent harmful changes to teacher contractual rights and enable districts to reduce teacher pay and put teachers on unpaid furloughs. The bill would change the date by which districts must notify teachers on probationary and term contracts from the current 45th day prior to the last day of instruction to the 10th day prior, leaving teachers uncertain about their contractual status until near the end of the school year and giving nonrenewed teachers less time to find other jobs.
Districts would also be able to use the much easier nonrenewal hearing process for mid-contract terminations based upon a reduction in force for financial exigencies. This process is made even easier for districts with more than 5,000 students by giving them the option to hold the hearings before an attorney hired by the district instead of before the full school board or an independent hearing examiner appointed by the commissioner as under current law.
Even the independent hearing examiner process for terminations has been made less fair and more susceptible to litigation due to a change added on the House floor during SB 8 debate. The amendment would allow school boards to change determinations made by the hearing officer as to whether there is good cause to terminate a teacher.
As expected, the bill eliminates the current requirement that reductions in personnel for teachers on continuing contracts be based on reverse order of seniority. In an unexpected twist, an amendment added on the House floor that stayed in the final bill would require districts to primarily base such reductions in personnel on the teachers’ appraisals, going against the theme of deregulation. (Note: the majority of teachers in Texas are on term contracts; only a handful of school districts offer continuing contracts, and only teachers in those districts are affected by this particular provision.)
Also as expected, the bill will allow districts to lower teacher salaries by eliminating the provision of the Education Code that requires districts to pay currently employed teachers at least as much as they made in the 2010-11 school year. An amendment supported by TCTA would require districts implementing a general reduction of salaries to include administrators and other professional employees in the salary reductions. The bill would also allow districts to put teachers on unpaid furloughs for up to 6 non-instructional days. As the bill will not go into effect until after educators have begun teaching under their contracts for the next school year, it is expected that most of the provisions of the bill will not go into effect until the 2012-13 school year, although there will likely be much litigation over this issue.
THE UGLY (and sad) part is that despite the heroic efforts of our legislative allies and those of you who contacted your legislators, the deregulation bill that was narrowly averted during the regular session has, unfortunately, passed both chambers during the special session and is on its way to the governor. How and whether this new local authority will be used will be determined by your local administrators and school board members, though SB 8 does provide some useful procedural provisions that will provide teachers the opportunity to know what is coming.
We will be providing further details and suggestions in the coming weeks and months.
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The House vote on SB 8:
AYES - 80
Aliseda(R); Anderson, Charles(R); Anderson, Rodney(R); Aycock(R); Beck(R); Berman(R); Bonnen(R); Branch(R); Burkett(R); Button(R); Cain(R); Callegari(R); Chisum(R); Christian(R); Cook(R); Craddick(R); Creighton(R); Crownover(R); Davis, John(R); Davis, Sarah(R); Eissler(R); Elkins(R); Fletcher(R); Flynn(R); Frullo(R); Garza(R); Geren(R); Gonzales, Larry(R); Hancock(R); Hardcastle(R); Harless(R); Harper-Brown(R); Hartnett(R); Hilderbran(R); Howard, Charlie(R); Huberty(R); Hughes(R); Hunter(R); Isaac(R); Jackson, Jim(R); Keffer(R); King, Phil(R); Kleinschmidt(R); Kolkhorst(R); Kuempel(R); Larson(R); Laubenberg(R); Lavender(R); Legler(R); Lyne(R); Madden(R); Margo(R); Miller, Doug(R); Miller, Sid(R); Morrison(R); Murphy(R); Nash(R); Orr(R); Otto(R); Parker(R); Paxton(R); Perry(R); Price(R); Schwertner(R); Scott(R); Sheets(R); Sheffield(R); Shelton(R); Simpson(R); Smith, Todd(R); Smith, Wayne(R); Smithee(R); Solomons(R); Taylor, Larry(R); Truitt(R); Weber(R); Woolley(R); Workman(R); Zedler(R); Zerwas(R)
NAYS - 63
Allen(D); Alonzo(D); Alvarado(D); Brown, Fred(R); Burnam(D); Carter(R); Castro(D); Coleman(D); Darby(R); Davis, Yvonne(D); Deshotel(D); Dukes(D); Dutton(D); Eiland(D); Farias(D); Farrar(D); Gallego(D); Giddings(D); Gonzales, Veronica(D); Gonzalez, Naomi(D); Gooden(R); Guillen(D); Gutierrez(D); Hamilton(R); Hernandez Luna(D); Hochberg(D); Hopson(R); Howard, Donna(D); Johnson(D); King, Susan(R); King, Tracy(D); Landtroop(R); Lewis(R); Lozano(D); Marquez(D); Martinez(D); Martinez Fischer(D); McClendon(D); Menendez(D); Miles(D); Munoz(D); Naishtat(D); Oliveira(D); Patrick, Diane(R); Pena(R); Phillips(R); Pickett(D); Pitts(R); Quintanilla(D); Raymond(D); Reynolds(D); Riddle(R); Ritter(R); Rodriguez(D); Strama(D); Thompson(D); Torres(R); Turner, Sylvester(D); Veasey(D); Villarreal(D); Vo(D); Walle(D); White(R)
PRESENT-NOT-VOTING - 1
Straus(R)
ABSENT - 6
Anchia (D); Bohac(R); Driver(R); Lucio III(D); Mallory Caraway(D); Taylor, Van(R)
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The Senate vote on SB 8:
AYES - 19
Birdwell(R); Carona(R); Deuell(R); Duncan(R); Eltife(R); Estes(R); Fraser(R); Harris(R); Hegar(R); Huffman(R); Jackson, Mike(R); Nelson(R); Nichols(R); Ogden(R); Patrick, Dan(R); Seliger(R); Shapiro(R); Wentworth(R); Williams(R)
NAYS - 11
Davis, Wendy(D); Ellis(D); Gallegos(D); Hinojosa(D); Lucio(D); Rodriguez(D); Uresti(D); Van de Putte(D); Watson(D); Whitmire(D); Zaffirini(D)
