Henry to the Rescue

Governor Henry Vetoes SB 834

Governor Brad Henry rescued Oklahoma schools today by vetoing Senate Bill 834:

While local control is an important component of a successful public education system, it is also critical to have rigorous state standards in place to produce the highest quality graduates and ensure achievement and accountability throughout the system. Recognizing the importance of such uniform standards, public and private sector leaders have advocated and implemented numerous reforms in recent years to raise the academic bar for all students and schools.

Senate Bill 834 would essentially turn back the clock on much of that important progress and weaken landmark reforms by allowing school administrators to create their own rules and ignore more rigorous state standards, including, but not limited to, the smaller class size mandates championed by former Gov. Henry Bellmon and Oklahoma voters in the historic passage of House Bill 1017 in 1990. SB 834 would also endanger such worthy programs as full-day kindergarten and alternative education in addition to making optional such critical personnel as school librarians and counselors.

Furthermore, SB 834 does a deliberate disservice to the backbone of the public education system, the public school teacher, by weakening or eliminating educators’ rights and benefits, including due process rights guaranteed under the constitution. These provisions would also undermine ongoing efforts to attract and retain the best and brightest teachers in Oklahoma, something that is critically important, particularly for a state that is routinely recognized for having some of the best educators in the nation.

At a time when we are working to send the signal that Oklahoma is serious about improving its education system and producing high-quality graduates who can compete in the 21st Century global economy, it would be a disastrous step backward to approve legislation that weakens state standards, abolishes historic reforms and reduces rights and benefits provided to teachers.

Dear Governor…

Well, I’m disappointed but hardly surprised that the Republican-controlled Oklahoma House of Representatives passed SB 834 – the so-called “School District Empowerment Program” – which frees local school boards from various state mandates.  Gutting stupid unfunded mandates would be fine, but the bill is also a union-buster that strips teachers of their collective bargaining rights.

All of my local legislators voted for the bill – one even authored it!  The thing returns to the Senate, which is expected to pass the amended version.  So it will almost certainly be up to Governor Henry to sign or veto the legislation.  I’ve sent him a note urging him to veto it and thus preserve our place at the bargaining table.  If he doesn’t, or if a bill like this passes after he leaves office, it will be that much harder to recruit new teachers in Oklahoma.  We’ll be able to undercut some of the lowest pay in the nation with the added disincentives of no right to bargain salary or working conditions and no impartial court hearing if the board fires you.  Doesn’t sound much like “empowerment” to me.

Have an opinion on SB 834?  Contact Governor Henry.

Local Control?

Today the Examiner-Enterprise featured a letter from local school board member Doug Divelbiss, rebutting my prior letter about Senate Bill 834.  His letter was respectful but did not take into account that my letter was composed before the House version of the bill had been amended (the Examiner-Enterprise took almost a week to publish it).  His letter also failed to recognize that the Senate version of the bill still lacks crucial requirements for teacher certification, personnel evaluations, and minimum graduation standards.  If the House version passes, the two differing versions must be reconciled.  The minimal protections Mr. Divelbiss appears to support might not survive that process.

Mr. Divelbiss also was misinformed that the amended House version provides for collective bargaining.  Neither version of the bill provides for collective bargaining.  So in its current form, Senate Bill 834 would strip all Oklahoma teachers of their right to bargain salaries and working conditions.

I certainly respect Mr. Divelbiss, with whom I have served on a vital district budget committee.  He has been a good board member, and I emailed him and the other board members tonight, pointing out the above issues and asking them if they would endorse a collective bargaining amendment in the bill.  During my tenure as Chief Negotiator, our union local and school board bargaining teams were recognized by the board’s hired negotiator, the state union’s advisor, and federal mediators as having one of the best bargaining relationships in our state.  I hope our board members recognize the value of such a relationship.

But Bartlesville is not like many other Oklahoma communities.  Ponca City, which has suffered devastating job losses this year, saw its teacher association and school board go to impasse and arbitration over a contract provision.  The arbitrator ruled against the board, but it exercised its right to impose its own contract condition anyway.  Consider the morale of the teachers in that district.  Do you think that board of education will respect their needs under Senate Bill 834?

Mr. Divelbiss reframed the Senate Bill 834 issue into one of local versus state control.  I strongly disagree with the level of deregulation under SB 834, since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior and many boards of education have made crucial educational mistakes until state regulations imposed needed corrections.  But I can certainly empathize with responsible board of education members who are frustrated by some of our unfunded and ill-considered state mandates.

The full House will consider the bill as early as next Tuesday or Wednesday.  Please contact your state legislator and let him or her know that you think teachers should have a voice at the bargaining table.  If they don’t, there will be little incentive for them to stay in Oklahoma when it pays so poorly and neighboring states not only pay far better but also provide seniority, tenure, and bargaining rights.

SB 834 Goes to Full House

Today SB 834 passed the Oklahoma House Education Committee on a party line vote of 9-5. So Earl Sears, as he had indicated to me via email beforehand, supported the legislation. I respect Earl, but he has yet to show that he respects teachers having a voice in their own destinies. He wants them to make a leap of faith in the school boards, something I know from ten years of bitter bargaining experience no school board has ever earned. The bill is now headed to a vote on the House floor.

The Good News

The bill was reportedly amended to now require:

• Certified teachers
• Maintenance of current curriculum standards including minimum graduation requirements and alternative education programs
• Continuing education courses for school board members

The Bad News

The already-weak class size guarantees established under HB 1017 almost two decades ago were not retained.  None of the rights that provide a voice for teachers were reconsidered.  Thus the bill would allow districts to:

• Deny teachers the opportunity to collectively bargain, thus placing all of their hard-won working conditions at risk:
  • No right to bargain for compensation above the pathetic state minimum salary schedule
  • No right to bargain for compensation for additional assigned duties
  • No right to bargain the number of contract days in a school year
  • No right to bargain the length of a school day
  • No right to bargain for “frills” such as the duty-free 30-minute lunch provided for Bartlesville teachers (wow!)
• Allow school boards to freely favor certain teachers over others in salary and working conditions
  • Get ready to see the “professionalization” of football and basketball coaching – don’t be surprised to see more head coaches who do not have to teach a single class and are paid far more than any teacher (we’re already effectively there in most ways in good old Bartlesville – your tax dollars at waste!)
• Deny teachers guaranteed due process upon termination.  The measure was amended to provide an informal pre-termination hearing before the school board for career teachers.  But that still means no trial de novo in district court, so no guarantee a teacher can bring forth witnesses, submit evidence, and confront and cross-examine witnesses.

My letter to the editor of the Examiner-Enterprise was published too late to include these latest developments.  Pressure still needs to be exerted on legislators to further amend or better yet, outright kill, this bad bill.  The amendments make it clear a primary purpose of this bill is to “break the union” by stripping Oklahoma teachers of their right to bargain, their seniority, and their tenure.

If this measure passes into law you can expect many highly qualified Oklahoma teachers to seek employment in neighboring states since they already pay better and will respect teacher contract conditions.  Attracting good teachers into Oklahoma schools under this legislation will become quite difficult – why in the world would a college graduate choose to teach in Oklahoma if it pays far less and there is no right to bargain, no seniority, no effective tenure, and no class size limits?

Letter to the Editor

Stop SB 834

If you live in Oklahoma, I urge you to contact your State Representative and State Senator to express your opposition to Senate Bill 834.

Authored by Bartlesville’s own Senator Ford, this bill places our schools at risk.  Our own state representative, Earl Sears, is on the Education Committee and needs to hear from his constituents about this bill.  Contact him at earl.sears@okhouse.gov or (405) 557-7358 to express your opposition to SB 834.  Earl already convinced Senator Ford to amend a few of the worst aspects of the bill (originally it entirely eliminated the teachers’ state minimum salary schedule, retirement, and health benefit regulations) but the bill is still extremely dangerous for our schools. Below is a letter to the editor I have sent off to the Examiner-Enterprise:

Dear Editor:

As an award-winning veteran teacher of 20 years in the Bartlesville Public Schools, I am opposed to State Senate Bill 834, authored by our own Senator Ford. Over the next few years it would place every Oklahoma school district under the state’s entirely inadequate charter school rules. Senator Ford says his bill is intended to empower lower school boards and eliminate unfunded mandates. But his bill is a blunt tool that will also remove essential quality controls from all of our public schools, reversing statewide reforms we enacted in the landmark House Bill 1017 legislation near the beginning of my teaching career.

Under charter school rules, state regulations regarding class sizes and teacher certification are eliminated. Before House Bill 1017, we Oklahoma teachers had a bitter saying: “Stack ‘em deep and teach ‘em cheap.” Those days would return under Senate Bill 834, because state school funding is controlled by well-paid legislators who prefer tax cuts, not volunteer school board members who prefer properly funding education and having students receive more individual attention.

This bill also removes regulations regarding the quality of substitute teachers, gifted and talented programs, school libraries and librarians, alternative schools for at-risk students, and so forth. Leaving minimal school standards to the whims of 2,700 school board members across the state is wholly irresponsible. If you think we have bitter divisions on our city council, just wait until our school board argues over which state regulations it should ignore. Have we learned nothing from what the deregulation of Wall Street and banking brought us? We cannot afford bankrupting our children’s education because our school board gambled on an unregulated restructuring plan.

Senate Bill 834 will also terminate teacher bargaining and due process rights. It would allow school boards to play favorites on teacher salaries, eliminate planning periods, extend the working day and contract year without any increase in teacher pay, fire teachers at will, and so forth. Oklahoma’s teachers need a place at the bargaining table regarding their salaries and working conditions, since under existing law we cannot strike and school boards are already free to eventually impose their own contract conditions. Stripping me of my tenure and seniority would be a great incentive for me and many other teachers to seek out the far better pay and job protection of any neighboring state.

Our own Earl Sears serves on the House Education Committee, which will be considering Senate Bill 834 very soon. Both he and Senator Ford need to hear from you how you would prefer that our schools meet minimal state standards that are properly funded, rather than scrap the standards and hope for the best.

Sincerely,
Granger Meador