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February 21, 2008

House Education Committee hears teacher bonus bill

The House Education Committee held a hearing on HB 2870, a teacher bonus bill encourages boards of education to give unilateral pay increases to math and science teachers so that they can be eligible for a state grant to pay more bonuses to math and science teachers. The bill would also prohibit negotiations on alternative pay structures.

Tom Krebs of KASB spoke in favor of the bill while Mark Desetti of KNEA spoke in opposition. Desetti told the committee, “KNEA opposes HB 2870 for several reasons:

• It is characterized as a bill to increase teacher pay and yet it does not address pay at all.
• It is designed to further remove from teachers any say in wages by placing constraints on professional negotiations.
• It will dramatically limit the ability of local groups to successfully implement alternative pay structures.
• It does not address the underlying issues of teacher recruitment and retention.”

Desetti brought research recently cited in Education Week that showed that teachers in Kansas are paid 86 cents for every dollar earned by Kansans in comparable jobs. “This bill,” he said, “makes the situation worse by paying some teachers a few cents on the dollar more while lowering it for most teachers by diverting resources from all teacher salaries for the benefit of a few.”

Desetti also talked about the success and failure of various alternative pay schemes as well as the history of the single salary schedule. He told the committee, “In the days prior to collective bargaining and the dominance of the single salary schedule, boards of education routinely enacted salary schemes that paid men more than women and high school teachers more than elementary teachers. Teachers were among the first professionals to deem this system to be patently unfair and demand that there be comparable pay for comparable work and experience.”

The salary schedule in Kansas was the brainchild of Kansas City, Kansas Superintendent M.E. Pearson and classroom teacher (and later NEA President) F.L. Schlagle back in the 1920’s.

Unfortunately for teachers, HB 2870 declares bonuses to be not negotiable under the Professional Negotiations Act. What that means is that school boards would be free to impose on teachers whatever pay system struck their fancy while teachers would have no right to bring a system to the negotiations table. Said Desetti, “We must stop the practice of imposing ideas on the teachers and start the practice of collaborating with the teachers.”

Click here to read the full text of KNEA’s testimony.

LPA reports – no accountability on economic development tax deals.

Maybe schools aren’t the only group from whom the Legislature should demand accountability.

A new Legislative Post Audit study on economic development incentives has been unable to identify benefits from over $1.5 billion in economic incentives provided to businesses over the last five years.

That’s right, the study found that “The estimated cost of economic development in Kansas during fiscal years 2003 through 2007 is at least $1.5 billion, which includes both governmental spending and forgone tax revenues.” But it gets worse! “In addition to any established economic development spending in the future, Kansas governments could incur about $404 million in additional costs because of the repeal of the Business and Machinery Property Tax.”

Yet despite all of the business tax cuts and spending on economic development over the last five years, the Post Audit tells us that “There are a number of problems in trying to assess the effectiveness of economic development programs and activities.”

Here is what they had to say as to why they can find so little evidence of an economic benefit:

Based on our reviews, we saw recurring themes regarding the difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of states’ economic development efforts.

Depending on the types of programs or activities being evaluated, those difficulties can include:

• economic development data are costly to acquire, generally inaccessible, or largely unavailable,
• economic development data that are available may not be reliable,
• nearly all economic growth measures are in some way problematic,
• some economic development efforts are too new to evaluate, or can take years before any results can be seen or measured,
• it’s often difficult to prove that any particular results were caused by the economic development assistance offered.

Some of these “difficulties” are particularly alarming. Why, for instance, is the data “inaccessible” or “unavailable?” Don’t the businesses have to report job creation due to the breaks they get?

It can “take years before any results can be seen or measured.” Schools are held to reporting a specific growth factor every year from now to 2014. We get one year to show that growth or be labeled as failing to meet adequate yearly progress. Maybe it’s time for adequate yearly progress for economic development?

Look, no one is opposed to economic development spending or tax breaks but maybe we should factor in a little accountability before we leap at the next business tax cut! Shouldn’t they be accountable for taxpayer dollars too?

Click here to read the whole report.

Education bills roll out on the Senate Floor

The Senate is getting down to business and has six education bills on the debate calendar today.

Up for debate, amendment, and votes are:

SB 531 – $59 on BSAPP for the fourth year of school finance,

SB 437 – ROTC scholarship community college pilot project,

SB 459 – a second count date (Feb. 20) for all school districts,

SB 404 – admissions, tuition and fees at the Kansas Academy of Math and Science,

SB 470 – fixing the FERPA problem in the school safety act, and

SB 507 – creating the Mathematics, Engineering, Technology, and Science Education Innovation Council.

Debate is on-going at this time and we will report the results tomorrow.

Up next?

Here we are at turn around; that frenzied time when legislators frantically try to get as much passed as possible in a short period. Every bill that will be considered in the second half of the session must be either passed by the chamber of origin or referred to a deadline exempt committee.

What’s front and center?

The House Education Committee will work four bills tomorrow:

HB 2734 and HB 2760 – the carrot and stick bills on school consolidation,

HB 2605 – the linear transition for high density at-risk funding, and

HB 2606 – changing the special ed catastrophic aid trigger from $25,000 to $36,000.

The House Education Committee has also formed a subcommittee to consider the three alternative licensure bills heard yesterday. The subcommittee will be chaired by Rep. Deena Horst (R-Salina) and will have as members Reps. Sheryl Spalding (R-Overland Park ), Bill Otto (R-Leroy), Ann Mah (D-Topeka), and Ed Trimmer (D-Winfield). They will meet on Monday morning.

But the big issue for next week will be immigration!

SB 458 will be up for hearings in the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee. This bill would provide substantial penalties for businesses that hire illegal immigrants. It also denies post-secondary education and resident tuition rates to the children of illegal immigrants. The bill is sponsored by Senators Palmer (R-Augusta), Barnett (R-Emporia), Huelskamp (R-Meade), Journey, (R-Haysville), and Ostmeyer (R-Grinnell).

And in the House Federal and State Affairs Committee, there will be:

HB 2370 by Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe) would require all law enforcement officers to ask about the citizenship or immigration status of anyone detained for a violation of any state law, city ordinance, or county resolution. It would also prohibit all ordinances and policies restricting a law enforcement officer from enquiring into a person’s citizenship status.  

HB 2680 by Reps. Mah (D-Topeka), Davis (D-Lawrence), Dillmore (D-Wichita), Holland (D-Baldwin City ), Lukert (D-Sabetha), Pauls (D-Hutchinson), Ruff (D-Leavenworth), Trimmer (D-Winfield), Ward (D-Wichita), and Williams (D-Chanute) would provide substantial penalties for businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Unlike SB 458, this bill would preserve the ability of the children of illegal immigrants to attend Kansas post-secondary schools and colleges at resident tuition rates under certain circumstances.

HB 2836 is the House version of SB 458. It is sponsored by Reps. Kinzer (R-Olathe), Judy Morrison (R-Shawnee), Landwehr (R-Wichita), Ruff (D-Leavenworth), Brown (R-Eudora), Crum (R-Augusta), Faber (R-Brewster), Fund (R-Hoyt), Gatewood (D-Pittsburg), Hodge (R-Olathe), Mitch Holmes (R-St. John), Kelley (R-Arkansas City), Keigerl (R-Olathe), Mast (R-Emporia), McLeland (R-Wichita), Merrick (R-Stilwell), Jim Morrison (R-Colby), Myers (R-Derby), Otto (R-Leroy), Pauls (D-Hutchinson), Peck (R-Tyro), Bill Wolf (R-Great Bend), and Worley (R-Lenexa) are all up for discussion in the House Federal and State Affairs Committee.

KNEA will be watching to protect the right of eligible children to attend post secondary schools.

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