Privatizing your neighborhood school where no one answers to you about your child.
This is from the Texas Branch of the American Federation of Teachers about education in the Texas Legislature:
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TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE
THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2013
* Bad Bills Off of the Senate Agenda, at Least for a Day
* Bills to Privatize Neighborhood Schools Lurk in House and Senate Committees
* Next Stop on Road to a Fair Deal on TRS Benefits, Contributions—the Texas House
Bad Bills Off of the Senate Agenda for Friday: Only bills that have been listed on the so-called Intent Calendar ahead of time can be considered on a given day in the Texas Senate. For several weeks, multiple voucher bills have been on the list, as has another dangerous bill that could be a vehicle for voucher amendments and other bad policy ideas. But for Friday, May 10, the threat has abated, as none of these bills is on the Intent Calendar with 17 days left in the session.
The voucher bills that have disappeared from the agenda are: SB 23 by Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston), SB 115 by Sen. Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands), and SB 1298, the online “virtual” voucher bill by Sen. Glenn Hegar (R-Katy). The dangerous vehicle for bad amendments, also off of the agenda, is the Texas Education Agency “sunset” bill, SB 218 by Sen. Patrick.
A big thank-you is owed to all of you who have sent thousands of letters and called your senators in opposition to these bills. Your efforts clearly are having an impact. Just keep an eye on the Hotline for further alerts in case the authors try to resuscitate these bad Senate bills. And those who have not sent in your letters yet have the chance to do so right now against vouchers in all guises and against the SB 218 “sunset” vehicle for bad ideas.
Bad Bills Lurk in Senate and House Committees: Still lurking in Senate and House committees are bills that are part of the multi-front attack on neighborhood public schools this session. (Keep reading for the full story, but if you are ready now you can strike a blow against these bad bills by sending an e-letter against the whole multi-bill barrage.)
One of them is the latest version of a virtual-instruction bill, HB 1926 by Rep. Ken King (R-Canadian), which is controlled in the Senate by Sen. Hegar. The bill as it came out of the House was amended into acceptable form, so that it could not morph into the functional equivalent of a voucher, which would transfer public funds to for-profit private entities on a wholesale, statewide basis. But a committee-substitute version offered in the Senate Education Committee today strips away House-passed safeguards, turning the bill back into a vehicle for indiscriminate funding of private providers of online instruction at state expense with minimal quality assurance.
Several independent studies have found the academic and financial performance of online schools severely wanting, especially for disadvantaged students. "Blended learning" is the way to go. Texas has no business underwriting the headlong expansion of full-time cyber-schooling.
Texas AFT and our allies in the Coalition for Public Schools testified against the Hegar committee substitute for HB 1926, which was not voted on in committee today. Stay tuned for further action alerts concerning this ill-advised bill.
Another pair of bad bills remains pending in the House Public Education Committee: A bill to turn neighborhood schools over to charter operators is SB 1263 by Sen. Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood), sponsored in the House by Rep. Naomi Gonzalez (D-El Paso). It is called a “parent trigger,” because it relies on a parent petition to get the charter conversion rolling, but SB 1263 really is a “parent tricker” that gives control over the neighborhood school to the charter operator, not the parents. This proposal is about the aggrandizement of private operators, not the empowerment of parents or the improvement of education for schoolchildren. You can send a specific letter against the “parent tricker” proposal here.
Also still in the House Public Education Committee is the “achievement district” bill by Sen. Royce West, SB 1718, that would promote state takeover of local schools and handover of those schools to private managers. In the process, many hard-won rights of students, parents, and educators safeguarded under the Texas Education Code would be tossed aside. The model for this bill is the Louisiana “recovery district” that has turned over scores of New Orleans schools to charter operators. These Louisiana “recovery district” charter schools have not been able to deliver promised improvements in academic performance. On the contrary, that “recovery district” is now the lowest-rated of Louisiana’s school districts—ranking 70th out of 70 in academic achievement. If you have not done so already, you can send a specific letter against the “achievement district bill. Texas can do better!
Next Stop on the Road to a Fair TRS Bill—the Texas House: The Senate-passed version of SB 1458, the TRS bill by Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock), now contains two elements of a fair deal on TRS benefits and contributions, thanks to the remarkable grass-roots lobbying efforts of Texas AFT members and allies in recent weeks. SB 1458 as passed by the Senate now boosts state contribution rates above employee contribution rates for 2014-2015, and it creates a stair-step approach to higher employee contributions in 2016-2017, which will be more than matched by combined state and school-district contributions.
Significant additional improvements in SB 1458 are still needed. The fight now moves to the Texas House, where there has been considerable interest this session in raising state contributions still higher and providing some immediate benefit improvement for all retired school employees. Texas AFT is working to capitalize on this sentiment in the House to achieve two more key elements of a fair deal: an exemption for all current employees from the new minimum age of 62 for full retirement benefits, and an immediate benefit boost for all retirees, who have gone without any cost-of-living raise since 2001.
As passed by the Senate, the bill exempts from the new minimum retirement age all employees who have five years of service credit by September 2014, but that still leaves up to 190,000 employees exposed to the benefit cut implied by the higher retirement threshold. SB 1458 as of now provides for a 3-percent cost-of-living increase (capped at $100 a month) for about 30 percent of TRS retirees (contingent on continued investment gains through the end of the current fiscal year), but it leaves 70 percent of retirees without short-term relief.
Since 2001, the only benefit enhancement for retirees was a one-time-only “13th check” paid in 2008. Over that same span, retirees have seen their share of health-care costs increase while the value of their pensions has been eroded more than 25 percent by inflation.
It was your grass-roots lobbying that pushed the Texas Senate to make significant improvements in SB 1458 in a floor amendment passed yesterday. The next Hotline will provide you with pointers and a new message to send to your member of the Texas House in support of the additional improvements needed to build all the elements of a fair TRS deal into SB 1458, for the sake of all active and retired school employees.
Texas AFT represents more than 65,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, support personnel, and higher-education employees across the state. Texas AFT is affiliated with the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers.
