Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna released two draft pieces of legislation detailing all his proposed changes to public schools.
The crux of Luna’s reforms is to pay for merit pay for teachers and more technology, including laptops for high school students and requirements to take online classes, by increasing class sizes and limiting the security and bargaining power of teachers. The change in class sizes would lead the state to shed 770 teachers jobs, though Luna has said there would be few layoffs.
The legislation is scheduled to be introduced in the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 7.
Among the specifics outlined in the plan are the elimination of tenure for new teachers and more rigid rules for negotiations between teachers’ unions and school boards. Unions would need to prove they represent a majority of teachers and negotiations could only cover teacher salaries and benefits and would have firm deadlines in June to reach an agreement. Negotiations would also have to take place in public.
Republican Sen. John Goedde, who leads the Senate Education Committee and is a former school board member in Coeur d’Alene, said the limits on bargaining could empower school districts. “Local school boards are elected to run local schools,” Goedde said. “Superintendent Luna’s proposals will free up school board members in a number of areas.”
The Idaho Education Association (IEA), which represents teachers, has raised concerns about Luna’s plan. An IEA spokeswoman said it wouldn’t have a comment on the draft legislation until Monday.
Karen Echeverria , the president of the Idaho School Boards Association, said she’s polling her members on the reforms and plans to have a comment by the time Luna’s plan is in Goedde’s committee.
Luna’s spokeswoman, Melissa McGrath, said the new rules for bargaining are necessary to ensure the state can better educate more students with limited resources.
One key shift from Luna’s original proposal is that high school students wouldn’t be required to take two online classes every year. The draft legislation would require them to take six credits in four years, which could be two classes for the last three years of high school.
McGrath said that change came due to feedback from school districts, which wanted more flexibility.
Goedde said the the drop in online classes could make the plan more palatable to lawmakers. “I think it will make it a little easier,” he said. “I’m assuming that other legislators are getting the same e-mail that I am. A lot of it says that ninth graders aren’t ready to take online classes, so we should allow them to delay taking online classes for a year.”
The legislation would also give Luna almost a year to form a task force to study expanding online learning and allowing high school students to use laptops. The task force would report to lawmakers in January 2012, and the laptops and online learning requirements would start for ninth graders that fall.
The legislation also spells out how much schools and companies that provide online classes would be paid. For every online class a student takes, the online provider would get two-thirds of the student’s average daily attendance (ADA) payment from the state. So, if a student takes two online classes, the providers of those classes would get 11 percent of the state’s payment. Schools could also set contracts with providers to charge a set fee for students who take classes.
Goedde said the ratio of payments to online providers is fair, since schools would need to provide some supervision and support for students taking online classes.
Another perk for teachers that would disappear is the early retirement bonus, which can give long-serving teachers $18,000 if they retire. Currently, it receives $1 million in funding, but under state statute can be funded at up to $4 million a year.
The base wage for teachers would rise to $30,000 a year, and the currently frozen salary grid for experience and education, which can pay teachers with additional schooling or years on the job, would thaw during the next three years.
Teachers would also receive merit pay starting in late 2012, divvied up by both the state and local districts. The state’s share would be based on students’ ISAT, with improvement in scores earning a better bonus than a standard ranking among schools. Local districts could award bonuses using more than a dozen criteria, including graduation rate, attendance, and test scores.
McGrath said the criteria for the local districts bonuses, which would be written in state law, came from discussions with education stakeholders including school board leaders, administrators, and teachers.
In 2013, districts could also award bonuses for teachers who take on leadership or take hard-to-fill jobs.
The legislation would also force school districts to inform teachers about getting professional liability insurance for educators, requiring them to get signatures from teachers saying they received information.
“Currently, many teachers only are aware of one option for liability insurance option,” McGrath said. “The goal is to ensure they are informed of all options available.”
On its website, the IEA says it offers liability insurance as a benefit to all its members.
Read Luna’s draft legislation, divided into two pieces, here and here.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by IdahoReporter.com, kusnadhi yasa. kusnadhi yasa said: Superintendent Luna says there are three pillars to his reform plan: For every online class a student take… http://tinyurl.com/4t4x5u8 [...]
It is more than a little telling that Goedde thinks School Board members run schools. I guess that’s the type of micro management that has gotten us to this place in Idaho if that is his philosophy. School Board members Hire and evaluate the superintendent who runs the schools, they also pass governance policy. Now the legislature wants to “run” the schools I guess. Hope your enjoying all that power Goedde.
[...] Idaho’s education superintendent wants to mandate a number of online courses for all high school students in the state. Resistance to the idea has propelled his proposal into a national story. [...]
[...] You can learn more about this and read the actual bills HERE. Some more information is available HERE. Luna’s page on the program is HERE. Feel free to search at home for your own information [...]
The best minds this country ever saw or will see are the results of dedicated competent teachers/mentors, motivated young men and women, a classroom and a well used library…period. Take a look at the article…what a mess of crapola. We take a basic idea and complicate it beyond comprehension and what’s the bottom line throughout this article, money and power. How much of this piece is actually about the “Student” and how much is about those who profit or justify themselves and their position in one way or another from all this. What I see is a lot of whining about pay and perks.
[...] Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s proposed reforms for public schools took their first step Monday, but are in for a long test next [...]
[...] Luna’s reforms include bonuses for teachers and increased technology in classrooms, including computers for every high school student and requirements to take online classes. Those efforts would be paid for by raising the ratio of teachers to students, which would lead to 770 teacher jobs being eliminated. The plan also restricts bargaining by teacher unions and ends tenure protections for new teachers. [...]