You may not have been very interested in the legislature this spring, but the legislature sure was interested in you. Your life on the job will be affected in many ways by the bills lawmakers passed. Here are 50 of those ways:
1. You'll lose $500, $750, or even the entire $1,000 of your state health-care supplement, depending on your job category.
2. You'll pay twice as much as before to support health care for retired school employees (half a percent of each paycheck).
3. You'll see less of TEA officials, because routine visits to monitor compliance with state laws have been curtailed.
4. You'll see some education service centers bending over backward to be helpful, because they are coming under sunset review and an audit by the comptroller.
5. Under the new paperwork-reduction law, classroom teachers no longer can be required to prepare any written information outside of categories specified in state law.
6. Charter campuses can be created by your school district without parent or teacher input, including charter schools run by contractors.
7. A teaching contract will be void if an employee fails to fulfill requirements for a temporary or emergency credential (but this does not apply to a certified teacher assigned out of field).
8.The state education commissioner gets to set a statewide standard to certify that your school district employs only "highly qualified" teachers in compliance with federal law by 2005-2006.
9. Superintendents must notify the State Board for Educator Certification if an educator's contract was terminated due to certain types of illegal conduct or if an educator resigned over such misconduct.
10. If you qualify as a master science teacher, you might earn a stipend starting in 2005-2006.
11. If you are a classroom teacher new to your school district, you now can be hired on a term contract immediately, without any probationary period, at your district's discretion.
12. You can be returned to probationary status after receiving written notice from the superintendent of proposed discharge, termination, or nonrenewal, but only with your informed consent.
13. If you have been rated proficient with no deficiencies on your last appraisal, your district (if you agree) can appraise you less often than annually-as infrequently as once every five years.
14. You're no longer entitled as a term-contract teacher to receive a copy of your school district's employment policies-unless you ask for it.
15. School districts must remove from campus and terminate an educator whose certificate is revoked by SBEC because of a conviction or deferred adjudication for a violent felony or an offense requiring registration as a sex offender.
16. By 2005-2006, you will be eligible to receive state-funded reimbursement for the purchase of classroom supplies-if your school district provides matching money.
17. Local standards will replace state standards for staff development.
18. You are supposed to have access to new training materials and resources for instructing students with limited English proficiency.
19. You can use personal leave for compensation during a period of active military service. Your district also can give you a paid leave of absence for such service.
20. Professional employees are now immune from disciplinary proceedings for the use of physical force against a student to the extent justified as self-defense.
21. Professional employees also are now entitled to recover their attorney's fees and court costs from the plaintiff if found immune from liability.
22. Your school board must require students to recite the pledges to the U.S. and Texas flags once each school day.
23.Your school board must provide for a minute of silence following the pledges; it's up to you to ensure that students remain silent and do not distract those trying to reflect, pray, meditate, etc.
24. The 60-day time line for initial evaluation of a student for special-education services is triggered by signed consent of the parents, and parents must receive a TEA explanation of the options and
requirements for special-education services each year.
25. A school employee may not use or threaten to use the refusal of a parent to consent to administration of a psychotropic drug as the sole basis for making a report of neglect of the child.
26. School districts must begin teaching all of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills in all subject areas, not only in the foundation curriculum.
27. A classroom teacher's exam or course grade issued to a student is final and may not be changed unless the grade is arbitrary, erroneous, or not consistent with school-district grading policy, as determined by the board of trustees.
28. Students who fail a state test in grades six through 12, or who likely will need more than five years to finish grades nine through 12, must be given a personal graduation plan, including intensive instruction.
29. The Optional Extended-Year Program can include students in high school.
30. Your district can give extra days of instruction to students who either have failed a TAKS test or will not likely be promoted to the next grade, with the extra days funded by reducing days of instruction for all other students.
31. In-school GED eligibility is expanded to students who after two years of high school have less than a third of the credits needed to graduate, and all districts and charter schools can apply to participate in this program.
32. Any public or nonprofit community organization can be used on campus by a school district to provide a mentoring program for students at risk of dropping out.
33. The State Board of Education must adopt rules to ensure that students in grades three through 12 study and recite a passage from the Declaration of Independence during Celebrate Freedom Week.
34. A "Middle College Education Pilot Program" will be developed for students at risk of dropping out, to allow those students to complete an associate degree as they complete high school.
35. Districts will be encouraged to offer electronic courses through a designated campus or a full-time program serving students district-wide.
36. Funding for new textbooks and for technology will be reduced.
37. Teachers cannot be required to pay for textbooks that are stolen, misplaced, or not returned by the student.
38. School districts without an Internet safety policy addressing access by minors to obscene material will be ineligible for technology-infrastructure funding.
39. TEA must develop an education Internet portal to make textbooks available in electronic format.
40.Your school district's code of conduct must specify whether consideration will be given to self-defense in a disciplinary decision.
41. Aggravated robbery, manslaughter, and criminally negligent homicide are added to the list of offenses for which a student must be expelled.
42. Teachers in an off-campus disciplinary alternative education program must meet certification requirements no later than 2005-2006.
43. Students in a disciplinary alternative education program must be offered a chance to complete course work before the beginning of the next school year, through any means available, such as correspondence school, summer school, distance learning, etc.
44. Rigid limits on use of physical force to restrain students with disabilities have been eased, so that stringent requirements apply only when a student's free movement is "significantly" restricted.
45. Without regard to where the conduct occurs, a school district can expel a student who engages in misconduct that would trigger expulsion if it occurred at school.
46. A school employee may not recommend that a student use a psychotropic drug or suggest any particular diagnosis, except a school health professional can recommend an evaluation by an appropriate medical practitioner.
47. An eighth-grade TAKS science test will be administered in the 2006-2007 school year.
48. Dropout rates must be computed in accordance with federal standards by 2005-2006.
49. A campus rated low-performing for two years in a row must be reconstituted, with educators not retained at that campus assigned to another position in the district.
50. Your school district, regardless of its property wealth, will receive an additional $110 per weighted pupil from the state.
