Dear Friend,

“Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; others on the contrary obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than before.” — Polybius (Greek historian, 2nd century BC)

Faced by an unprecedented barrage of hostile legislation this year, your lobbying team could have yielded to the temptation to throw in the towel on any number of occasions. Dwight Harris, Eric Hartman, René Lara and Ted Melina Raab never quit, and we not only survived the nightmarish 78th Legislature, we actually made a few gains for members. Below is a list of good legislation that passed into law.

HB 1 by Rep. Talmadge Heflin (R-Houston) and Sen. Teel Bivins (R-Amarillo) guarantees for two years the funding for the law giving paraprofessionals free tuition for college courses leading to a teaching degree.

HB 411 by Rep. Kent Grusendorf (R-Arlington) provides for master science teacher certification, with grants and stipends to begin in 2005.

HB 1314 by Rep. Brian McCall (R-Plano) contains language putting some common sense back into rules on physical restraint of special ed. students. Rep. Glenda Dawson (R-Pearland) and Sen. Kyle Janek (R-Harris) initially proposed the language that wound up in Rep. McCall’s bill.

HB 1440 by Rep. Rob Eissler (R-The Woodlands) and Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) allows for less frequent appraisal of veteran teachers who were found proficient on their most recent appraisal.

HB 1844 by Grusendorf provides for reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenditures for supplies by classroom teachers, starting in 2005-2006.

HB 1949 by Eissler and Van de Putte strengthens teachers’ grading authority, making the teacher’s grade final unless the grade is arbitrary, erroneous, or inconsistent with local grading policies.

HB 2072 by Grusendorf forbids making teachers pay for textbooks or instructional technology that is lost, stolen, or simply not returned by students.

HB 3459 by Rep. Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie) and Sen. Bivins contains the Paperwork Reduction Act for teachers. This legislation was originally sponsored by Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) and won crucial support from Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst.

SB 930 by Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Addison) protects school employees from contract or certificate sanctions for use of physical force against a student in legitimate self-defense.

SB 1370 by Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) contains the language that sunsets the cut in health-care benefit stipends for school employees effective September 1, 2005. The “sunset” amendment was inserted by Rep. José Menendez (D-San Antonio) and Sen. Mario Gallegos (D-Houston).

SB 1394 by Sen. Shapiro and Rep. Bob Griggs (R-Ft. Worth) allows school districts to offer veteran teachers an immediate term contract without a probation period.

And now, another battlefield in the fight to save your health-care benefit stipend!

The legislature slashed most school employees’ benefit stipends in half, but the authors of that budget cut wanted to eliminate school administrators’ stipends altogether. Okay, but what exactly is an administrator? The term “administrator” stumped the drafters of the legislation (you cannot just say, “the guy with a fancy suit in the admin building”), so they punted the problem to the Texas Teacher Retirement System (TRS).

The TRS experts in bureaucratic babble pondered the problem and decided that an administrator is anybody other than a classroom teacher who holds a certificate and earns more than $50,000 per year.

While this definition probably captures most administrators, it also hauls in about 21,000 folks who never knew they were administrators. Counselors, librarians, school nurses, diagnosticians, psychologists, and speech therapists (among others) could lose the full $1,000 under this definition.

TFT intends to challenge the TRS rule by every means available, up to and including a lawsuit. We do not know which of our members get hurt by this latest assault, but we will find out and sue on their behalf if TRS does not retreat from this screwy definition of “administrator.”

We are gaining ground in the campaign for Social Security Fairness!

The Social Security Fairness Act now has 253 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives, which means that we win if we can get the legislation to the floor for a vote!

(Those who are new to our organization may not know that Social Security rules currently penalize Texas school employees in a wicked way. Most Texas school districts do not cover their employees with Social Security, so employees of those districts have no Social Security benefits when they retire. That seems logical enough, but there’s more.

If a school employee in one of those non-Social Security districts earns Social Security benefits by working after school, that school employee will lose much of his earned Social Security benefits if he retires as a school employee and collects his TRS pension. Sound bad? There’s more!

A person who works in private industry for years, paying his Social Security taxes all the while, and then takes a job as a school employee suffers the same loss of Social Security benefits. Same for a school employee who worked in a district that provides SS coverage to employees if he moves to a non-Social Security district.)

Although we have more than sufficient support to pass the legislation, we have one Congressman whose vote counts more than the votes of all the others: Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land). Congressman DeLay is the Majority Leader, which means he makes sure the GOP congressmen toe the party line. He also decides which pieces of legislation get the green light, which get detoured, and which never get out of the parking lot. So far, Congressman DeLay has kept the Social Security Fairness Act in its parking space.

You can help by logging on to TFT’s web page (www.tft.org) and sending a letter to your congressional representative urging action on the Social Security Fairness Act. If you happen to live in Congressman DeLay’s district, that’s great!

In the U.S. Senate we think we can pick up the support of Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas). Please send Senator Hutchison an email (go to www.tft.org) encouraging her to get on board. We still have heard nothing from Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Representative Scott Hochberg (D-Houston) launched a surprise attack on your behalf on July 22. When a bill came to the House floor to put back into the budget $231 million that had inadvertently been left out during the regular session, Rep. Hochberg seized the opportunity to propose an amendment that would have used that money to restore part of the health-care benefits cut from your pay during the regular session. Hochberg’s amendment failed 71-52, but he deserves our thanks for giving it a good shot.

How did your representative vote when Hochberg tried to get some of your money back in your pocket? Attached with this letter is a list of the votes. (The meaningful vote came on a motion to table Hochberg’s amendment, which means a “no” vote was a vote for school employees. Since this is confusing, I report the votes as “right” or “wrong” for school employees.)

Sincerely,