Dear Friend,

“A good plan carried out today is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” — General George Patton

Our legislative ordeal drags on until June 2, which means I must choose between a newsletter that meets its deadline and one that gives you the complete results. I’ve decided to give you the best information available now. I may not know exactly how the story ends, but the plot line is pretty clear. Besides, those of you who receive this newsletter via the Internet still have time to affect the ending of a couple of chapters.

The Texas legislature meets for 140 days every two years, so a huge amount of work must be done in a short period of time. As time runs out, the legislators’ daily work schedule gets longer and longer, until the legislators are in session around the clock. When legislators are discussing your professional life, your lobbyists must also be on the job, so Eric Hartman, René Lara, Ted Melina Raab and Dwight Harris are putting in long, long hours at present.

Many bills die each legislative session because time just runs out on them. Former State Senator Bill Haley memorably called this part of the legislative process “…the killing of the baby seals…” because so many projects dear to the heart of legislators die under the pressure of time. On the other hand, the clock is the friend of those who are playing defense.

Count us among those who are on defense right now. This legislative session turned ugly some time ago, and your lobbyists find themselves in a position similar to a football team with the ball on its own one-yard line. We keep winning battles, but each victory means we must fight another battle to stave off disaster. So far, so good, but one loss could lose the whole game.

What is it like on defense? To give you an idea of the kind of fight we have been in, I have prepared a partial list of attacks that we have faced.

“HOME RULE” SCHOOL DISTRICTS: HB 859 by Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano) would have allowed local school boards to vote to opt out of most state regulations. HB 973 by Rep. Grusendorf would have given the same privilege to “exemplary” campuses or districts. Either way, your salary, contract, benefits, and working conditions were at risk. These bills died ingloriously when the sponsors could not muster enough support to justify a floor fight.

SILENCING SCHOOL EMPLOYEES: HB 1698 and HB 1227 by Rep. Madden would have taken away your right to pay organizational dues through payroll deduction. HB 1513 by Rep. Mary Denny (R-Aubrey) would have made it a felony for me to send you this newsletter. Your representatives in Austin will live to fight another day, since all three bad bills died.

TAKING AWAY A TEACHER’S RIGHT TO A HEARING BEFORE HE OR SHE IS FIRED: HB 1112 by Rep. Myra Crownover (R-Lake Dallas) would have let school districts return a teacher to probationary status without the teacher’s consent and without due process of law. Rep. Crownover also carried HB 1253, which would have allowed school districts to rehire retired teachers as at-will employees, and HB 1254, which would have taken the independence away from the independent hearing officers who preside over teacher termination hearings. HB 1132 by Rep. Grusendorf would have allowed a principal to decide whether to renew a teacher’s term contract, without any opportunity for the teacher to appeal the decision. These bad ideas have gone belly up.

YOUR $1,000 BENEFIT SUPPLEMENT: The House’s version of the school funding bill would have cut this $1,000 in half for teachers, by 2/3 for support staff, and by 80 percent for part-time employees. “Professional Support Staff” (whatever that means) came off worst of all, losing all of that money. The Senate version was not much better. After lots of hard work by your lobbyists, the legislators decided to cut less deeply into support staff’s paychecks by giving them the same 50 percent whacking that teachers get. Stipends for “professional” support staff (we suspect this means administrators, but it probably also includes librarians, nurses, counselors, and others who do not consider themselves management) still face the death penalty. If you want to weigh in with a last-minute protest against this pay cut, go to www.tft.org and send an email to your representative.

MAKING YOU WORK WHEN YOU ARE SICK: HB 1626 by Rep. Todd Smith (D-Bedford) would have cut your personal leave from five days down to only two. When this bill came before the House, Rep. Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin) moved to table it, and the motion to table passed by a vote of 93-33.

THE “ANYBODY CAN TEACH” BILL: HB 318 by Rep. Grusendorf (sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Addison) grants teacher certification to anyone with a bachelor’s degree who can pass a subject-matter test. Although the bill limits certification to the subject in which the person passed the test, a person holding such a certificate could be assigned by the district to teach anything under the sun. Hence, a school district could hire a person who passed an exam in history, label that person a certified teacher, and then assign the individual to teach math, science or Spanish. The bill also gives school districts an incentive to prefer these folks over truly certified teachers, because the HB 318 teacher would be an at-will employee who would not enjoy the protections and benefits of state education code provisions (such as the minimum salary schedule). There is still time for you to object to this assault on teaching standards by using TFT’s Web site (www.tft.org) to send a letter opposing HB 318.

Not all of the news is bad. Here is a list of positive developments (you will notice that it is a much shorter list).

SOCIAL SECURITY: The Social Security Fairness Act (HR 594 in the U.S. House and S 349 in the Senate) now has 221 cosponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives and 19 co-sponsors in the Senate. Our efforts to pass this legislation repealing the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision are gaining ground. Since the U.S. Congress meets year-round we are not facing the time pressure that confronts the Texas Legislature. We have until about November to get the support we need to repeal the two wicked rules that keep so many Texas school employees from collecting the Social Security benefits they have fairly earned. Twenty-three of the 32 members of Texas’ congressional delegation have signed on as co-sponsors, but that means we need to convince the other 9 that our cause is just. We also need to convince Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, neither of whom has decided where to stand on this issue. You will find a letter that you can send vial fax or email at TFT’s Web site, www.tft.org.

GOOD NEWS (SORT OF) FOR PARAPROFESIONALS: The 2002 rewrite of federal education law (dubbed the No Child Left Behind Act by President Bush’s administration) requires that paraprofessionals with instructional duties must demonstrate appropriate knowledge and skills. Those hired after January 8, 2002, must meet the standard immediately; those hired on or before that date have until 2006 to meet the new requirements. When the law passed, TFT urged the State Board for Educator Certification to create state standards so that paraprofessionals in one district would be subject to the same criteria as those in other districts. As is too often the case with the SBEC, it punted and allowed each district to come up with its own criteria. Some districts decided to use principal evaluations, some chose tests, and others opted for Regional Service Center processes.

The use of so many different processes for meeting the new standards virtually guaranteed that paraprofessionals’ certificates would not be portable from one district to another. It also meant that some districts’ requirements for paraprofessionals would be more rigorous than those of other districts…a sure guarantee that the educational opportunity of children would also vary from district to district.

The Texas Education Agency has stepped forward with a method of assessing paraprofessionals that districts across the state can use to meet the No Child Left Behind Act criteria. Although not mandated by the state, this assessment is touted by Commissioner of Education Felipe Alanis as an option that will be recognized as a valid assessment statewide. You can look at the assessment instrument (which does not include a written test) at www.esc13.net/statedide/paks.

CONGRATULATIONS to the leaders and members of the San Antonio Teachers Council, the San Antonio Federation of Teachers, and the San Antonio Federation of Paraprofessionals and Classified Personnel. These groups decided to form one united organization representing all school employees in San Antonio ISD. They spent many of their precious weekends working to hammer out a merger agreement, and that merger was sent to the members of the three groups for a vote in May. The vote count vindicated their hard work: 90% of SATC members, 94% of SAFT members, and 89% of SAFPCP members voted “Yes” on the question of uniting in a single organization.

Sincerely,