Teachers, School Administrators Part Ways in Budget Fight (TX)
April 8, 2011
Teachers and school administrators have long been twin powers in the Texas Capitol fighting to protect public education.
Now they are working against each other on legislation that could change how teachers are paid and how many children they teach.
The legislation, House Bill 400, is intended to give school leaders the flexibility they need to manage their budgets as the state reduces by as much as $7.8 billion what it owes the districts over the next two years. It allows for teacher pay reductions and furloughs, modifies teacher contract rules, and adjusts the cap on class sizes in the earlier grades.
House Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, said HB 400 would save teacher jobs because now the districts have no other option but to lay them off in order to reduce costs.
Teacher groups, however, say school administrators are using the budget crisis to justify permanent and sweeping changes they have long coveted.
Jeri Stone, executive director of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association, said the bill amounts to “gratuitous violence.”
“It is antithetical to the stated goal of cutting anywhere but the classroom,” Stone said.
Stone said her members are open to temporary and limited pay and contract changes to bridge the current budget hole. That is the direction that senators have been going with a similar bill.
But the House approach goes too far by making the changes permanent and including a requirement that districts create a performance pay plan that could rely on student test scores as well as other measures, Stone said.
State Rep. Mark Strama, a Democrat from Austin who serves on the Public Education Committee, said he could support a targeted and temporary bill that gives the districts the needed flexibility.
But that is not what passed out of committee late Tuesday night. By increasing class sizes and reducing compensation, Strama said, “we set (teachers ) up for failure, not success.”
Some Republican members of the committee, all of whom voted for HB 400, said they were concerned that schools’ budgets would be balanced on the backs of teachers.
“I think everyone is looking for a way to give the school districts the flexibility they need without being overly harsh on teachers,” said state Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen.
The blowback over teacher layoffs across the state has many lawmakers on their heels. They have tried to change the debate by criticizing administrators for proposing layoffs before adequately scrubbing budgets outside the classroom.
Even Gov. Rick Perry jumped into the fray. Last month, he said teacher layoffs should be laid at the feet of local officials — not the state — and suggested administrative bloat by citing a statistic that school districts have one non-teacher for every teacher. Many of those non-teaching jobs are cafeteria workers, bus drivers and janitorial workers, not administrators.
The teacher groups say the lawmakers’ actions speak louder than their words and that they feel attacked, said Linda Bridges, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.
Amy Beneski, director of governmental affairs at the Texas Association of School Administrators, said the “teacher groups are over-exaggerating. Are they for teachers getting laid off in lieu of a salary reduction or a furlough day?”
Superintendents need permanent tools to manage their people and limited resources, particularly because the budget situation two years from now doesn’t look much better, Beneski said.
“There is no reason to come back and fight these battles two years from now,” she said.
HB 400 makes common-sense changes that put control in the hands of local decision-makers, where it should be, Pflugerville district Superinten dent Charles Dupre said. It won’t change the relationship between labor and management in his district, he said.
“We val