Kpishdadi, Flickr
For the past three weeks, Idaho teachers and their supporters have bombarded lawmakers with calls to oppose a sweeping education measure now working its way through the state Senate.
Idaho Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna, backed by Republican Governor Butch Otter, wants to rework teacher collective bargaining agreements, eliminate seniority considerations in layoffs and tie teacher pay to performance. And the Idaho Education Association has turned out in force to oppose the changes. The three education bills introduced at the start of the session have become the year’s most hotly contested legislation, generating many hours of public testimony. Roughly 1,000 protesters rallied outside the state capitol Monday with hundreds more turning out in other cities.
The debate in Idaho is, of course, not an isolated phenomenon. The efforts to curtail public employee union influence in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana all involve teachers. But the Idaho plan is perhaps the most far-reaching effort to use teachers’ rights and performance as part of a bid to revamp a state’s entire educational process.
“There’s a national recognition that the current education system we have is not working,” says Luna. “We’re finally at the point where people realize we have to move from discussion to action because if we do not act, then we will be acted upon by the financial reality that we find ourselves in. I’m not going to sit back and watch our education system collapse under its own weight.”
Luna recently became president-elect of the Council of Chief State School Officers, and has discussed his plans with superintendents from around the country. Indiana’s superintendent, Tony Bennett, has pushed for similar changes and, on Wednesday, Indiana senators passed a bill limiting collective bargaining for teachers to the subjects of pay and benefits.
Still, Luna calls the Idaho plan “the most comprehensive” because it calls for infusing new technology into classrooms along with changes to teacher contracts. Luna wants to give every high school student a laptop and make online classes a graduation requirement. There are also provisions for new forms of technology, more teacher training and increased financial transparency in school district budgets.
Over the past two years, Idaho has had to cut about $200 million from its schools. It cut its reading and math initiatives, froze teacher pay and, in about 20 districts, has gone to a four-day school week. Still, education officials say, the state needs to find another $35 million in school cuts.
Voters have not shown any appetite for tax increases. The only option, according to Luna, is to revamp the manner in which the state runs its schools. If he gets his way, class sizes would grow, leading to the elimination of roughly 770 teaching positions. Teacher contracts would have to be renegotiated every year and bargaining would cover only pay and benefits. Right now contracts also cover working conditions and address such issues as grading policies and parent-teacher conferences. The plan would also lift salary freezes, but the higher salaries would be tied to ratings of teacher performance.
Sherri Wood, president of the Idaho Education Association, says the union supports more technology in schools, transparent bargaining sessions, and even pay for performance, as long as it’s financed with new money. But she objects to the watered-down collective bargaining rules and to provisions making it easier for school districts to fire teachers. “The district doesn’t have to show any cause or reason for firing a teacher,” she says. “It can be as simple as you didn’t play the mayor’s son enough on the football field.”
Luna’s proposal cleared the Senate Education Committee last week, but a vote in the full Senate has been delayed because some lawmakers have expressed reservations about parts of the plan. On Thursday, senators began debating the first of the bills. The debate surrounding the changes has grown confrontational at times. Luna was heckled during a television interview, and opponents of the bill showed up at his mother’s house. Last week, somebody vandalized his pickup truck and slashed its tires. “If you’re in Idaho, your pickup truck is very, very important,” he says.
Idaho lawmakers are also working to weaken union bargaining power for other workers besides teachers. The legislature has sent two bills to the governor that would diminish the power of private-sector unions in businesses that receive government contracts. Individual legislators have gone further: Republican Senator Shirley McKague has introduced a bill that would eliminate all forms of collective bargaining in the state. McKague said she did not expect her bill to come up during this year’s session but she wanted to give her colleagues time to study her proposal.
McKague calls the teachers’ protests “embarrassing to the whole profession.” She argues that “this is a crisis year. The state’s broke, the feds are broke, the schools are broke and the Medicare is broke. People have to get used to the idea of doing things for themselves.”
See related stories:
Behind collective bargaining debate, mixed experiences in the states (2/23/2011)
Governors, unions brace for battle (1/28/2011)
This story was reported by David Harrison.
