If you didn’t make it to the Members’ Rights Workshop, you missed out! Deshaunta Kearns, our new TSTA Staff Member, presented information about what rights teachers have. Issues we talked about:

• Can a principal order me to make a grade change?
• Can the principal make us meet during our planning period?
• I don’t have a duty-free 30 minute lunch.
• Are there limits to the amount of paperwork required?
• What can I do if there is a student is is abusive or seriously disrupts my classroom?
• Am I required to work overtime?
• What about compensation?
• What can I do about a bad appraisal?
• And much, much more!

If you weren’t able to make it, we have actually videotaped the presentation! Check your e-mail to see when this will be available and how you can view it. If you have these (or other) questions, please feel free to talk to your campus AR (Association Representative) or come to one of the monthly AR meetings.

If you would like to let your representatives know your opinions about the attack on education, you can use this link to find out who you need to address your letters to!

http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/

Talking Points

• Appraisal System
• HB 400
• Personal stories
• How many hours we work – what a teacher’s day actually looks like

If you want to get Klein TSTA announcements sent directly to your cell phone (meetings, board meeting information, political updates, and other important information), then please text “follow kleintsta” to 40404.

http://twitter.com/kleintsta

The House on Thursday gave final passage to HB 500 by Chairman Rob Eissler, easing end-of-course exam requirements for high school students. TSTA supported this bill.

The House also gave final passage to:

· HB 6 by Eissler, relating to the foundation curriculum, the establishment of the instructional materials allotment, and the adoption, review, and purchase of instructional materials and technological equipment for public schools.

· HB 734 by Diane Patrick, relating to the jurisdiction of constitutional county courts over truancy cases and the appointment of magistrates to hear truancy cases in certain counties.

· HB 1334 by Alma Allen, relating to the effect of a delay by the State Board for Educator Certification in renewing an educator’s certification.

· HB 1555 by Senfronia Thompson, relating to the first day of instruction in certain school districts that provide additional days of instruction financed with local funds.

The House gave preliminary approval on second reading to HB 336 by Marissa Marquez, requiring reports of political contributions and expenditures in El Paso school board races to be posted on the district’s website.

The House Public Education Committee met upon adjournment and passed out the following bills:

· HB1610 by Larry Gonzales, relating to employment termination procedures applicable to a teacher who is convicted of a felony.

· HB3018 by Roland Gutierrez, relating to a policy of a school district concerning possession of a paging device by a student.

Senate Ed Committee approves superintendent bill
The Senate Education Committee today approved several bills, including Senate Bill 208, designed to make the process of selecting a school superintendent more public.

SB208 by Sen. Gallegos would require a school board to give public notice of the name of each finalist the board is considering for the position of superintendent of the district. A board also may hold at least two limited public forums at which each finalist may speak and parents, teachers, and other community members may offer relevant information and opinions and ask questions of the finalists.

The committee also approved:

· Senate Bill 718 by Sen. Van de Putte, allowing a student to be expelled if the student, while placed in an alternative education program for disciplinary reasons, continues to engage in serious misbehavior that violates the district’s student code of conduct.

· Senate Bill 1410 by Sen. Duncan, requiring TEA to establish procedures for each school district and open-enrollment charter school to identify students enrolled in a tech-prep program and report the number to the agency and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

· Senate Bill 1620 by Sen. Duncan, requiring the State Board of Education to establish a process for substituting an applied STEM course for a specific math or science course required for the recommended and advanced high school programs. Sen. Duncan introduced a committee substitute to ensure that all courses would be easily transferable. TSTA supports this bill.

All the approved bills were certified for the local & uncontested calendar.

The committee also heard the following bills but left them pending:

· Senate Bill 1557 by Sen. Carona, creating the Texas High Performance Schools Consortium. It would be responsible for informing the governor, legislature, and commissioner about ways to transform public schools to improve student learning through the development of innovative, next-generation learning standards and assessment and accountability systems. Sen. Carona introduced a committee substitute in which Phase I of the program would begin in the 2012-13 school year and Phase II in the 2013-14 school year.

· Senate Bill 1622 by Sen. Van de Putte, requiring certain districts to offer a secondary-level language learners’ program in grades 9 through 12. The bill also addresses components of an ELL program and professional development for certain educators. TSTA supports this bill.

Senate passes instructional materials bill
The Senate today passed Senate Bill 6, a committee substitute by Sen. Shapiro establishing the instructional materials allotment for the public schools. The measure, which covers textbooks and technological equipment, now goes to the House, where a similar bill is pending. TSTA supports this bill.

The Senate also passed:

· Committee Substitute to Senate Bill 501 by Sen. West, establishing the Interagency Council for Addressing Disproportionality. It will examine the level of disproportionate involvement of children who are members of a racial or ethnic minority group at each stage in the juvenile justice, child welfare, education, and mental health systems. It also will examine issues relating to the disproportionate delivery of educational services to children who are members of a racial or ethnic minority group. And, it will make recommendations to reduce the involvement of minority children in the juvenile justice, child welfare, education, and mental health systems.

· Senate Bill 217 by Sen. Huffman, allowing a student to be expelled for breach of computer security under Section 33.02, Penal Code, if the conduct involves accessing a computer, computer network, or computer system owned by or operated on behalf of a school district.

· Senate Bill 596 by Sen. Shapiro, requiring transition planning to begin by age 14 for a student receiving special education services. TSTA supports this bill;

· Senate Bill 729 by Sen. Seliger, allowing for the election of trustees of an ISD to be held on the same day as an election for the members of the governing board of a public junior college district in which the school district is wholly or partly located.

· Senate Bill 778 by Sen. Williams, providing that campus-level planning and decision-making committees should include, if practicable, at least one representative with the primary responsibility for educating students with disabilities. TSTA supports this bill.

SBs 217, 596, 729 and 778 were passed on a local & uncontested calendar.

Senate panel seeks counseling information
The Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education, meeting today, adopted one rider to House Bill 1, the budget bill, dealing with school counseling and discussed several others. The adopted rider by Sen. Lucio deals with collecting information on the amount of time school counselors and teachers spend on various activities, such as counseling on higher education, ARDs, and parent conferences. The subcommittee put a cap on the rider at $250,000.

The subcommittee also discussed:

· A rider from Sen. Hinojosa, requesting $3 million per year for an online college and career readiness pilot program to be funded at the discretion of the commissioner. The program received only $1.3 million for the entire 2009-11 biennium.

· Another rider from Sen. Hinojosa on dropout prevention programs, specifically Texas AIM and Communities in School. The subcommittee decided that these programs had already been addressed in a previously adopted rider for $50 million for dropout prevention programs.

· A rider from Sen. West, requesting $39 million for textbooks and other materials for Proclamation 2011. This funding is currently in Article XI, the so-called legislative “wish list,” and also will become part of the supplemental appropriations discussion.

· A second rider by Sen. West, dealing with Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

The subcommittee determined that all riders dealing with discretionary programs should be amended to include the directive that the commissioner fund programs with demonstrated success and effective results on the basis of past performance. The commissioner will have discretion to fund such programs in light of the newly amended language.

CSHB 400 was voted out of committee tonight on a 6-4 straight party line vote (Representative Allen was absent due to the death or her husband last week.)

CSHB 400 not only launches a full scale assault on teacher rights and benefits, but it also will do permanent, long term damage to public education in Texas.

The bill:

Ø Permanently eliminates the 22-1 class size cap in K-4 and replaces it with a district wide average of 22-1 in K-4 with a class size cap of 25-1. It allows districts to get waivers from those limits.

Ø Permanently eliminates the requirement that districts cannot pay teachers less next year than they made this year. It eliminates the state minimum salary schedule and requires districts to adopt a new compensation system. Some of the factors that can be considered in developing this new plan are: demonstrated effectiveness in improving student achievement; evaluations; teaching in shortage areas; and job-related duties as determined by the district.

Ø Permanently changes the date for notice of non-renewal to the last day of instruction. It allows the district to notify a teacher by mail and considers the date the letter was mailed to be the starting date for notification for purposes of requesting a hearing.

Ø Permanently eliminates the use of a neutral hearing officer for mid-year terminations and replaces that with a hearing before the board.

Ø Permanently allows the board to furlough teachers for as many as seven non instructional days a year and reduce salaries accordingly.

Ø Permanently deletes seniority as one of the factors used in determining who is terminated if a RIF is implemented.

Ø Permanently allows a district to declare financial exigency at any time for any reason for purposes of doing a RIF and allows a district to end a financial exigency any time it decides to do so.

Taken as a package, the bill creates permanent salary reductions to address what should be a short term fiscal crisis. It also makes permanent increases in K-4 class sizes in spite of research that argues against doing this. TSTA believes that any changes in salary provisions must be short term and must be limited. We believe that the current class size wavier provision is sufficient to get school districts past this short term crisis. This bill allows and, in fact, encourages districts to put the entire burden of the current shortfall on teachers to the long-term detriment of the quality of our public schools.

Senate Education approves revised charter bill

The Senate Education Committee on Tuesday approved a committee substitute for Senate Bill 127, a charter expansion bill by Sen. Dan Patrick. TSTA opposed the original version of the bill, but the committee substitute makes the potential expansion of charters more restrictive.

The substitute does not lift the existing cap on open-enrollment charters until the 2012-2013 school year and, beginning that same year, will cap special education charters at two per year. The bill will allow the State Board of Education to grant as many as 10 new charters for an open-enrollment charter school each fiscal year. But for a charter to be allowed to expand, all of its existing campuses must be rated acceptable or higher. Under the original bill, only 90 percent of the campuses had to be so rated. Also, the committee substitute provides that open-enrollment charter schools granted a charter after Sept. 1, 2011, may not admit a student unless the student is seeking admission to first grade or lower or was enrolled in a public school in Texas during the preceding school year.

The revised bill was passed to the full Senate on a 5-2 vote, with Sens. Gallegos and West voting “no,” and Sens. Shapiro, Patrick, Davis, Carona, and Ogden voting “yes.”

On March 22, TSTA offered testimony against SB127 because of concern over inadequate state review and oversight of charter expansion, particularly during a tight budgetary period. TSTA also believes it would be irresponsible to expand charters while budget-strapped school districts are considering closing down some traditional public schools and laying off tens of thousands of public school employees. TSTA called, instead, for an exhaustive interim study on charter schools, how they are operating, what could be made better and what might be a new, appropriate cap for charters.

The Senate Education Committee also considered the following bills on Tuesday:

Ø Senate Bill 291 by Sen. Watson, requiring the State Board of Education to adopt essential knowledge and skills that address the dangers, causes, consequences, signs, symptoms, and treatment of binge drinking and alcohol poisoning. The agency must compile a list of evidence-based alcohol awareness programs that school districts can use in middle school, junior high and high school science curricula. Senate Bill 291 was passed to the full Senate and certified for the Local & Uncontested Calendar.

Ø Senate Bill 346 by Sen. Gallegos, requiring DAEP programs to provide structured courses equivalent to those provided in the regular classroom setting. DAEP programs also would be required to provide students an opportunity to achieve promotion to the next grade level or to graduate from high school on the same schedule as students in the regular classroom setting. Senate Bill 346 was left pending.

Ø Senate Bill 746 by Sen. Davis, requiring that at least one member of the Continuing Advisory Committee for a district be a director of special education. Senate Bill 746 was passed to the full Senate and certified for the Local & Uncontested Calendar.

Ø Senate Bill 975 by Sen. Hinojosa, allowing certain public junior colleges to partner with local school districts in dropout recovery programs. A junior college district would receive funding for each student enrolled in the program, but the students would count toward their local school districts’ average daily attendance. Senate Bill 975 was left pending.

Ø Senate Bill 1349 by Sen. Van de Putte, requiring that a person hold a license issued by the appropriate state agency in order to be employed as a marriage and family therapist by a school district. Senate Bill 1349 was passed to the full Senate and certified for the Local & Uncontested Calendar.

Ø Senate Bill 1788 by Sen. Patrick, requiring TEA to develop a model form for use in developing an individualized education program. A committee substitute was adopted that made the use of the form permissive. Senate Bill 1788 was passed to the full Senate and certified for the Local & Uncontested Calendar

Senate passes charter school bonds bill
The full Senate on Tuesday passed and sent to the House the committee substitute for Senate Bill 597 by Sen. Shapiro, allowing the state education commissioner to grant the applications of open-enrollment charter schools for state bonds guaranteed by the Permanent School Fund. The bonds would be used to help charters finance new facilities. TSTA opposes this bill.

The Senate also passed the committee substitute for Senate Bill 27 by Sen. Zaffirini, requiring the boards of school districts and charter schools to adopt and administer policies for the care of students at risk for anaphylaxis. The policies would be based on guidelines developed by the commissioner of state health services in consultation with an ad hoc committee appointed by the commissioner of state health services.

Positions

1. Lawmakers are considering cuts that will affect class size, planning periods, due process and more.
2. Proposed cuts could lead to as many as 100,000 public school jobs being cuts and schools being closed.
3. Tell legislators to spend the Rainy Day Fund and explore other revenue options!
4. See www.tsta.org for more information.

Our local rally will be at Agnes Moffit park. Keep checking with your local AR, our TSTA webpage, and our Facebook page to find out more details. If you’d like to help, leave a message here and someone will get back to you!
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Threatened with a reduction in force (RIF), teachers and support staff turned out in force for the Klein ISD board meeting Jan. 10.

Klein TSTA/NEA President David Casillas and Vice President Darlene Sentesi addressed members’ concerns with an agenda item proposing to use evaluations rather than seniority to determine the RIF. Cy-Fair TSTA President and NEA Board of Directors member Frances Smith delivered what Casillas called a “very powerful message” to the Board of Trustees and Dr. Cain.

“Agenda item 14 did not pass last night, and I feel this happened in large part because there were so many teachers present. This is what it is going to take as we move forward,” Casillas said. “Do not think for one moment that this push for evaluations to RIF is over. We need to be very vigilant, because another motion like item 14 will be made at some time down the road.”

Even more than the decision to cut teacher tenure, I am disappointed in the fact that the board was presented with this idea and that they were told that teachers agreed with it. Agreed with the idea of what? To weaken our already fragile contracts? To give more power to a principal? Who is speaking for the teachers? Because that person is not my voice. Neither is it the voice of TSTA.

How does the Board of Trustees hear my voice? My voice, as a mere teacher, isn’t counted in anything: my salary, district technology decisions, student concerns, or even health insurance. Every day, people make decisions that affect my job in the classroom, my students and their success in the classroom (and on the TAKS test), and I don’t get a voice. No one asks me anything. And if I take the initiative and voice my concerns, I am quickly placated, shut down, or ostracized. Even worse, hanging over my head is the oft verbalized threat that “I should just be happy that I have a job”, and that if I don’t like it here in Klein, there are 1,000 people willing to take my position and do my job with a smile on their face.

While that may not be the legal definition of a hostile work environment, it certainly isn’t a very friendly environment. In fact, I would say it is rather demoralizing. Is that how Klein ISD deals with criticism and questions? We may have a few people who need to go through Boys Town training to learn KLASS skills in how to handle conflict. I live in Klein ISD. I work in Klein ISD. I bought a house in Klein ISD because I wanted to raise a family in this particular school district. This is my community, and whether you like it or not, I am here to stay. And as far as ME being lucky to have a job, Klein is lucky to have ME as a teacher!

My concerns-
1. We don’t want schools to replace well-paid, experienced teachers with lower salaried inexperienced teachers. Not that there is anything wrong with inexperienced teachers – we were all there once. If not for MY highly-paid, experienced mentor, I may well have been another professional drop out. Take tenure away you could easily disenfranchise new teachers.
2. Tenured teachers have the opportunity to criticize ill-formed plans, become politically active, and join teacher organizations. They are more likely to be innovative in the classroom. They are more likely to advocate for students who are in crisis. Take tenure away, and you will end up with The Emperor’s New Clothes.
3. I worry about giving anyone person too much power – whether that be teacher or principal. Many teachers already complain about nepotism, and removing tenure would make it that much easier for it to occur in Klein. Take tenure away and we could be at risk of losing good teachers so that principals could protect their friends and family members.
4. Not all principals are reliable. You only need three years of classroom experience to be a principal. I know that many principals became principals to escape the classroom. Even though they are trained in KPAS evaluation, they may not truly understand good teaching, especially with the technology push in Klein. Just because someone is using the Starboard during an observation does not mean that learning is occurring.
5. Teachers are already scared of retaliation. That’s why this is an anonymous letter through TSTA. To get rid of tenure just make it easier for principals to retaliate by giving a bad evaluation, putting the teacher on a growth plan, and firing them. With tenure, teachers can only be fired for just cause, and the board will have to see evidence of poor performance. If just cause exists, then the personnel file should contain ample evidence of this. If Klein finds that they cannot fire teachers with continued poor performances even after an attainable growth plans have been issued, then we should take a look at the why the administrator failed to document appropriately.

What reassurances can the board give the teachers and community members that this is not going to happen? This is the sort of thing that puts everyone on guard and makes everyone nervous. Times are rough in education. We all understand that. We also know that there are teachers who need to have a nonrenewal of contracts, but is this really the way? Klein ISD is not an educational business; it is a community of stakeholders, and we have a responsibility to everyone to provide the best education for our children with as little corporate tactics as possible.

Signed,
A teacher, resident, voter, and believer in Klein ISD.

            Good evening President Szymczack, Board Members, and Dr. Cain. As we move into the election season, the association hopes that the administration will assist us in encouraging all district employees and citizens to get out and vote. These are critical times and it is important that our students and citizens take the time to get familiar with the candidates and other items on the ballot. This is a huge race and we are looking forward to the candidate’s forum taking place at Klein Forest High School on October 21.

            The district Walktober Challenge is in full swing and doing well. We have a walking course at Doerre where I teach, and I’ve been using my smart phone as a pedometer to record my steps. I find that I’m walking between two to three miles a day while teaching. This is just one program we’ve engaged in as part of the wellness program. The association is supporting Mr. Stockton and the Benefits department in promoting the benefits of this plan to our employees.

            As we move into 2011 it is important that we give thought to the uncertain financial times ahead. Texas is looking at an 18-21 billion dollar deficit. We all know this is going to have a huge impact on public education. If we do not experience better economic times it is very possible that Klein ISD will be confronted with the dilemma of having to reduce staff.

            If Klein ISD is faced with the hardship requiring a reduction in force, then we need to be prepared. If a RIF is necessary, then on behalf of nearly 1000 members in Klein, I would like to chair a committee of educators and community members to research and prepare a report on the most equitable method of approaching a district wide reduction in force. We believe that the key stakeholders to be affected should sit on this committee, so their perspective can be presented. We hope that we would have this support of Administration and the Board of Trustees if this need were to arise.

            The association is currently presenting workshops to our members to provide educators the tools they need to improve their methods of instruction in the classroom. We want to do all we can to support our students and teachers. The association has teamed up with Sherry Matula, an educational consultant focusing on the new science curriculum. She will be presenting a Science Curriculum Workshop in November. Sherry is also a consultant of the PDAS evaluation system and will be proving PDAS Workshops.      

            As a member and a leader in the world’s largest education association, I am here to ensure that our members and others understand our purpose and why we exist. We exist to ensure the following: Our members believe that there should be a great public school for every child. We will work to make education a great experience for our children and their parents. Thank you.