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.

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.”

Without exaggeration, this election is the most crucial for Texas’ public schools and educators in many years.  Hundreds of school districts around the state are financially strapped, thanks to an inadequately funded school finance system. And, with the Legislature facing a revenue shortfall as high as $21 billion when it convenes in January, the situation will become much worse, unless we elect new leadership in Austin.

At the behest of Gov. Rick Perry, the Texas Education Agency already has proposed $261 million in cuts from the next public education budget, including $48 million for new textbook purchases, $35 million for science labs, $12.9 million for teacher mentoring, more than $16 million for dropout prevention programs, $11 million for middle school physical education and $42 million for the Student Success Initiative, a program designed to give special help to struggling students.

What’s more, a move already is underway to lift the 22-1 class-size limit on grades K-4, a key, longstanding reform that has helped promote quality teaching in the primary grades.

Think we sound alarmist? Ask one of the hundreds of Texas educators who already have lost their jobs. Hundreds more – including maybe you or someone you know – will follow them, if this slash-and-burn attack on the public schools isn’t stopped.

The halt can start on Election Day — but not without the help of educators.

Check out TSTA’s list of endorsed, pro-education candidates in the “Members Only” section of our website, www.tsta.org. Registration is required. There, you will find our choices in the governor’s race as well as state legislative, congressional and State Board of Education races. Our endorsements also are listed on page 8 in the new issue of the Advocate.

It is essential that educators who value their jobs, who care about their students’ futures, make phone calls and knock on doors for pro-education candidates…and then get out and vote! They also need to bring friends and family members with them to the polls. There is simply no excuse not to because too much is at stake.

Early voting will run from Oct. 18-29. Election Day is Nov. 2.

It also takes money:
Political campaigns are expensive, and TSTA’s candidates are competing against candidates heavily funded by voucher advocates, private school boosters and other interests who would undermine public education. Please consider contributing to TSTA-PAC, so we can help our candidates stay competitive.

Many school districts have discontinued the practice of deducting PAC contributions from employee paychecks since Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a legally questionable opinion earlier this year banning the practice. TSTA is developing an online way to make PAC contributions using your credit card. Please check www.tsta.org for updates. Click on the “Legislative” section.

It’s the last day to register to vote!

http://www.votexas.org/register_to_vote.html

We are looking forward to an active and lively board of trustees election this November. Currently, there are eight (8) people running for two (2) positions.

Information about the Candidates:

Position 6
Paul Lanham
Mark D. Taylor
Larry Allen (incumbent)
Johanna Ramos Dawson

Position 7
Steven E. Smith
W.R. (Rick) Mann (incumbent)
Kevin Weido
James B. Robinson

Important Dates:
July 25 – August 24, 2010
Time period to apply to have name placed on ballot

August 30, 2010, 5:00 pm, Central Office
Drawing for Ballot Placement

September 23, 2010
Candidates’ Workshop

October 18 through October 29, 2010
Early voting at designated Harris County precinct polling locations

October 21, 2010, 7:00 pm, Klein Forest High School
Candidates’ Forum

November 11, 2010, 7:00 pm, Central Office Board Room
Canvass of votes and swearing in of candidates

December 16, 2010, noon to 4:00 pm
New trustees’ orientation

• 102,000 calls to Congress;
• 42,000 postcards; and
• 301,000 e-mails.

Four of every 10 Texas teachers moonlight during the school year to make ends meet, and 56 percent take extra jobs during the summer, according to a survey by Sam Houston State University commissioned by the Texas State Teachers Association.

The 40.8 percent of respondents who said they held second jobs during the current school year was the highest percentage since TSTA first started sponsoring the biennial survey, “Texas Teachers, Moonlighting and Morale,” 30 years ago. It was a significant jump from the 28 percent who reported moonlighting in 2008 and the 22 percent who reported having extra jobs when the first survey was conducted in 1980.

“It is a shame that so many of our dedicated educators have to struggle with extra jobs to support their families, but they have no choice,” said TSTA President Rita Haecker. “They are to be commended for going the extra mile each day for their students and their families. It is past time for our elected state officials to give these professionals the professional pay that they deserve.”

Almost half of the respondents (46.7 percent) said they were seriously considering leaving the profession, but the fact that 58.6 percent also were their family’s major breadwinners made that prospect difficult for many teachers.

The online survey of 907 teachers was conducted this spring by faculty members at Sam Houston State University.

The average number of hours, 15.2 percent, that teachers spent on extra jobs each week during the school year also was the highest amount recorded for the survey, as was the 56.4 percent of teachers who took summer jobs. In 2008, the average number of hours spent moonlighting each week during the school year was 11.5, and 34 percent of respondents reported summer jobs.

Some 68.6 percent of the moonlighting teachers believe their teaching quality would improve if they didn’t have extra jobs but said they couldn’t afford to give up the additional income without a raise in their teacher pay. Most (63.2 percent) said they would quit their second jobs during the school year if their teaching jobs paid more. On average, they said that would require a raise of $8,534 a year.

The average salary of teachers responding to the survey was $50,019 a year. Their average classroom experience was 17.7 years.

Overall, the average teacher salary in Texas, according to data for the 2008-09 school year, the most recent available, was $47,157. That was 34th in the country and $7,176 below the national average.

Other findings from the survey included:

*The respondents’ average age is 49.
*78.9 percent are women.
*43.8 percent have master’s degrees.
*Only 28.8 percent consider the quality of teaching at their schools better than it was five years ago.
*They spent an average of 15 hours a week outside of class on school-related work.
*Their out-of-pocket expenses on school supplies averaged $564 a year.
*Their average out-of-pocket expenses for health insurance averaged $222 a month.
*Only 32.1 percent believed they had adequate time to prepare and teach.
*Discipline (57.7 percent) and paperwork (22.3 percent) were identified as the worst problems in their schools.
*Only 6 percent believed a single standardized test should determine whether a student gets promoted.
*51 percent of respondents taught in urban districts and 38 percent in suburban schools.
*37.4 percent taught in high school, 35.9 percent in elementary grades and 24.9 percent in middle school.

For poll data and questions, see the Pressroom.
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