At the end of the board meeting we were asked about what we thought of the three propositions. I said some of what I thought about it. After listening to a podcast from a KID radio show where Mr. Luna talked about the new laws, I felt compelled to write a letter to the Pioneer and Morning News. I had to reduce this in half to make it fit in the Morning News. I have not heard from the Pioneer. I get so tired of Luna blaming the school districts and teachers for many of the problems. He has a way of not telling the whole truth, so I thought I would tell some of the other side the way I see things.
After I wrote this I found out if these laws are repealed it will cause a lot of problems that will have to be resolved. The requirement for online classes and technology is now law. If the proposition is repealed it will remove the funding, not the law. I think they will have to pass new legislation to remove the law. Schools can not afford an unfunded mandate like this.
Another concern brought to me is about the pay for performance. With many plans in place setting up the guidelines, if the law fails, it will be very hard for schools to figure out what to do if their plan is under contract with the teachers, and then they don't end up with the funding. I can understand there will be challenges, but I still maintain these are bad laws. I compared it to what I think of Obama care. Some of Obama care is in place, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be changed.
I think if the legislature and the Department of Education would have worked more with teachers and school boards they would have come up with a better plan, and we wouldn't have all the conflict we are dealing with now.
If you have any questions after reading this let me know. Good or bad I guess I say what I think.
Propositions
I am on the Firth school board and wanted to address my thoughts about the propositions. I am basically neutral on Proposition one. I don't think this proposition effects our school very much either way. I want to mainly address the other propositions. I would strongly encourage a no vote on each of these. Prop. 2 pay for performance. They make it very confusing so it's very hard to understand. Basically all schools are evaluated and put on a bell curve, just like some grades are given out in school. The top of the curve schools get a full share of funding from the state. It works it's way down. The lower the evaluation goes the less money is paid, until the lowest get nothing. One thing to keep in mind. No mater what a district chooses to do, a teacher can only get one full share, no more. So if the school is at the top level they will all get the same amount of money. If a district wants to reward teachers for performance, the rewards have to go to a group of teachers teaching or doing the same thing, and only if the school as a whole does not qualify for a whole share. So for example you want to reward the school math teachers because they raised student achievement. But in this example the school only qualifies for half a share. The only way to reward the math teachers is to take away from the teachers who received a half a share, so they will get even less, and give part of their share to the math teachers. Is this fair? What if one math teacher is poor and the all the others are excellent, but because of the weak teacher achievement isn't high enough, then no one will get extra performance money. This can put teachers against each other. Administering this from the state must require a lot of extra time and expense that could be used to raise all teacher's pay.
Proposition 3. To me this is the worst one. Requiring all students to take two online classes will be a real challenge for a small district like ours. I have a hard time believing the state will really provide all the funding for this program. For one thing there is no new funding to replace the teachers we had to cut, because we received less funding from the state and federal governments. Our total funding has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. Now we are supposed to come up with the teachers to help with the online classes. I believe many students will struggle with this requirement. I think it would have been good to offer online classes to those who want to take them, but not to make it a requirement. Since the classes are going to be provided by teachers outside of the district, the funding for these classes will have to follow. There is some ways to mitigate some of this expense, but not all. I don't think funding will go back into the district to replace these lost dollars.
There are so many half truths out there clouding this issue. I recently heard Tom Luna on the radio. I want to set straight a few things he said. He talked about increasing school funding. Schools are paid by a unit of students, for the M&O budget. The older the kids the less kids it takes to make a unit. We used to get about $24,000 per unit. Last year we received $19,626. Each district's state funding for teachers had been based on the number of these units. If we chose to have less we wouldn't save any money, the state would just keep the money. If a district wants more teachers, they would pay for them through a supplemental levy. As the state reduced school funding they made some changes to how this works. The state didn't change the number of units, or teachers we qualify for. They gave districts discretion to lay off a certain percent of the teachers, and can now use the money saved to supplement the drop in the M&O budget and other budget cuts. So by laying off teachers, we look like the bad guys not the state. He talks about funding going up for this year. They raised this budget $80 per unit. Not much of an increase.
He claimed when the districts received federal stimulus funding, that we probably used much of these funds to hire more teachers. So it wasn't the states fault that since this funding is gone that now districts have to lay off teachers. We didn't hire anymore teachers. We used most of the money to help replace part of what I think was a 7% teacher pay cut the state imposed. The rest helped pay for an increase in insurance costs. He also doesn't mention some state funding was lowered when federal money came in.
He says class sizes are determined at the local level. He also says the Students Come First laws don't effect class sizes. Because of less state funding we have laid off I think four teachers. So some of our class sizes have gone up. The only way to maintain class sizes is through supplemental levies, which we don't have. Some of the reduction for funding of teachers may have come first, but most of the new money for education is going back to Students Come First, not used to restore teaching positions or our M&O budget. Others talk about funding for Proposition 3 as an unfunded mandate that will lead to higher property taxes. Well in this sense it is. Because the state chooses not to restore these funds, many districts are depending on supplemental levies, which in fact have raised property taxes.
I have nothing to do with any union. I am as republican as anyone can be. But these so called Luna laws are a big mistake. Thanks, Brian Esplin
