Two Things on SB 1187

Tomorrow, the House Appropriations and Budget (A & B) Committee will hear one of the bills I’ve been watching for month. Sort of.

1. SB 1187 passed the Senate by one vote. It essentially would have given high-performing* districts the flexibility to do all kinds of things – such as removing the minimum salary schedule, insurance, and retirement benefits for the teachers. In other words, if you are a good teacher, and our kids are successful, I, as your administrator, can take away decades of progress – but only if you vote to allow me to do it. Oh, we also wouldn’t have had to serve all students in our district. It was bizarre. Apparently, that bill is now a memory.
2. Tomorrow, a substitute bill will be heard in its place. This bill takes all of the original language out and lets high schools substitute concurrent enrollment credit for certain End-of-Instruction exams. It’s now a totally different bill. Even if it passes the House, it would have to go back to the Senate. Then if they change it, there will be a conference committee. And so it goes.

What does that mean? Probably that we have more important things to worry about. I’ll keep worrying about money. That’s the big one.

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*As determined by standardized tests or a troll under a foot-bridge…it wasn’t really clear.

Two Bills to Support

Yesterday was pretty anti-climactic. The morning was loud and at times, contentious. The afternoon was like a balloon with a small pin prick. Slowly, and noticeably, the air went out of the Senate first, and then the House.

I won’t spend a whole lot of time on that. Before I discuss two bills that warrant your support, I want to share with you the experiences of Oklahoma teacher and English/language arts standards writing team member, Kelli Anglley.

I had the unique opportunity to go to the state capitol today and speak with our legislators about the Oklahoma ELA standards that I helped author.

As I teacher, I often wonder why our legislators make the decisions they do. Today I gained some insight. Teachers obviously cannot go and lobby because we are teaching. However, other groups seem to have more time on their hands.

This group (ROPE – Reclaiming Oklahoma Parent Empowerment, formerly Restoring Oklahoma Public Education) was there in force. They were holding red signs that read “FIX AND VERIFY” in reference to our new standards. Some members of this group had no clue why they were there. I heard a lady say to another, “Why are we here again?” All she had done was answer a robocall plea to be at the capitol. It took all I had not to walk up with my copy of the standards and say, “Which one would you like me to fix and verify” because I am almost positive most have never even read them.

As legislators would walk past them, they would chant and and grab some for conversations about the bills they were interested in.

As members of the writing team walked by to enter the House Republican Caucus, where we were invited as guests, this group was chanting “STOP COMMON CORE” the whole time we walked down the long hallway.
1. Our standards are NOT Common Core.
2. I’ve never been on either side of a protest before, so that
was very odd.

My opinion is that this is why we get some of the crazy legislation we get – because there are crazy people up at the capitol bending our legislator’s ears. I feel that my presence there today, shaking hands, putting a face to the standards, and answering questions helped. However, I am very happy to be going back to my classroom tomorrow.

As parents and teachers, we need to get more involved. I’ll post a group in the comments that you can join if interested in current educational legislation.

I was there for a little while in the morning too, but I missed that scene. That’s probably a good thing.

1. Senate Bill 1170 – This bill would repeal End-of-Instruction testing and give districts control over testing and graduation requirements for high school students. This bill does nothing for grades 3-8 testing, which is fine with me. That’s more complicated, and I’m still not sold on anything we’ve seen to replace those tests. It’s a good start and would save the state money (and high schools valuable time).

2. House Bill 2957 – This bill would end the Teacher and Leader Effectiveness Evaluation System and place the job of teacher evaluation back into the hands of districts. As with SB 1170, it’s a bill that provides flexibility and local control.

(By the way, this is a stark contrast to SB 1187 which rolls back years of progress on teacher protections – get this…as a REWARD for being successful! That’s not the local control we’re looking for.)

HB 2957 also would save districts money. Time, flexibility, and cost-savings. These are always upgrades.

As hard as we’ve worked these last few weeks fighting madness, let’s keep that energy focused, and fight for things we want. These bills passed their chamber of origin unanimously this month. As I found talking to people at the Capitol today, there are more elected leaders trying to help us than hurt us. Let’s thank them and let them know we support good legislation.