URGENT: Take Action

March 26, 2013

Contact Senate Education Committee members TODAY and tell them to VOTE NO on private school voucher expansion, HB 1003!

Tomorrow the Senate Education Committee will vote on an expansion of Indiana's private school voucher program that was ruled constitutional today by the Indiana Supreme Court.

In wake of today's court ruling, the Milton Friedman Foundation, one of the leading pro-school voucher organizations in the country, announced that Indiana's current program could make more than 530,000 Indiana students eligible for taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private schools.

All public school districts will suffer, financially and in the loss of students, if the current voucher program is expanded under HB 1003. Millions of additional dollars will be shifted from public schools to private schools. That would result in fewer learning programs, less remediation, and larger class sizes for the state's one million public school students. All students deserve quality educations, not just those who receive vouchers.

Please join ISTA and other public school supporters from across the state and share your opposition to HB 1003. Contact members of the Senate Ed Committee today and share your support for strong and well-funded public schools in every Hoosier community.

Support public education by contacting the Senators listed below. Tell them to vote NO on HB 1003 tomorrow.

The future of public education is in our hands. Please email TODAY from your personal or home computer.

Senator Dennis Kruse (Chair): s14@iga.in.gov
Senator Earline Rogers: s3@iga.in.gov
Senator Carlin Yoder: s12@iga.in.gov
Senator Jim Banks: s17@iga.in.gov
Senator John Broden: s10@iga.in.gov
Senator James Buck: s21@iga.in.gov
Senator Luke Kenley: s20@iga.in.gov
Senator Jean Leising: s42@iga.in.gov
Senator Pete Miller: s24@iga.in.gov
Senator Frank Mrvan: s1@iga.in.gov
Senator Scott Schneider: s30@iga.in.gov
Senator Greg Taylor: s33@iga.in.gov

The Value of YOUR ISTA Membership!

Individual Teacher's Contract

• In August, 2011 ISTA immediately challenged Dr. Tony Bennett's new teacher contract form and was granted a Preliminary Injunction to keep it from being used. The judge ruled that current teacher contract forms should be used because Bennett's form did not conform to Indiana code.
• In August, 2012 ISTA opposed IDOE's attempt to overturn that Preliminary Injunction and ISTA was granted a Permanent Injunction.
• ISTA then prepared to challenge IDOE's appeal of the Injunction to the Indiana Court of Appeals.
• In March, 2013 Indiana's Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal at IDOE's request.
• ISTA is drafting a sample teacher contract providing IDOE with suggestions on how the teacher contract should read.
• This effort by ISTA and its legal counsel (costing in excess or $50,000) is worth the cost of your membership because no teacher in this state will now be forced to become an at-will employee and be required to work any and all hours their employer would request.

ISTEP Integrity Statement

• ISTA's legal efforts resulted in an immediate revision of this statement last school year and a recall of the first version teachers were mandated to sign.
• ISTA is currently working with the IDOE to further modify the statement to make it less offensive to those who are required to sign it.

License Revocations

• ISTA has successfully represented several members in license revocation cases.
• Without ISTA's efforts on their behalf, they were certain to lose or have their licenses suspended. Some of these cases were brought against teachers who had no charges of any sort pending against them and who had been entirely cleared of any offense by law enforcement and Child Protective Services but were still being pursued by the IDOE for license revocation.

Child Abuse Representation

• Eric Hylton, ISTA legal counsel, has handled more than 35 child abuse allegation cases so far this year with tremendous success in getting an unsubstantiated ruling on virtually all of them.

Permanent/Semi-Permanent Property Rights

• ISTA is currently challenging in court the property rights of teachers who have previously earned semi-permanent or permanent status but who have now been RIF'd before a less senior colleague.
• This challenge could have huge ramifications for every teacher in the state who has semi-permanent or permanent status when school districts start looking at layoffs this spring.
• ISTA is also challenging to establish the right of a semi-permanent or permanent teacher to have full evidentiary rights at a dismissal hearing.

Collective Bargaining

• ISTA has several pending cases or Unfair Labor Practice claims that will try to establish the right of teachers to bargain the payment of wages for additional hours worked into their master contracts.
• A Nettle Creek Fact Finding case is pending in a trial court and a Noblesville ULP is awaiting a hearing before the IEERB Board. Both could have significant impact on our members across the state.
• ISTA is currently inquiring into the authority of the State Board of Accounts to audit local bargaining agreements and to issue citations to local school corporations.

Legislative

• ISTA staff continues to aggressively advocate for public education and education employees and lobbying against many bills that are not favorable to ISTA members or to public education in the General Assembly, including the bill that vastly expands the current voucher program that provides public dollars to private schools.
• ISTA remains the voice for public school educators at all levels of state government.

Political Action

• ISTA was an early supporter and stayed extensively involved in the successful election of State School Superintendent Glenda Ritz and will continue to support her efforts to improve public education and the Indiana Department of Education.

Voucher Challenge

• NEA/ISTA presented oral arguments before the Indiana Supreme Court in opposition to the voucher program on November 21, 2012. ISTA continues to believe that Indiana's private school voucher program is a clear violation of the state's constitution. The Indiana Supreme Court has not yet ruled in this case.

Look for more information from ISTA soon!

Retirement Workshops!

Horace Mann is offering two retirement workshops at the beginning of April, 2013.

The first is on April 9 at Albion Elementary in Albion, Indiana (Central Noble).

Click the flyer below for more details.

The second is on April 10 at Norwell High School in Ossian, IN (Northern Wells).

Click the flyer below for more details.

Stand up for yourself and ISTA

ACTION ITEM: Please contact your House Representative immediately to urge their opposition to HB 1334.

This is your chance to stand up for your profession and the Association that stands up for you.

This morning, the House Education Committee heard HB 1334 (Rep. Jeff Thompson, R-Lizton, a teacher himself), allowing the Department of Administration to contract for liability insurance for public and nonpublic teachers. This was the original bill (before an amendment) and basically invites state government to get in the teacher liability insurance business-hardly an example of free market principles generally espoused by members of the Republican caucus-but coincidentally a service that the ISTA provides as part of its membership dues.

Speaking of Association dues, Rep. Thompson then added an amendment to his bill in committee to do a number of things, chief among them, to prohibit a school employer from enabling the automatic deduction of union dues from the school employee's paycheck as voluntarily requested in writing by the employee.

Since this issue was highlighted in the Northwest Indiana Times and the Indianapolis Star beginning in November (after the election) as a legislative goal of the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce, ISTA has systematically contacted many members of the Republican House and Senate caucuses to ascertain the strength of support therein. Time after time, the response ISTA received in these intervening months centered on words and phrases like "unnecessary," "punitive," "retribution," and "does nothing to improve student achievement."

During public testimony on this issue, only one individual registered support specifically for the component of the bill that prohibits dues deduction-Kevin Brinegar, President of the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce.

ISTA testified in strong opposition and is greatly disappointed that, once again, the House Education Committee has chosen to focus on adults rather than programs in classrooms that help children succeed. The effort to take away teachers' own choice to deduct their dues, which is both voluntary and annually renewed, is disrespectful and is yet another attack on teachers-this time their professional Association.

During testimony, Rep. Thompson confirmed that his measure has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with his "philosophy" on the issue. This is not being billed as a fiscal savings measure and is surely not as demonstrated by the continued allowance of every other voluntary deduction one can conceive.

Recently, in other states with Republican-controlled legislatures, this same measure has been enacted-only to be found unconstitutional in court.

Ironically, Rep. Thompson embedded into his anti-teacher amendment the following initiatives:

(1) A $1000 state income tax deduction for certain expenditures made by teachers related to their instruction (this amounts to $34 annually);

(2) Excused from all professional growth requirements for re-licensure teachers deemed "highly effective;"

(3) Excused from 50% of the growth experiences the teacher would otherwise be required to accrue for re-licensure teachers deemed "effective;"

(4) In a blanket move, authorized "high performing schools" to seek waivers of all SBE rules.

The bill passed committee as amended along party lines with a vote of 7-3. Representative Kreg Battles (D-Vincennes) excused himself from the vote until he can seek legal counsel because, as a professional educator and dues-paying member of ISTA, he wants to ensure there are no conflicts of interest.

ACTION ITEM: Please contact your House Representative immediately to urge their opposition to HB 1334. This is your chance to stand up for your profession and the Association that stands up for you.

Contact your legislators

https://keepthepromiseindiana.org/_data/files/Copy_of_House_Senate_emails.pdf

ALERT! Anti-Public Education Bills

ISTA Members: Two anti-public education bills in the Indiana House need your attention and your response TODAY:

www.keepthepromiseindiana.org

PARENT TRIGGER ACCELERATION HB 1358
ATTACK ON TEACHERS' RIGHTS HB 1339

HB 1358:
Tuesday; House Education Committee will hear the accelerated "Parent Trigger" bill to enable a minority of parents to take over community-based public schools and convert them to charter schools run by corporate "lead partners".--HB 1358 (Rep. Todd Huston, R-Fishers).

WHAT HB 1358 DOES:

• Indiana's existing conversion charter school law is repealed (which requires both the school board and parents to agree on a conversion).
• That law is replaced with a model that solely enables 51% of parents in a school that is labeled in the bottom two categories for three (3) consecutive years to:

• take over the school by petitioning the state board of education to assign a "lead partner" to operate the school; and

• place the school under the most draconian of sanctions that currently attach to schools in the bottom two lowest categories for five (5) consecutive years.

• When is 51% not a majority? When parents are given multiple votes based upon the number of children they have in a school. Because parents are given "weighted" voting rights based upon the number of children then have in a school, a minority of parents can fundamentally change the focus, the governance, the scope of teachers' rights, and the framework of a local community-based public school. 

HB 1339:

• Teachers:

• Due Process: Repeals the law concerning the continuing effect of an individual teacher's contract. Without this law, contracts will terminate on their face annually and a teacher, "effective or not," will not be protected from arbitrary termination until a new contract is signed.

• Collective Bargaining: Relative to the pro rata member/nonmember composition on committees-states that all "discussion committees" fall under this pro rata framework. Existing law exempted the bargaining team from having to adhere to the member/nonmember composition because under law, the bargaining team is the EXCLUSIVE representative.

• States that the existence of a voluntary sick bank is bargainable but the terms of the sick bank policy are not. This reneges on the 2011 pledge that wages and benefits are bargainable. A voluntary sick bank is a benefit.

• Removes the provision authorizing the continuing effect of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) when agreement has not been reached. The whole point of the new collective bargaining law was to get to the point of agreement. There has been only one case in which agreement has not been reached---and that situation was created by allegations of unfair labor practices having occurred. In a case such as this, the party that committed an unfair labor practice should not be "rewarded" by terminating the existing CBA.

• Suspension without pay: Removes from law the requirement that a teacher who is subject to suspension without pay is entitled to a full statement of the reasons for the proposed suspension without pay and to be heard and to present the testimony of witnesses and other evidence. Also repeals the law that enables the school board to appoint an agent or attorney to issue subpoenas for the attendance of witnesses for either party at the hearing to suspend a teacher without pay.

• Teacher Compensation: Requires that each school district must submit its compensation model to the DOE and the DOE, the State Board of Accounts, and the IEERB and these bodies shall report any noncompliance to the State Board of Education -which is then required to take "appropriate action to ensure compliance."

• Virtual Charter Schools:

• Enables a virtual charter school to provide up to 90% of its program "virtually" and still qualify for state funding. Current law says 50% of instruction must be "real." The likely effect is to enable more home-schooled students to be virtually-instructed at the state's expense. There is no funding attached to this. There is no requirement that a student first attend a public school. Also, note in HB 1338, virtually funding was increased from 87.5% of Indiana's per pupil funding to 100% of Indiana's per pupil funding. The funding for these new students will come from existing public school k-12 funding.

• Repeals the law that requires the DOE to report to the state on virtual schools in Indiana.

• Charter Schools:

• As to charter school performance reporting on the DOE website, enables each charter school authorizer to develop its own performance framework in terms of the data reported (existing law says that the annual performance data for charter schools must include the same demographic and performance data required of every other public school).

• Administrators:

• Provides some of the same due process "protections" to administrators that teachers have. However, because most administrators have multi-year contracts, the consequences for cancelling a contract will likely not play out in the same fashion-that being, contracts with out-going administrators generally come with some form of buyout.

Please let your representative and every member of the House Education committee know TODAY you oppose HB 1358 & HB 1339

For additional information on these two bills and to email legislators, visit:
www.keepthepromiseindiana.org

California Casualty Academic Award

Win $2,500 for you classroom with a California Casualty Academic Award!

Academic Award Terms & Conditions

Academic Award Terms & Conditions- Questions regarding this contest may be directed to California Casualty Management Company (“California Casualty”) at (888) 229-7526.

A contestant must be an active employee of a K-12 public school, a current member of the NEA (National Education Association), and must reside in one of the 44 states or principalities as indicated below:

AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, ID, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, MO, MN, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WV, WY

Unless otherwise noted, a contestant may only submit one entry. Entries must be received by California Casualty by the specified drawing date to be eligible for the indicated drawing. There is 1 (one) drawing in a calendar year and non-winning entry forms are automatically carried forward to the next year’s drawing. The schedule is as follows:

California Casualty will be solely responsible for selecting the recipient, interpreting contest rules, and all other matters related to the contest. Its decisions will be final.

The winner will be notified, as close as possible to the timeline proposed in the drawing calendar, that his or her school has been selected as the recipient of the academic grant. The prize will be delivered in the form of a check in the amount of $2,500 made payable to the school designated on the winning entry. No prize funds go to individuals.

By entering the contest, each contestant (1) agrees to abide by the contest rules and decisions of California Casualty; and (2) agrees that neither NEA, California Casualty and their respective affiliates, directors, officers, employees and agents shall be liable for any loss or damage of any kind caused by or resulting from the contestant’s participation in the contest, (3) represents that the contestant’s registration information is accurate, (4) consents to the use of all information submitted by him/her for contest promotion purposes, and (5) assigns all rights to his/her entry to California Casualty. As a condition to receiving a prize, a winning contestant and the school/school districts affected may be required to sign legal documents that reflect these agreements, representations, consents and assignments.

California Casualty is not responsible for any incorrect or inaccurate information supplied by contestants. California Casualty is not responsible for lost or misdirected entries. Employees of California Casualty and immediate family members (parents, spouse, siblings and children) of such employee are not eligible to participate in this contest.

Any personal data (for example, name, address, telephone number or email address) a contestant transmits online will be used by California Casualty in accordance with the California Casualty website’s Privacy Policy.

California Casualty in its sole discretion, may alter, amend, extend, modify or terminate this contest at any time. No purchase is necessary to enter or win. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. Void where prohibited.

The California Casualty Academic Award website (www.calcasacademicaward.com) may contain links to websites or social properties (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) owned or operated by parties other than California Casualty. These links are provided for your convenience only. California Casualty does not control and is not responsible for the content, privacy policies or the security of these websites and social properties.

Click here to apply online.

Click here to download a copy of this information for printing.

Keep The Promise: Kruse Commends Ritz

Senator Kruse Commends Superintendent Ritz

Last week, Senator Dennis Kruse (R-Auburn) opened his committee hearing (Senate Education and Career Development) with the following statement:

“We’re not going to hear any bills here in the Senate bills that reflect in any way against our new superintendent. She has been doing an excellent job so far and getting along with us very well, and I will continue to work with her the best I can,” Kruse said. [Thanks to Eric Bradner of the Evansville Courier and Press for including this in his blog, Capitol Journal]

Then, Senator Kruse publicly invited ISTA lobbyist Roni Embry to work on SB 330 (having to do with the school accreditation process) with Sen. Earline Rogers (D-Gary), and John Barnes (legislative liaison to the Department of Education) to ensure that the Department of Education is appropriately included in the bill.

All of this is very good news for school employees across the state and reflective of yourwork in sharing with Senators your concerns about bills that have been introduced that appear to seek to diminish the authority of the office of the State Superintendent.

ACTION ITEM: Please follow-up and thank Senator Kruse (s14@in.gov) for his public comments supporting Glenda Ritz and for his open invitation to your ISTA lobbyists to help improve bills in his committee.