Texas teachers need some help

From the United Educators Association
and the Texas Federation of Teachers

Thursday, May 5, 2005


HB 2568, the proposed TRS omnibus bill that would make significant new cutbacks in TRS benefits.


HB 2568 now would further boost employees’ costs and cut benefits by:

--Averaging employees salaries over five years instead of three to calculate pension benefits.

-- Increasing benefit reductions for those who retire early.

-- Setting a minimum age of 60 for standard retirement benefits, even for those who have satisfied the rule of 80.

-- Increasing by another 30 percent the active-employee contribution to TRS-Care.

-- Sharply increasing the cost of out-of state service credit.

-- Imposing a “rule of 90" for partial lump-sum eligibility.



Pensions and Investments Committee chair Craig Eiland, Democrat of Galveston, has responded to concerns voiced in a series of meetings over the past two weeks by exempting current employees from these cutbacks with grandfather clauses.



For example, the minimum age of 60 for standard retirement benefits would not apply to any employee hired before September 1, 2006.



Another example: The adverse changes in calculation of final average pay and of benefit reductions for early retirement would not apply to any employee who, as of August 31, 2005, is at least 50 years old or satisfies a rule of 70 or has 25 years of service credit.



The TRS pension fund still won’t be flush enough to offer annuity increases to retirees any time soon, and there is no provision to grant such a cost-of-living increase automatically once the fund can support one.



There is a possibility of a small increase in the state contribution to the pension fund, but nothing like the restoration of the 7.31-percent rate that was temporarily cut to 6 percent ten years ago--let alone the 8-percent rate still mandated in law but routinely overridden by the legislature every two years in the budget bill.



HB 2568 makes no attempt to correct this urgent problem.



Below is a list of area legislators with their email addresses:



State Representative

Name District E-mail County

Rob Orr 58 rob.orr@house.state.tx.us Johnson

Phil King 61 phil.king@house.state.tx.us Parker

Charlie Geren 99 charlie.geren@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Anna Mowery 97 anna.mowery@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Lon Burnam 90 lon.burnam@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Marc Veasey 95 marc.veasey@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Kent Grusendorf 94 kent.grusendorf@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Toby Goodman 93 toby.goodman@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Bill Zedler 96 bill.zedler@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Bob Griggs 91 bob.griggs@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Vicki Truitt 98 vicki.truitt@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Todd Smith 92 todd.smith@house.state.tx.us Tarrant

Myra Crownover 64 myra.crownover@house.state.tx.us Denton

Burt Solomons 65 burt.solomons@house.state.tx.us Denton

Brian McCall 66 brian.mccall@house.state.tx.us Collin

Jerry Madden 67 jerry.madden@house.state.tx.us Collin


State Senators

Jane Nelson 12 jane.nelson@senate.state.tx.us Tarrant

Kim Brimer 10 kim.brimer@senate.state.tx.us Tarrant

Chris Harris 9 chris.harris@senate.state.tx.us Tarrant

Craig Estes 30 craig.estes@senate.state.tx.us Denton / Collin

Florence Shapiro 8 florence.shapiro@senate.state.tx.us Collin

From the United Educators Association
and the Texas Federation of Teachers
May 4, 2005
Education Priorities Under Funded, Out of Balance and Less Than 30 Days to Go in Session!

The Senate Education Committee has sent to the full Senate a rewrite of the ill-conceived House version of HB 2, the main bill of the session on school finance and policy. The committee chose to reject some bad ideas from the House bill, such as one to punish teachers at schools rated exemplary by taking away the teachers' contract rights.
But the Senate committee version fails to bolster the bill's inadequate level of proposed new funding for schools. The new funding would not even equal the cuts absorbed by education programs and personnel in the 2003 session.

The bill also continues the push for privatization of public schools labeled low performing. The commissioner of education could contract out management of a public school rated low performing twice in a row, even if an intervention team is still in the midst of a turnaround program for the school and even if the school has yet to receive any needed funding for its improvement plan.

Yet at the same time the Senate committee rejected an amendment to toughen accountability for privately operated charter schools. The result is a blatant double standard, with charter schools deemed satisfactory with student passing rates of 25 percent, while traditional public schools have to meet significantly higher standards that are rising every year. The rationale is that charter schools deserve special indulgence because they deal with many at-risk students, but that's just as true, if not more so, for the regular public schools. What is the real reason for the special, low passing standard for charter schools? If the passing standard were the same as for regular public schools, a whole lot of politically "connected" charter schools that are doing a poor job would have to be shut down for failing to meet minimum standards.

The Senate committee bill, like the House version, dedicates significant funding to after-the-fact "performance pay," based on methodology yet to be invented--while under funding proven incentive options, such as mentor stipends and stipends for extra knowledge and skills or for serving at hard-to-staff campuses. The focus is not on putting properly certified teachers in our classrooms, especially at low-performing schools where we know that out-of-field teaching is rampant. Rather, the incentive language in the bill seems to have been drafted to suit the Governor's Business Council, which is ideologically fixated on performance pay as opposed to across-the-board pay raises.
The Senate panel also has injected some really bad new ideas of its own in HB 2. One would give districts a financial incentive to employ less than fully certified teachers. Anyone working under a probationary, temporary, or emergency teaching credential could be paid less than the state minimum teacher salary. Another bad innovation in the Senate version would allow school districts to fire teachers in the middle of their contract term based on a claim of "financial exigency," without having to justify the termination in front of an independent hearing examiner.

The Senate committee bill restores (as salary) the $1,000 supplement for teachers and full-time support personnel, with part-time support personnel receiving $500. That's not as good as the health-care supplement that current law requires, but it's an improvement over the House version, which would leave support personnel empty-handed.
However, the Senate's version of a teacher pay raise, amounting to $2,500 effective September 2006, is null and void unless voters approve a constitutional amendment to impose a statewide property tax. That tax will not generate any money for the pay raise (whose actual funding source is still a bit of a mystery), so why should the pay raise be contingent on approval of the tax? Apparently the Senate leadership wants to dangle the carrot of a pay raise in front of teachers to compel them to lobby the House to support the statewide property tax and then to vote for the tax at the polls.

A Senate hearing is being held today on the constitutional amendment, SJR 38, and on HB 3, the revenue bill intended mainly to pay for the property-tax cuts called for in the Senate version of HB 2. The Senate wants to cut property taxes 20 cents in the first year, plus another 20 cents in the second year if the constitutional amendment passes.

Social Security Fairness: Cosponsors keep signing up for the Social Security Fairness Act, H.R. 147 in the U.S. House and S. 619 in the U.S. Senate. The tally of House cosponsors of H.R. 147, by Republican Rep. Howard McKeon of California, now is 252. That's 34 more than needed to pass the bill in the House, if only Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Republican of Sugar Land, would let the bill come up for a vote.
The Senate version of the Fairness Act, S. 619, now has 17 cosponsors. The bill's principal author is Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California; her coauthor is Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine.
The identical companion bills would repeal both the Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision under the Social Security Act. The GPO cuts duly earned Social Security spousal benefits; the WEP cuts benefits directly earned through a job covered by Social Security. In each case, receiving a public pension based on employment not covered by Social Security is all it takes to trigger the offset.