Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/83243
AT THE CAPITOL Bad Bill AEA Fixed HB2823: The original form of this bill was extremely problematic and punitive for teachers. After a month of intensive work by AEA leaders and staff as well as clear signs of actions being organized by local AEA affiliates, a major amendment to the bill was crafted. This amendment was adopted to the bill in the Senate Education Committee. The Senate Education Committee amendment addresses some of the problems in the bill by: • Focusing the bill on professional development and improvement opportunities for teachers rather than severe consequences. • Allowing more time to test the evaluation system before teachers are held accountable to new consequences. • Providing protections for a teacher's performance classification if the principal is deemed to be ineffective as a school leader. • Requiring administrators to observe teachers in a complete and uninterrupted lesson and then provide written feedback to the teacher within 10 days of the observation. • Requiring that the person evaluating the teacher is trained and qualified. • Requiring an opportunity for public discussion of the teacher evaluation policies before a school board adopts them. • Reverting changes to the Classroom Site Fund back to a school district decision- making process. • Permitting school districts to postpone the implementation of the teacher evaluation until the 2013-2014 school year if the school board votes to delay. • Returning control of the evaluation and performance-based pay policies to local school boards and stakeholders. "With these changes, HB2823 is now workable for the teachers and principals who work so hard to meet the needs of Arizona students in our neighborhood schools," says AEA President Andrew F. Morrill. "The bill's new focus on teacher development and support has the potential to help many teachers struggling to meet the challenges they face in their classrooms." With the amendment from the Senate Education Committee, the AEA is now neutral on the bill. We are unable to offer full support of the bill primarily due to its inequitable treatment beyond the performance classifications for charter schools teachers and principals. We also maintain concern about the lack of data currently available for evaluation systems statewide. Morrill goes on to advise teachers, "This bill creates a challenge and important opportunities for local association leaders, principals, and school administrators to craft local policies that implement the new system fairly and base those policies on research about quality teaching, teacher evaluation, and performance-based pay." For a full summary of HB2823, go to www.arizonaea.org/assets/document/ HB2823LegislativeSummaryW-Amendments. pdf. Bad Bills that Passed HB2622 originally intended to prohibit a school from displaying a classification or ranking that is no longer current unless the date the classification or ranking was received is prominently shown. The sponsor, Representative Lesko, took the bill to a conference committee during the last days of the legislative session and amended onto the bill a statewide private school voucher expansion program. This voucher program allows any student who meets the following criteria to be given a private school voucher (called the "Arizona Empowerment Scholarship"): any student who attends a school or school district that has been assigned a letter grade of "D" or "F"; those who previously received the "Arizona Scholarship for Pupils with Disabilities"; child or legal ward of a member of the United States Armed Forces who is on active duty; or a child who is a ward of the juvenile court who has achieved permanency through adoption or permanent guardianship or who is residing with prospective permanent placement. SB1047 effectively doubles the amount of tax credits that can be claimed for private school tuition through donations to a school tuition organization (STO). It creates a new income tax credit of up to $500 for individuals or $1,000 for married couples filing jointly for contributions to STOs. This new tax credit is allowed only if the filer already has claimed the maximum credit allowed under the existing STO tax credit program for individuals (which also is $500 per single filer and $1,000 per married couple filing jointly). Per the JLBC fiscal note, "Individuals received $43.2 million in tax credits for STO contributions made during 2010. This level of STO-related tax credits for individuals under current law could increase under this bill because it would double the maximum allowable tax credit that individuals could receive for STO contributions." ✒ AEA Advocate ❘ Fall 2012 7