Changes possible in school policies
Changes in Louisiana’s teacher tenure law and how public schools are funded are among the proposals that may be pushed this year by Gov. Bobby Jindal or education groups, officials said.
Penny Dastugue, president of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, said earlier this week that tenure is a recurring topic in “stakeholder” meetings that Jindal has been holding with lawmakers and others before he spells out his 2012 education package.
“It is the subject that comes up in every conversation,” she said.
Tenure is a form of job protection.
In general, public school teachers who meet standards are awarded tenure after three years.
Backers say tenure prevents teachers from unfair firings. Critics say that it all but guarantees a job for life, regardless of the teacher’s performance.
Dastugue, a Jindal appointee, said legislation could address anything from how long teachers with unsatisfactory ratings should have before they face formal job reviews, to new tenure policies for future teachers.
She said there has also been talk of changing tenure for school bus drivers, who are thought to enjoy the only such law of its kind in the United States.
Starting this fall some public schoolteachers will start undergoing annual evaluations linked in part to growth of student achievement.
Brigitte Nieland, a vice president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, said there have been discussions of new rules for precisely what teachers face if they get unsatisfactory classroom ratings and fail to improve.
“I think it would be linked to the new evaluation,” said Nieland, who attended one of the private meetings with Jindal and others.
Jim Garvey, vice-president of BESE, said he also thinks tenure will be a topic during the 2012 regular legislative session, which begins on March 12.
“My guess is he (Jindal) is not planning to do away with tenure, but he has talked about tweaking it,” Garvey said.
State Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, has sponsored tenure legislation in the past and said he would do so again. His past efforts have been unsuccessful.
“If they ask me to, obviously I would love to,” said Carter, who could become chairman of the House Education Committee.
Jindal has said that improved teacher quality, more school choices and giving local educators new flexibility in how dollars are spent will be his key themes.
However, he told reporters on Wednesday that it will be a few weeks before he spells out details of his school package.
“We want to make sure we give everyone a chance to come and share their thoughts,” Jindal said.
In another area, Dastugue said there have been discussions about possible changes in how the state provides funds for the estimated 668,000 public school students.
Under current rules, the state allocates $3.4 billion in school aid through a formula called the Minimum Foundation Program.
However, about half-a-dozen school districts are experimenting with a radical change that gives principals, not school districts, much of the authority on how to spend most state, federal and local education dollars.
“It is certainly on the list of things that could potentially come up,” said Chas Roemer, a member of BESE and a proponent of the new funding method, which is called Student-Based Budgeting.
“The benefit of it is it should get more money into the school building instead of the central office,” Roemer said. “This should allow more school-level decisionmaking on how a school is run.”
Dastugue said that, while the pilot projects have shown major challenges to implementing such a system, funding changes of some kind are possible.
“I do believe there will be some serious efforts around the concept of dollars following the children,” she said.
Nieland noted that Louisiana’s formula for funding public schools sparks annual criticism.
“Everyone hates it for different reasons,” she said. “Even though it was put into place primarily to put in equity, one of the harshest criticisms that we get year after year is that it is not an equitable formula.”
Other possible proposals would:
- Expand access to scholarships, or vouchers, which allows families that meet income requirements to get state aid to attend private or parochial schools.
The aid is now limited to a relatively few students in New Orleans.
- Expand access to charter schools, which are public schools run by nongovernmental groups, by increasing the number of groups that can authorize them.
Only local school boards and BESE can authorize charter schools now.
- Allow individual school district voters to decide whether to set term limits for local school board members.