House approves teacher equity pay bill
NASHVILLE (AP) — The House voted Monday for Gov. Phil Bredesen’s proposal to equalize teacher pay between urban and rural school districts, approving what one representative called “a patch on a bad tire.”
The teacher equity pay plan is a response to the 2002 Tennessee Supreme Court decision that found, for the third time, the state’s funding formula for K-12 education unconstitutional.
It injects $35 million to equalize teacher pay, redefines the state and local share for teacher salaries and makes several other changes designed to get the state out from under the court decision.
It incorporates eight of 10 recommendations made to Bredesen by a task force he appointed to study the issue. One of the two recommendations left out — recognition of the additional cost that urban systems face in teaching higher percentages of poor children and those for whom English is a second language — was cited by several urban legislators as a serious flaw.
The urban legislators were assured that their issues would soon be addressed. The vote was 77-17.
“As you know we’ve been sued over this particular statutory scheme several times,” said Majority Leader Kim McMillan, D-Clarksville. “It is the goal of this legislation to get us out from under the restrictions placed on us by the Supreme Court. There are issues that will be carried forward with the highest priority and it is the hope some changes will occur in coming years, but for this year it was of the utmost importance that we address the problems raised by the court.”
The plan includes teacher salaries as a component of the Basic Education Program for the first time, as ordered by the court. The BEP is the funding formula for K-12.
The plan initially sets the value of a teacher salary at $34,000, which will raise the average teacher salary in Tennessee to more than $43,000, higher than the Southeastern average.
It changes the state’s share of aggregate teacher salary costs from 75 percent to 65 percent, and raises the local share accordingly. It includes about $30 million to ensure no district receives less money next year under the new system than it would have received under the old one.
It also directs much of the new money to two types of school systems — those that are poor, without the tax base needed to pay more on their own; and those that have been growing rapidly.
“This was a potentially very difficult problem,” Bredesen said before the House vote. “A couple years ago, there were estimates of $500-$600 million as the cost of solving it. I think for about $70 million we have got the issue to the point where we’ve had a lot of pay increases for people in smaller districts, and we’ve satisfied the plaintiffs in the case.”
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Les Winningham, D-Huntsville and chairman of the Education Committee, called it “a solution to a problem.”
“It makes the Supreme Court happy. It makes teachers across the state happy. It makes each of us happy if we’re at a point where we can move forward with issues that are relevant to education,” he said.
Rep. Brenda Turner, D-Chattanooga, said the bill “is going to be harmful. This is not helpful.”
Turner said she would vote for it “with a great deal of sadness. It’s not appropriate that when we want to be fair, to share so much with the rural areas and the urban children are very much in danger.”
Rep. Gary Odom, D-Nashville, said he was troubled by the bill’s impact on his district’s schools.
“I’m really concerned about voting for something now that will penalize my school system to the tune of three to four million dollars, while in the meantime we’re saying we know there are unique circumstances that affect urban systems and we’re going to study them,” he said.
The “patch on a bad tire” reference was made by Rep. Dwayne Bunch, R-Cleveland, who said the House was ignoring the real problem, which he said was a flawed, illogical decision by an activist Supreme Court.
He said the real answer is to have popularly elected Supreme Court judges.
“Until we deal with that problem we’ll deal with issues that don’t have a good answer,” he said.
The Senate deferred action on the bill until Thursday.