Missouri NEA Legislative Update
Week 6, No. 2, February 7, 2012
By Otto Fajen MNEA Legislative Director

CHARTER SCHOOLS

The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee will meet in executive session on February 8 to consider HB 1228 (Tishaura Jones).  The bill expands the authority for charter schools to cover the entire state, expands the list of entities allowed to sponsor charter schools, creates a statewide chartering commission and makes several changes designed to improve the accountability and transparency of charter sponsors and charter schools.

The Association believes that charter schools need to meet the same standards of accountability, transparency and respect for the rights of students, parents and  staff as apply to district-operated public schools.  Currently, serious remedial action is needed to improve that accountability for sponsors and charter schools, and the state should adopt and implement those reforms and verify that they are working to ensure charter schools meet those standards before considering expansion of charter school territory or sponsorship.  Accordingly, the Association opposes the bill and will seek to limit charter school legislation to correcting those deficiencies without concurrent expansion of either charter school geography or sponsorship.

STREAMLINED SALES TAX

The House Tax Reform Committee will meet on February 8 to hear two bills to enact the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement: HB 1356 (Doug Funderburk) and HB 1215 (Margo McNeil).  The bills would help ensure that more of the sales and use taxes that should be collected for purchases in Missouri from online and remote sellers are actually collected.  The Association strongly supports these efforts to stablilize sales tax revenues.  The bills also help level the playing field for Missouri-based businesses that are already collecting and remitting state sales tax and facing increasing and unfair competition from online and remote sellers who do not collect sales taxes.  This far-sighted tax reform will help the state increase investment in K-12 and higher education and other vital services.

SCHOOL FUNDING FORMULA

The Senate Education Committee may consider SB 454 (David Pearce) in executive session on February 8. The bill revises how the K-12 school funding formula will distribute funds to districts in the case where the formula is underfunded.

The bill would eliminate the language allowing the per pupil base amount to be lowered to meet appropriations and put a structure in place to prorate payments to ensure that the impact of underfunding is shared among all districts, rather than just falling on the most vulnerable.  SB 454 would reduce non-formula district payments by 50% of the proportion that formula payments are reduced.

The bill also provides proration targets for appropriations beginning in fiscal year 2014 that increase and continue until fiscal year 2017. While any formula revision without additional funding will shift funding among districts, the Association supports the bill, as it seeks to limit the most radical and harmful funding shifts in the short term and to set the state on a long-term course to again fully fund the formula.

HOUSE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION COMMITTEE

The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee will also meet on February 8 to hear two bills:

HB 1157 (Lyle Rowland) to delay the deadline for the notification of reemployment and the offering of teacher contracts for probationary teachers from April 15 to May 15.

HB 1387 (Joe Aull) to allow a school district to use a calendar based on hours of attendance, rather than hours and days of attendance, if the minimum number of hours is at least 1,073.

SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE

The Senate Education Committee will meet on February 8 to hear three bills:

1) SB 483 (Scott Rupp) to create the Early High School Graduation Scholarship Program for public high school students who graduate from high school early.

2) SB 562 (Bob Dixon) to allow four-year public higher education institutions to transfer property, other than by fee simple transfer, without further authorization by the legislature.

3) SB 563 (Bob Dixon) to modify the term lengths of the board of governors of Missouri State University so that no more than three members’ terms expire in any given year.

BUDGET COMMITTEES

The House Appropriations-Education Committee will meet on February 8 to continue the analyst markup phase for the education budget books.  The meeting gives committee members the opportunity to ask questions of staff regarding the various programs in the budget.

WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION AND WHISTLE-BLOWER LAW

The House gave first-round approval (Perfection vote) to HB 1219 (Kevin Elmer) on February 7 by a vote of 84-70.  The Association opposes HB 1219. The bill still makes several harmful changes to the state’s anti-discrimination law in employment, disability and housing and significantly limits and weakens “whistle-blower” protections. Problematic changes in discrimination law include removing individual liability, caps on damages and barring punitive damages on public entities.

VOTER ID

The House gave first round approval (Perfection vote) to HB 1104 (Shane Schoeller) on February 7 by a party-line vote of 104-54.  The bill is implementing legislation for SJR 2, regarding voter photo ID requirements, should it be approved by voters.  The bill requires a person seeking to vote in a public election to provide election officials a photo identification.  Missouri NEA believes voting is a constitutional right that should not be restricted by unnecessary voter photo identification requirements or other additional barriers to the voting franchise.  The Association opposes the bill.