LAPCS | April Legislative Update | Latest News and Events

2010 Regular Legislative Session
Legislative Update
Week 5: April 26 - 30

As compared to last week, it was a fairly quiet week at the legislature for charter schools with only two bills being heard in committees that would have direct impacts on your school.

HB 1033 (Rep. Frank Hoffman - Monroe) Provides relative to evaluation and assessment for teachers and administrators. Click here to read HB 1033.

This is the Governor's Value Added legislation. The bill was debated for more than 2 hours with testimony in support of the legislation from a broad spectrum of special interest groups that included educators both from traditional public schools and some charter schools; the Louisiana Association of Business Industry; CABL; Association of Professional Educators of Louisiana; Black Alliance for Educational Options, and a few local school district superintendents including BESE member and DeSoto Parish Superintendent Walter Lee and Superintendent Gary Jones of Rapides Parish.

Opponents to the bill included members of the Louisiana School Board Association and the Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE).

The bill ultimately passed out of the House Education Committee with no opposition and is waiting to be heard on the floor perhaps sometime next week.

Following is a summary of the amendment specific to charter schools. I hope you will take time to review HB 1033 and let us know about your concerns as we will continue to track this bill.

Present law permits charter school governing authorities to determine if the charter school faculty and staff will participate in any state-required assessment and evaluation program. Provides relative to teacher certification requirements for charter schools that do not participate in present law teacher assistance and assessment program.

Proposed law instead requires each charter school governing authority to annually evaluate every teacher at the school. Further provides that by the 2012-2013 school year, 50% of each teacher evaluation shall be based on evidence of growth in student achievement using a value-added assessment model as determined by BESE for which value-added data is available. Requires BESE to establish measures of student growth for grades and subjects for which value-added data is not available and to adopt a policy to invalidate such student growth data for any teacher for temporary school closures due to natural disaster or any other unexpected events. Provides that the model shall take into account special education, eligibility for free or reduced price meals, student attendance, and student discipline. Permits the state superintendent of education to make such school-level data available to the public for conducting statistical analyses.

SB 240 (Sen. Ed Murray - New Orleans) Allows the Orleans Parish School Board to exclude certain costs from the amount of local funds that it would otherwise be required to transfer to the RSD. Click here to read SB 240 (please also read amendments for the fullest understanding of the bill).

SB 240 would allow for Orleans Parish School Board to withhold a portion of the voter approved millage for certain legacy costs across ALL public school students. The millage, which was recently rolled forward by OPSB, is anticipated to generate an additional $12 million dollars in local revenues.

Originally, OPSB was seeking to withhold $9 million of the $12 million. However, after some very collaborative meetings that included a broad representation of public education stakeholders, including representatives from the LAPCS, the bill was amended to allow for the lesser amount of $6 million.

The bill is extremely prescriptive and includes dollars for the following: workers compensation claims prior to August 25, 2005; legal claims directly associated with Hurricane Katrina; retiree insurance; and the cost of borrowing to allow for forward funding of the MFP to all public schools.

This bill passed favorably on the Senate Floor and now will be heard by the House.

CALL TO ACTION

SB 694 (Sen. Butch Gautreaux - Thibodaux) Mandates participation of all charter schools into the Teacher Retirement System of Louisiana (TRSL). Click here to read SB 694.

On Monday, May 10th, the Senate Retirement Committee will be hearing SB 694 that mandates all charter schools participate in the Teacher Retirement System of LA (TRSL). While many charter schools do participate in TRSL, this bill is yet another threat to charter schools' autonomy to make decisions that best meet the needs of their students and faculty.

We are asking that you please take 5 minutes to send a message to Senate Retirement Committee members regarding this bill. We have created a message for your convenience, but feel free to edit to your liking.

CLICK HERE TO EMAIL THE SENATE RETIREMENT COMMITTEE

Additionally, if any of you would like to come to the committee hearing on Monday please let us know. We are seeking individuals that would be willing to speak to legislators prior to committee or that would be willing to testify against the bill during committee.

Also included for you is the study by The Pelican Institute that came out this week regarding charter schools and TRSL that perfectly lays out the problem with this legislation. Click HERE to view the study.

This bill was defeated last year in House Retirement but continues to be brought to the table by the teachers' union.

Expected in Committee

HB 420 (Rep. Walt Leger - New Orleans) Relative to the use of certain local revenues for computing and allocating the per pupil amount provided to all charter schools, specifies use of current year rather than prior year amounts in such computations and allocations. Also deletes provision requiring certain minimum per pupil funding pursuant to the most recent legislatively approved MFP formula. Click here to read HB 420.

This bill was heard in House Education Committee on Wednesday, May 6th, and passed favorably. The bill is now waiting to be heard on the floor. The Association has been working closely with the LDE's Finance Department on this legislation, including facilitating two conference calls for charter schools to hear a presentation by the LDE and for questions to be posed to the staff.

If you have any questions, please contact Renita Thukral on our staff at renita@lacharterschools.org or at 504-274-3644.

HB 1128 (Rep. Walt Leger - New Orleans) Establishes certain requirements for BESE and local school boards relative to charter schools including that BESE shall develop a model compliance plan for providing special education and related services in charter schools. Specifically, proposed requirements for charter schools include:

(1) The proposed charter must provide a plan for meeting the needs of students with exceptionalities.

(2) A plan to educate parents on their educational rights under state and federal law.

(3) Include research-based discipline programs, such as positive behavioral interventions and supports, as provided in present law.

(4) Include a plan for collecting data for the compilation of progress profiles.

Click here to read HB 1128.

The Association has been working with charter school leaders and SpEd Coordinators through our SpEd Cooperative to address this legislation. We have had several meetings with Rep. Leger and the proponents of this bill (primarily the Southern Poverty Law Center) in an attempt to find common ground and create law/policy that protects the rights of students and parents while not being duplicative or creating laws more onerous than those faced by traditional districts.

This bill had been slated to run earlier this week but Rep. Leger pulled the bill for further discussions. We continue to work with him on this legislation and will keep you updated.

There are other bills that we are tracking but, to date, they have not appeared on any committee agendas.

As always, if you have any questions or thoughts around any legislation just give us a call at 504-274-3651 or email us.