Night Fever (I mean Night Meetings!)  But who can resist the Bee Gees performing one of their signature hits?

The long Tuesday went from 8:15 with the House Education Innovation Policy Committee meeting this morning until well after dark with the Pension Commission meeting to discuss the omnibus pension bill that should go a long ways toward correcting the pension problem facing the Teacher Retirement Association.

Teacher behavior and student safety dominated the day in the House.  The Education Innovation Policy covered a variety of bills dealing with teacher ethics and consequences for inappropriate behavior with students.  The bills that received the most attention were HF 2795, authored be Representative Jenifer Loon and HF 2777 authored by Representative Kelly Fenton.  Representative Loon's bill creates a code of ethics for teachers, requires that the Professional Educators Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) get a criminal background check in some instances where a teacher is renewing their license, and expanding a number of reasons why a license cannot be renewed.  The bill authored by Representative Fenton is similar to HF 2795 in that it expands the number of offenses for which a teacher can be dismissed or denied renewal, but it is not as comprehensive and doesn't include the code of ethics provision.

The House Education Funding Committee covered the issue of school safety, especially as it relates to facility upgrades.  Representative Loon has introduced HF 3320, a bill that would expand the allowable uses of Long Term Facilities Maintenance Revenue to include improvements aimed at making school buildings more secure.  There is a bit of a problem with the bill in that it doesn't provide any additional revenue with which to make these improvements.  Currently, districts can levy up to $390 per pupil unit for building maintenance purposes and a number of school districts have levied all the way up the $390 per pupil unit and are tied into that amount for the foreseeable future.  That would leave these districts with little or no revenue to make security improvements.  Representative Loon made it clear that the current version of HF 3320 is a starting point and that she is amenable to making changes as the bill moves through the process.  The rest of the hearing was devoted to witnesses from various organizations providing their perspectives on the issue of school security, both in terms of buildings and personnel.

The last hearing of the day devoted solely to education policy was the Senate Education Policy Committee.  The committee handled three bills, with SF 2920, Senator Eric Pratt's bill that provides for nonexclusionary pupil disciplinary policies and practices.  The committee also heard Senator Eichorn's SF 2737 that deals with school trust lands and transfers the administration of those lands away from the current framework in the Department of Natural Resources to a newly-created school trust management account.  The final bill was the SF 1961, Senator Abeler's Student Data Privacy Act.

The day ended with the Pension Commission dealing with the omnibus pension bill.  More witnesses than animals on the ark.

National News!  The West Virginia teachers will be heading back to work after a nearly two-week old strike.  West Virginia teacher salaries ranked 47th out of the 50 states and their statewide strike earned them a 5% raise.  To accommodate the raise, the West Virginia Legislature and Governor will be moving revenue from other categories to come up with the necessary dollars.

Here is an article from The New York Times regarding the settlement:  West Virginia Raises Teachers' Pay to End Statewide Strike

There is conjecture that the actions of teachers in West Virginia will lead to similar strikes in other states aimed at raising teacher salaries.  Here is an article from New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer that speculates that Oklahoma might be next in line for a statewide teachers' strike:  Will Oklahoma Teachers Be the Next to Strike?