Final Version of SB 8 Maintains Assault on Classroom Teachers
The ten Republican senators and representatives on the House-Senate conference committee for Senate Bill 8 have finished their work on a final version of the bill, and an ugly piece of work it is. The bill would consummate a six-month-long assault on salary guarantees and contract safeguards for Texas teachers and other school employees, making entirely unnecessary, permanent changes in state law under the false flag of “flexibility” for school boards faced with cuts in state aid.
The best that can be said for this final version of SB 8 is that it omits a couple of the bad ideas the House attempted to add--one opening the door to tampering with class-size caps in grades K-4, the other interfering with employees’ voluntary payroll dues deductions for their chosen organization. The demise of these provisions is welcome, but the rest of what SB 8 still holds in store for Texas educators is most assuredly not.
This mislabeled “flexibility” bill uses the prospect of a shortfall in state aid to school districts as the excuse for a major attack on Texas teachers’ salary and contract guarantees. SB 8 is a classic case of overkill, demolishing well-established checks and balances, needlessly destabilizing our schools, and eroding educational quality.
A reasonable crisis-response bill could have been crafted--without any changes in educators’ contract rights--authorizing temporary furloughs or other salary reductions strictly as an alternative to layoffs and expiring after two years. A bill providing temporary, limited authority to reduce pay--combined with districts’ existing ability to freeze hiring, tap local fund reserves, tap unused local tax capacity, reduce spending in non-critical areas, offer resignation incentives, and reassign staff--could have helped hard-hit districts weather a state-aid shortfall without decimating their workforce.
But SB 8 does not take this reasonable, temporary, limited approach. Instead, this “flexibility” bill paints a target on the backs of Texas teachers and invites the exercise of arbitrary power by school superintendents and school boards—on a permanent basis.
SB 8 would authorize unpaid furloughs of up to six days and unlimited additional pay cuts, with no meaningful expiration date on this authority. It would permanently remove the salary floor in state law that prevents rollback of state pay raises. It would permanently remove the last shred of seniority protection in state law for experienced teachers under continuing contracts in layoff situations. It would permanently shift the date of notice of non-renewal of a teacher’s term contract to just 10 days before the end of the school year (from the current 45 days before).
SB 8 would permanently deprive teachers, in case of “financial exigency” terminations in the middle of their contract’s term, of their existing right to an impartial hearing in front of an independent hearing examiner. The bill also would permanently alter the legal standard of “good cause” for mid-contract termination in all cases, allowing school boards to casually override the findings of the hearing officer who actually has heard and weighed the evidence.
Consider the message that SB 8 sends to teachers: The legislature will not fund your schools adequately, but school districts are invited to make up for the loss of state aid at your expense. This legislation devaluing teachers and targeting them for pay cuts, expedited layoffs, and loss of due-process rights will drive tens of thousands of vitally needed, high-caliber educators out of Texas classrooms and will deter high-caliber aspiring teachers from ever entering those classrooms. The result: untold collateral damage to the quality of education for Texas schoolchildren.
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