March 17, 2011 in Idaho

Otter signs teacher contract, merit pay bills

• Print
• Email
• Share

BOISE - Idaho Gov. Butch Otter quietly signed two controversial school reform bills into law today, removing most collective bargaining rights from Idaho teachers and imposing a teacher merit pay program.

The two are the first of three bills he and state schools Supt. Tom Luna pushed this year in what they dubbed the “Students Come First” reform package, with the third aimed at raising Idaho’s class sizes and cutting 770 teaching jobs in the next two years, to generate millions in savings to be funneled into teacher merit pay and technology boosts, including providing laptop computers to every high school student.

That measure, however, remains stalled in a Senate committee; lawmakers expect a new version to emerge on Friday, minus most of its main provisions - leaving out online course requirements, class size increases, and teacher cuts. Instead, the new bill likely would fund laptop computers for teachers as a first step toward supplying them to students, and leave local school districts with the decision on how to handle big budget cuts next year.

Otter, in a statement after he signed SB 1108 and SB 1110, said, “I had the privilege of signing into law today two bills that have been a long time coming, have been publicly vetted and debated to an unprecedented degree, and will improve the ability of our public schools to fulfill their mission of educating Idaho’s children. But our work is not done. We are committed to continuing our work with lawmakers and stakeholders on legislation to provide students and educators with the technology and flexibility they need to be successful in an increasingly competitive world.”

Eight comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  liberal_in_right_wing_land on March 17 at 12:02 p.m.

  They called it “Student Come First”????? Were they totally drunk when they came up with this slogan? Obviously these bill had NOTHING to do with students and improving their education.

  Idaho was already in the bottom half of the country in education, but I guess they now want to be the worst.

• 

  johnclarke on March 17 at 1:09 p.m.

  Keep. Voting. Republican. Idaho.

• 

  mauijim on March 17 at 3:51 p.m.

  Raising class size and laying off teachers and the students come first. Idaho is always on the bottom for education and teachers get dumped on and get blamed for all the education problems of today. All by people who have never been in the classroom. Actually Idaho is always at the bottom of most social services.

• 

  cryssT on March 17 at 5:26 p.m.

  Hey, the programs will work if the teachers can use birch or hickory sticks. But at the college level, the students will have firearms. I’m all for the right to keep and bear arms but only if it’s mutual.

• 

  hawken on March 17 at 8:20 p.m.

  Anyone wonder why so many oppose the most competent to be rewarded for excellence?

• 

  RedCedar on March 17 at 10:32 p.m.

  I can live with what they’ve already passed, although I’m not sure exactly what problem it’s supposed to solve, but they need to kill the laptop program completely. All the kids already know how to use computers. There’s no magic there. What we have in Luna’s laptop program is a straightforward decision to replace teachers with computers, and then sign two cushy contracts, undoubtedly with his Salt Lake friends to supply the computes and the teaching software. Liberals might be interested to note that the software company is run by a bunch of pretty hard-core conservatives, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their lessons reflect that.

  What the legislature is proposing now — funding the computers from the state end, and then cutting the state payments to the school districts, letting the districts decide which teachers to fire — is the worst of both worlds.

  The thing that really burns me about this is that Mr. Luna clearly had this huge grand plan in mind before he got elected, but he very dishonestly hid it from the voters. If he thought it was so great, why didn’t he make it part of his campaign platform?

• 

  Julia70 on March 18 at 12:03 p.m.

  Boycott Idaho, don’t visit this right wing infestation of republican lice.

• 

  rt on March 18 at 11:12 p.m.

  Greetings from Indiana, your far-right cousin in the heart of the Midwest. Good luck on recruiting the best and the brightest of teachers, once they see this merit-pay drivel exposed for what it actually is, which is a constant parade of teaching to tests and state educational standards based on a corporate orthodoxy. Teaching to learn will now be secondary to getting kids to pass the tests, and from now on, no way will Average Yearly Progress be accurately measured, not with teacher’s and administrators livelihoods being dependent upon scores. Don’t know if your state has instituted vouchers, but my state has, so private schools in Indiana now can be funded with taxpayer money.