Hancock: Interplay between reform bills would eventually finish pending master teacher payments

Jason Hancock, aide to state schools Supt. Tom Luna, told the House Education Committee this morning that the repeal of the $2,000-per-year payments for five years to those teachers earning national board master teacher certification in SB 1184 actually is offset by a provision in the already-passed SB 1110, and sure enough, on page 7 of that teacher pay-for-performance bill, it says “notwithstanding” the bill’s other requirements, employees who earned national board certification prior to July 1, 2011, who no longer are receiving the payments, would get them again once that bill goes into effect in 2013 “until all moneys that would have been paid under the previous provisions … have been paid.”

That means that the roughly 55 Idaho teachers who were receiving the payments in 2010 and didn’t get them this year due to budget cuts, also wouldn’t get them next year, but they’d finish up the payments in later years.