Charter School Bill Failed in Committee

The first step towards passing a charter school bill failed in the House Education Committee today. An email from the Education Excellence Coalition explained what happened:

the 3 pro-charter Democrats on the House Education Committee watered the bill down so much to meet the demands of other House Democrats that only one of the 4 pro-charter Republicans on the House Education Committee was willing to vote for the final bill.

Republicans were upset with the way that last year's bill had been weakened by:

1. Prohibiting Public Universities from sponsoring charter schools when local districts refuse to do so;

2. Reducing the number of NEW charter schools authorized from 70 (over six years) to 30 (over six years);

3. Limiting the number of current public schools that can convert to charter schools (last year any public school could convert with its school board's permission; this year only persistently low-performing public schools are allowed to convert); and
4. Requiring that all persistently low performing public schools that convert to charter schools remain subject to the all current collective bargaining agreements applicable to non-teacher employees (janitors, secretaries, food service workers, para-educators, etc).

During the hearing, Republicans offered several amendments to strengthen the bill but, except for a few technical amendments, the Republican amendments were rejected on party-line, 6-5 votes.

As a result, when the amended bill was put forward for final passage, only one Republican voted for it (Rep. Glenn Anderson). While the bill could still have passed if 5 of the 6 Democrats on the Committee had voted for it, only three did so (Chairman Dave Quall, Phil Rockefeller and Ross Hunter).
Accordingly, the vote on final passage came up 2 votes short, losing 7-4.

The pro-charter majority on the committe should still be able to reach a successful compromise. I hold the Democrats responsible for the impass, as everybody knows that last year's stronger bill was set to pass.

My personal feeling is that the insistence on maintaining certain collective bargaining rights at the expense of educational opportunity is reprehensible. Any legislator who is willing to sacrifice educationally disadvantaged children in order to protect office worker unions should be targeted for defeat. But that's just my opinion. The refusal to let public universities operate charter schools also sounds stupidly obstructionist, but maybe the proposed compromise I mentioned earlier should be acceptable to enough people to get this thing to pass.

If your own representative is included among the charter supporters, please contact them to encourage a compromise:

Chair: Dave Quall (D-40)
quall_da@leg.wa.gov
360/786-7800

Rep. Phil Rockefeller (D-23)
rockefel_ph@leg.wa.gov
(360) 786-7934

Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48)
hunter_ro@leg.wa.gov
(360) 786-7936

Rep. Gigi Talcott (Ranking Republican) (R-28)
talcott_gi@leg.wa.gov
(360) 786-7890

Rep. Rodney Tom (Assistant Ranking Republican) (R-48)
tom_ro@leg.wa.gov
(360) 786-7848

Rep. Glen Anderson (R-5)
anderson_gl@leg.wa.gov
360) 786-7876

Rep. Lois McMahan (R-26)
mcmahan_lo@leg.wa.gov
(360) 786-7802

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 22, 2004 11:11 PM