Political Action Center

Updated March 1, 2010

145th Geneeral Assembly (09-10) back in session
Review of 2009 session, pay cuts

For your review and comment: Legislative Program for 2011-2012

Every two years the Delaware State Education Association reviews our Legislative Program and seeks input from the membership. The Program is a short list of priority areas of advocacy around which we may support or oppose legislation, regulation, or policy.

The draft Program features a completely new section titled, "Protect and Nurture Children." This area of advocacy will allow us to speak to the socio-economic concerns of children and their families. This year approximately 26.6% of all children in the United States live in poverty. If a child comes to your classroom hungry, with a toothache, after having slept in the car all night, or with any one of a hundred challenges that come with poverty, their opportunity to learn is diminished. Therefore, just like the National Education Association became involved in the fight for child labor laws one hundred years ago, so too must we challenge the social order around child poverty.

Please examine the draft Legislative Program below. If you have suggestions for additions, edits, or deletions, please email Tim Barchak, DSEA’s director of legislation and political organizing. Also, there will be an opportunity to participate in a webinar on Monday, March 8th at 6:30PM. We will be sending more communications about that event later.

The final Legislative Program will be debated and approved by the DSEA Executive Board and the Representative Assembly which convenes in Dover on April 17, 2010.

Delaware State Education Association 2011-2012 DRAFT Legislative Program

· Improved, Sustained Funding for Public Schools
The adequate and equitable funding of Delaware’s public schools is required to ensure that our children --- regardless of where they live or the personal circumstance of their individual lives --- have educational opportunities that allow each child to reach her or his full potential.

· Improved Pay for Public Education Employees
Compensation must be improved in order to attract and retain high quality public education staff for our schools and state agencies. DSEA’s priorities include a starting salary for professionally certified school staff of $40,000. Additionally, the salaries for instructional and service aides are shamefully low and should begin at least with the federal poverty level for a family of four.

· Strengthened Fringe Benefit Programs
Public education employees have a progressive, historically well-funded package of fringe benefits that help to attract and retain a high quality work force that must be protected, particularly in times of economic stress.

· Charter School Accountability
The growth of charter schools since passage of the original law in 1995 continues without taking into consideration the effects of new charter authorizations on existing local public school districts. With public resources scarce it is more important than ever to regulate the charter market by making the state Department of Education the single authorizing authority with guidelines that avoid duplication of services and mitigate the impact on community schools.

· Protect and Nurture Children
Every educator knows the heartbreak and frustration of children who are too hungry, sick, or traumatized to learn well. The opportunity to learn cannot be divorced from socio-economic realities, and those realities are becoming more challenging. In 2010, more than 26% of all US children will live in poverty. DSEA will be supportive of legislation, policy, and initiatives which promote the welfare of children and the economic stability of their families.

PLEASE email your comments to Tim Barchak or call him toll-free at 1-866-734-5834 before April 9.

The 145th Delaware General Assembly is back in session

Issues onthe minds of legislators are crowded out by the $300 million+/- discrepency between spending this year and projected revenues for next year. We'll all hear Governor Markell's thoughts on reducing spending/increasing revenue when he delivers his Proposed Budget to the General Assembly on Thursday, January 28.

DSEA leaders and staff have met with him and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) personne right before the new year, and will again before his January 28 address. He is looking at more state agency savings and cuts.Since this is an election year, he doesn't expect to propose raising taxes.
He says he does not want to hurt education, repeating that moving forward with making Delaware's public education as strong as possible is key to attracting jobs and long-term economic recovery.

And, on Wednesday, February 17, the General Assembly's Joint Finance Committee heard from the Dept. of Education on its budget requests. DSEA President Diane Donohue also testified about funding priorities. You can read what she said about attracting and retaining high quality educators to our classroom here.

Click here to read daily updates from DSEA's Legislative Blog, "One Fight More"

Get daily musings and informational updates about what's happening in the General Assembly. Written by DSEA's Dir. of Legislation and Political Organizing Tim Barchak, One Fight More is not only interesting to read, but gives a progressive perspective on education and public policy issues that you don't often hear these days. We encourage you to click on "Subscribe to" at the bottom of the page so that you receive postings as they are created.

Lt. Gov. Matt Denn also has a blog worth reading.

To participate in our planning and strategy for this legislative session, attend our Winter Advocacy Retreat, February 26-28, at the beach.

We're on the radio again
New this year, DSEA is sponsoring the live Legislative Updates from the General Assembly every day that it is in session with a corresponding radio spot on WDEL-AM 1150.
As soon as we receive a digital version of the spot, we will link to it here.

Related links
Delaware's 145th General Assembly web page
Be a DSEA/NEA Cyberlobbyist!
Legislators by School District and Legislative District
Joint Finance, Education and Labor Committee Members for 2010
DSEA Legislative Priorities
Fact sheets on other legislative issues
Lobbying Tips
Request a DSEA grant for local school board elections
Congressional legislative links
Race to the Top updates and information

Bill summaries

Track bills in Delaware's General Assembly to see committee assignments, admendments added, whether they have passed particular chambers, how individual legislators voted, and whether the Governor has signed them.

Our "No 8% Salary Cut" campaign last year was just awarded BEST Gov. Relations/Political Action Campaign from the NEA PR Council among the "small states"

Wrap-up from 2009's session of the General Assembly

At the end of the legislative session on June 30th, 2009 (actually July 1), we achieved the following:

The proposed 8% straight salary cut plus three furlough days for educators became five unpaid furlough days, amounting to a 2.5% salary reduction for all state employees for next year.

In practice, the 2.5% pay reduction will be spread out in all of your pay periods, and in exchange, employees will take five unpaid leave/furlough days. In other words, instead of receiving less pay, but working the same amount of time, the work year has been cut five days to compensate for the loss of pay. For teachers and specialists, the five days will come from professional development days. The language for teachers and specialists is very specific: 180 student days, with one professional development day, and two days for opening and closing. The five furlough days are to come from professional development days.

Other unionized school and state employees will chose their five days through a plan worked out between their local union and school district or agency.

For state employees who are not part of a union, their "...Cabinet Secretary, Agency Head and/or Other Elected Official shall submit for approval a plan that provides for five days of leaving during FY2010."

All plans, even those that we bargain, must then be submitted to the Secretary of Education (for school district employees), the Director of Office of Management and Budget, and the Comptroller General for approval and implementation.

It is clear that there are several options for determining the five days:

shortening the school year by five days for teachers, specialists, instructional paras....
moving the five teacher/specialist professional development days to Fridays or Mondays;
for 12-month school employees, taking the five days during summer, Winter Break or Spring break so that buildings could be closed and save additional dollars
For agency and ESP employees, taking days together, at the same time, or not taking them together but as you would vacation days (teachers cannot do this). If you have opinions on this, PLEASE contact your local association leaders and let them know.

• The 2009 salary schedules return at the end of the fiscal year. In other words, we do not start “in the hole” when debating next year’s pay issues with the state.

• Step increases will be paid.

• Lane (education) changes on the salary schedules will be paid.

• Cluster and national board certification pay for those already receiving it, will continue to be paid. However, the moratorium on new clusters and national board certifications will continue (i.e., new stipends and new or renewed certification payments will not be granted).

• "Double state share" for health benefits was not eliminated. This applies to health benefits for married couples, both of whom are state employees or state retirees. Eliminating "double state share" promises, however, to be a cost-cutting issue again next year.

As noted before, insurance premium costs for state employees will go up 50% next year, and mandatory 90-day refills for routine meds will be required. In addition, the state's Second Opinion program was eliminated.

There will be no increase in deductibles, co-pays or Medicaid payments.

But there is some really bad news, perhaps an issue for our State Workers United Coalition to take up:The Short-Term Disability program was changed: the period employees must now wait before receiving any disability payments was bumped up from 20 calendar days to 60 calendar days for disabilities that begin after August 1, 2009. We fought long and hard to have the state establish a short-term disability program so that people didn't have to consider long-term disability and/or retirement, with no other option.
This is a set-back to that new program. Why? Most employees use their sick leave and lose no pay during the 20 calendar day waiting period. The choices are: go unpaid for two months, use any available sick time or donated leave if available and applicable, or purchase separate disability insurance to cover this period. But most people will have exhausted most of their sick day before they get to the point of needing to consider a short-term leave... which means more pay will most likely be lost before the short-term disability coverage begins.

The struggle to maintain wages and benefits was aided in large part by participation of DSEA in State Workers United for a Better Delaware, a coalition of 14 unions representing state workers. 

Again, thank you, for your relentless lobbying efforts that made a very bad situation much better.

Three of Governor's education bills become law

Although economic issues dominated the attention of the legislature, a few education bills became law, including three bills considered to be the Governor’s education package.

o First, a bill eliminating the DSTP and replacing it with a growth model test for the 2010-2011 School Year became law (Senate Bill 68 w/SA 1).

o Second, legislation was filed attempting to establish an alternative compensation plan for teachers that included a component of pay for student performance. Eventually, this bill was completely rewritten to become an Academic Achievement Program (SB 151) to give schools financial rewards from federal stimulus money for showing two years of improvement in closing the achievement gap and meeting AYP.

o The third bill in this package was filed as HB119. The original bill provided school districts with a great deal of flexibility in the use of their state funding as well as increased scrutiny of their financial matters. With the possibility of negatively impacting special needs, health programs, art, music, drama, and vocational technical instruction, the legislation picked up many critics. The bill was withdrawn, rewritten and reintroduced as HS (House Substitute) 1 for HB119. The new bill limits flexibility to movement of money from Division II (energy) to Division 1 (salaries). The bill was amended to remove a section that would have given DOE more direct control of a local district’s budget.

Around 2:30 AM on July 1, the Senate passed Rep. Longhurst’s bill (HB275) giving teachers of the Colonial School District the right to return to their exact same position when returning from FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) leave. Congratulations to Longhurst and Colonial!

(Yes, President Diane Donohue, Exec. Dir. Howard Weinberg, and Tim Barchak, DSEA's dir. of legislation and political organizing, stayed till the bitter end, about 4:15am.)

Personal Income Tax to increase by one point for earnings over $60,000

Revenue bills to help bridge the state's huge deficit include a one point income tax increase (from 5.95% to 6.95%) on earnings of $60,000 or more. Also in the bill is language to end this increase in four years.

The very good news here is that there is no increase in Personal Income Tax rates for people making less than $60,000. However, Delaware will continue to collect income tax at the lower levels: 2.2% on income in excess of $2,000; 3.9% of taxable income in excess of $5,000; 4.8% on income above $10,000; 5.2% on income in excess of $20,000; and 5.55% on taxable income in excess of $25,000 but less than $60,000.

Also passed are tax increases on the purchase of tobacco products; fees for alcohol licenses; fees for birth and death certificates and other vital records; and public utility taxes on direct-to-home satellite services.

There is also a one-year amnesty for people who owe taxes: they won't have to pay any penalty.

And, as of July 1, if you win at the lottery, your winnings are taxable income

For the status of all bills, check out the Bill Tracking section of the General Assembly's web page.

Poll conducted in April 2009 finds Delaware voters oppose proposed 8% cuts to state worker pay, support some tax increases to promote growth, improve public education and critical state services.

Be a Cyberlobbyist!

Not much time? Really don't enjoy lobbying but would like to do something to help promote our legislative issues?
Thanks to technology, you can promote our issues through your computer.
Just send an e-mail to our Cyber Lobbying Page and sign up. You can link to all sorts of state and federal officials to send them e-mail messages. You will also receive, every so often, an email message from DSEA to send to specific legislators. Perhaps one of our priority bills is due to hit the floor for a vote. Perhaps certain legislators have an incorrect notion about the impact of one of our bills. Whatever it is, all you have to do is point and click! Sign up today!
Home email addresses only!

Factsheets on issues before the General Assembly
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NEA's Quality Public Schools Legislative Action Center
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