News Headlines
Source: KSBA eNews Servcie, Frankfort, March 9, 2010
Legislative unhappiness over negotiation process a big factor in defeat of principal hiring bill
Measure to give superintendents a more signficant role now faces uncertain future
By Brad Hughes
Amid questions about whether school groups and legislative proponents had negotiated in good faith, the House Education Committee Tuesday morning defeated a measure that would have given Kentucky superintendents more say in the selection of school principals.
House Bill 322 – which passed the committee Feb. 9 but was recommitted after strenuous objections by the Kentucky Education Association (KEA) – failed to gain enough votes to move back to the House floor. Today’s vote was on a committee substitute of the original bill.
The revised measure, which has been the subject of numerous meetings, proposals and counterproposals for the past month, was supported by KSBA, the Kentucky Association of School Councils, the Kentucky Association of School Administrators and the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents. KEA President Sharon Oxendine repeated her organization’s opposition in testimony this morning, claiming the status quo works very well.
Frustrations spilled over among the legislators backing the status quo and those seeking to change the current law that leaves principal hiring mostly in the hands of each school’s site-based decision making council.
“I see compromise made by the superintendents. This bill offers fairness in that the superintendent needs to be at the table and have a voice,” said Rep. Jeff Greer of Brandenburg. Greer, a former Meade County school board member, repeatedly asked if there had been compromise by KEA representatives in the negotiations since the measure’s original passage out of the committee.
Committee Chairman Carl Rollins said, “All parties worked in good faith. KEA did not want any limit on the number of applicants that could be reviewed. That was a stopping point. We’ve had several meetings trying to negotiate this bill (but) you get to a place where you have to have a solution if you want to have a bill.”
Rep. Harry Moberly of Richmond countered that KEA “was more conciliatory than I’ve ever seen. Nothing could be further from the truth that only superintendents made compromises. I think KEA has accommodated very much in this. Now we have this committee substitute that’s a sort of a jumble. I know we can do better than this.”
A major point of debate among the legislators was over the fact that after an initial meeting of education groups on both sides to seek a compromise, negotiations then took the form of suggested amendments passed back and forth between the groups by Rollins and the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Kent Stevens of Lawrenceburg, a retired principal, and Rep. Wilson Stone of Scottsville, a former Allen County school board member and KSBA president.
“That meeting went well. All parties were together with everyone in the room,” said Rep. Derrick Graham, a Frankfort Independent teacher. “I thought KEA took a reasonable approach. Why wasn’t that followed?”
But Rollins offered a different recollection of the joint meeting. “It didn’t end so positively. It got sort of personal and that may have been the reason there were no more joint meetings,” he said.
Rep. Stevens said after that joint meeting, the sponsors chose the correspondence route for further negotiations. “We did offer several proposals. Some I thought were good proposals that one group or the other didn’t particularly care for. We wanted to come up with a plan that is better than what we have now. This committee sub is much better than what we have,” he said.
Rollins announced the measure had failed after a roll call vote. It appeared that there were more “no” and “pass” votes voiced by committee members than “yes” votes. Some committee members urged all sides to try again to reach a compromise in the final weeks of the legislative session.