A Fork in the Road

Have you heard of Ohio's Senate Bill 5?

If you haven't, I'm sure you've heard of the anti-union business going on in Wisconsin. Basically, SB5 is Ohio's version of it.

Now I try to stay out of politics. Really, I do. A friend of mine is big-time into politics and he drives me absolutely crazy.

But SB 5 is something that could greatly affect my career. These are some summary points:

· State employees and K-12 school employees may bargain wages, hours and terms and conditions of employees. HOWEVER, the bill still outlines extensive matters prohibited from bargaining. E.g. “no affects bargaining”

· Salaries can be bargained but must be based on the following performance measures:

o Level of teacher license; whether the teacher is a “highly qualified teacher” under law; the value-added measure the board uses to determine the performance of the students assigned to the teacher’s classroom; the results of the teacher’s performance evaluations, any peer review program created by an agreement between the board and teachers association, or another system of evaluation used by that board; any other criteria established by the board.

· An initial limited contract for a classroom teacher, entered into on or after the effective date of the bill, shall not exceed three years. Any subsequent limited contract: not less than 2 years and not more than 5 years.

· No public employee or employee organization shall engage in a strike. Whenever a strike occurs, the public employer may seek an injunction against the strike in the court of common pleas.

· Any person engaged in a strike is subject to removal, shall have deducted an amount equal to twice their daily rate of pay for each day on strike and the penalty for violation of a court injunction against a strike is a fine of $1,000 and up to 30 days imprisonment, or both.Further penalty for willfully disobeying a court.

These are the amendments made to the bill late last week.

A couple things stick out to me as worrisome. First, the salary thing. They're taking away salaries based on years of service and education and changing it to merit-based pay. What we're all wondering about is how this is to be done. Will it change annually? What if you get a bad group of kids? (And you all know what I mean.) Are these based on test scores? What if you have a class of students that don't have a standardized test to take (like my freshmen, juniors, and seniors)? How is a gym/art/music/non-cores teacher going to be rated? I was told by someone at school that one of our school board members said that s/he would like to cap salaries at $50,000. I know that teachers don't make much, but I'll admit to being quite a bit over that level. To have my salary adjusted downward so much would be quite a shock. (Especially when you throw in an increase in insurance rates... also a part of SB5.)

I've seriously been thinking about other career options. I love what I do. I've never wanted to be anything but a teacher (except for my astronaut phase when I was in elementary school... but I get motion sick pretty easily :) ). With two small kids I can't imagine not having the time during the summer to spend with them. Unless I can find something that would pay me well and give me the time off I think I'm stuck.

But I hate to say "stuck" in something that I love to do.

A couple of videos...