Politics & Government

Teacher Publicly Disputes Sen. Rodney Tom's Position on Health Care, Charter Schools, Evaluations

In an open letter on the Northshore Education Association website, Christopher Tracy, accuses Tom of supporting legislation that appears to blame teachers for all that is wrong in the public education system.

 

In an open letter posted on the Northshore Education Association website earlier this week, Christopher Tracy criticizes Sen. Rodney Tom’s (D-48, Bellevue) support of recent legislation changing public employees’ health care benefits and reforms in . Tracy is a veteran member of the NSEA Bargaining Team, and member of the Northshore School District Benefits Committee.

Tracy wrote:

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 Open Letter to Rodney Tom

Greetings Sen. Tom:

I am concerned about your actions in the legislature, as you appear to attack teachers by sponsoring bills that most educators find troubling. The bills imply that teachers are responsible for just about everything that is wrong in education and likely in government. But the following shows your logic to be suspect on many issues.

The K-12 take-over of our health insurance, that you support, just does not make sense. The Auditor's report suggesting this did not take into consideration the costs to set up and administer a program, nor address a rate stabilization fund needed for a program to be self-insured. Since the legislature will not be able to fund a costly stabilization fund, estimated to be over $200 million, and because state employees--including you--are allocated more benefit dollars, the resulting purchased program for K-12 employees will guarantee that MY health insurance will be less comprehensive and/or much more expensive that what YOU get with the Health Care Authority's PEBB Uniform self-insured plan. That is unfair to K-12 employees. And where’s the problem to start with? Current rules allow any bargaining group, such as teachers, custodians or secretaries in any school district, to move by employee group, to Health Care Authority’s plans if they believe they are better. Will there be any government savings? No, unless K-12 employees are charged more and/or benefits reduced. And since long-term-disability and life insurance are not addressed, I assume those things are just passed to underfunded school districts to try to fund. No wonder K-12 employees feel you are unjustly attacking us; your bill ensures my health care program will not be as good as yours!

You seem to think that Charter Schools will solve problems, but they create more problems than they fix. Sure, if Boeing or Microsoft provides additional funding for a science and math charter school it will get lots of extra private money, plus its share of state money for students--siphoned from public schools--but the public school system nearby could lose its best science and math students to a charter school that it cannot compete with. That's not good for public schools. Never-mind that charter schools have lost three times in statewide votes and widely respected research show few perform better than public schools. No wonder teachers look at this bill, that you back, as a personal attack.

You want to get rid of early retirement for teachers with at least 30 years of experience and that are at least 55. So how great is early retirement that you want to get rid of? Using the early retirement formula (not the ERFs that will likely be tossed out by courts soon), a 55 year-old teacher with a five-year average salary of $70,000, with 30 years of service in Retirement Plan 3, would receive about $1400 per month. Do you really think that is too generous for 30 years of service? Quite frankly the pension is not competitive with Boeing or clerks at Safeway! No wonder teachers cannot understand your motivation. (How come you are not advocating reform with the far more generous police and firefighter pensions?)

So you want test scores to be part of the teacher evaluation process and you ranted to the press when a compromise bill was agreed to. Teachers are concerned that factors, which we cannot easily control, impact student achievement. Student attendance, family life and poverty, all impact a student's readiness to learn, so using test scores in evaluation needs to be tempered. Teachers understand this. Almost all teachers I work with work well beyond the call of duty, and we feel you don't appreciate our efforts when you propose to tie test scores to our evaluation and talk broadly about firing teachers.

Finally, although you claim to be making the case for government reform, I could not help but note that you singled out and voted to suspend payments to the oldest teacher retirement fund, TRS Plan 1, and voted to reduce the stipends for teachers that have earned National Board Certification. Both actions conflict with your public rhetoric.

You need to know that teachers see your actions as undeserved attacks; they are demoralizing. And we take them personally. What did we do to deserve your wrath?

Sincerely,
Christopher J. Tracy


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