Indiana House bill: Flexibility for superintendents or a slap at teachers' unions?

Legislation that would let school superintendents increase pay and benefits for teachers in hard-to-fill positions is headed for a Senate vote, over objections of teachers' unions.

The bill has already made it through the Republican-controlled House, despite an intense campaign by union leaders and Democrats to stop it.

The measure would allow school leaders to bypass the collective bargaining process and negotiate directly with teachers with certain skills.

The bill's author, Rep. Bob Behning (R-Indianapolis), argues it would especially benefit rural and high-poverty urban schools, which have a hard time recruiting teachers with high-demand expertise in such areas as science, math and special education.

"We're just giving superintendents the flexibility to find the right person for the classroom," Behning said.

Union leaders don't see it that way. They fear pay differentials based on anything but years of service and levels of education could lead to cronyism and misuse by school leaders.

At a Senate committee hearing on the bill Wednesday, Indiana State Teachers Association lobbyist Gail Zeheralis opposed the measure.

She said it could undermine collaborative efforts made by teachers and school leaders in recent years as they've crafted contracts with ever-tightening budgets.

"People are going to the table today in the spirit of cooperation," she said.

The bill comes as teachers' unions have seen their influence and power diminished in Indiana.

A series of reforms, started after Republicans took control of the Statehouse in 2011, have already put limits on what teachers can negotiate in their collective bargaining contracts. And legislators have tied more of teachers' pay to the academic performance of students.

Rep. Terri Austin, D-Anderson, is a former teacher who argued against the bill when it was in the House.

"It's absolutely a continuing erosion of teachers having any say over their salary and benefits," she said. "Pretty soon, they won't even have that left."

But the measure also comes at a time when Indiana is facing an increasing teacher shortage in the critical areas of science, technology, engineering and math — the so-called STEM skills demanded by a growing number of employers.

The shortage is particularly acute in rural and inner-city schools that have seen decreased dollars under a state funding formula that directs more money to suburban, growing schools.

One of the most vocal backers of Behning's bill has been Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Lewis Ferebee.

He says school leaders need the extra flexibility to lure teachers with high-demand skills into their classrooms and away from the business world where they could earn more money.

Some districts have tried to build more pay flexibility into their labor contracts with teachers.

Bob Bell, superintendent of the North Daviess Community Schools — a rural district based in the small town of Elnora — almost lost one of his high-school science teachers last year.

The teacher — one of only two in the district licensed to teach physics — had been offered a $15,000 pay raise by a neighboring school district in dire need of another science teacher.

Bell was able to keep the teacher on his staff by working with the teachers' union to offer a pay raise of about half that amount.

"This competition for teachers is still pretty new, but it's going to happen more and more often," Bell said. "It's something we're just going to have to live with."

But such discretion may be in peril.

Provisions that give superintendents the flexibility to negotiate where teachers are placed on the pay scale were ruled illegal by the Indiana Court of Appeals last November.

The court said decisions about teacher pay can only be made as part of the collective bargaining negotiations with local teachers' unions.

Behning said his bill would give all school districts a way around to those rules. It would let school leaders declare that a position is difficult to fill, and then decide the pay rate for the job without first getting approval from the union.

Opponents, including Austin, worry such legislation undermines what she calls the sinking morale of teachers in Indiana by valuing some more than others simply based on what they teach.

"It just pits teachers against one another, rather that bring out best in everybody," she said.