Legislative Success

Education Budget
HB 274/ACT 2010-610
AEA saved thousands of teacher and ESP jobs by making the retention of jobs the top priority in the EFT budget, in spite of massive efforts by opponents to cut jobs and/or cut pay by reducing the school year.

Code of Ethics
SJR 9/ACT 2010-33
An end-run around the teacher tenure law was attempted by the Governor and the State Supt. of Education acting in concert to permit an ill-defined and overly broad teacher code of ethics proposal to become law. After a tough-fought battle in the Legislative Council and in both chambers of the legislature, AEA finally overturned the proposal which would have permitted the State Superintendent to pull a teachers’ certificates to teach based on his proposal to enshrine a subjective code of ethics proposal into the Administrative Procedure Act making it law.

PACT Program
SB 162/ACT 2010-725
AEA helped to save the Pre-paid Affordable College Tuition Program by appropriating the necessary funds in future education budgets to fulfill the PACT contracts, without providing an unlimited appropriation of hundreds of millions of dollars due to unlimited tuition increases by colleges and universities.

Probable Cause
HB 236
AEA passed a proposal to require probable cause for teachers and police before they could be arrested for misdemeanors while performing on-the-job duties.

Sexual Misconduct
HB 38/ACT 2010-497
AEA helped to pass legislation to further prevent sexual misconduct with a child under the age of 19 if the child is a student and the offender is a school employee.

Tenure Law
HB 37/ACT 2010-264
AEA helped to write the final legislation which clarified the teacher tenure law’s dismissal of teachers, and the continuation of their salaries upon conviction of a felony.

TRS Funding
30 yr. payback
SB 292/ACT 2010-221
AEA helped pass a regulatory bill freeing millions of dollars to help ensure that the funding could be used to retain education jobs without jeopardizing TRS viability.

Vacancy Posting
HB 79/ACT 2010-210
AEA passed legislation for the third time despite two previous vetoes by Gov. Riley requiring the posting of vacancy notices for the Chancellor of Postsecondary Education, the State Superintendent of Education, and city and county superintendents of education.

For more information on the Foundation Program, class sizes, state funded units, local budgets, and budgets in general, simply click on the above links.