PSBA's Legislative Platform, Sec. A-E

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As adopted by the PSBA Legislative Policy Council
on Oct. 4, 2007 

A. Buildings and Construction

It is resolved that PSBA support efforts to establish reasonable levels of state aid for the construction, renovation or purchase of school buildings including career and technical centers and intermediate units. PSBA also supports efforts that grant school districts the authority to provide and maintain environmentally sound facilities for the health and safety of their employees and students. PSBA opposes the imposition of any requirements that inflate construction costs.

The association:

1. Supports legislation that provides school districts with the same options for school construction and/or renovation projects that are available to the private sector. This includes, but is not limited to, relief from the Prevailing Wage Act and Separations Act, the availability of the privatization concept of school construction to school entities, the establishment of a lease/purchase subsidy of schools comparable to that provided for traditional construction and the opportunity for school districts to contract with a single firm to design and build school facilities.

2. Supports efforts to relieve the impact of the Prevailing Wage Act on school districts by increasing the threshold to reflect current project costs and utilizing local labor costs.

3. Supports legislation that would provide additional state funding, adjusted periodically, for the purchase, construction, improvement, maintenance and/or enhancement of school buildings.

4. Supports legislation prohibiting the construction or expansion of any facilities near a school building that may adversely impact a school environment.

5. Supports legislation that would provide prospective and retroactive funding for the removal or approved treatment of environmental hazards.

6. Supports legislation to provide reimbursement under PlanCon for professional service providers such as construction managers.

7. Supports legislation increasing state reimbursement to school districts for construction and equipment costs related to school safety.

8. Supports revisions to the PlanCon process to better address the facility needs of school districts, including a reduction in the 20-year waiting period between construction and renovation projects.

9. Supports legislation to expand the definition of reimbursable projects to include capital improvement projects with a value in excess of $25,000.

10. Supports legislation exempting school districts from designing, constructing and financing improvements to public roads as a condition of approval for school construction or renovation by governmental entities.

11. Supports legislation that would require any state agency to reimburse school districts for any construction or renovation project costs resulting from the failure of that state agency to provide any statutorily mandated reviews or proposals within the maximum required review periods.

B. Personnel Issues

It is resolved that PSBA support legislation that will result in the increased availability of qualified teachers and provide school boards with the greatest possible flexibility in their ability to attract and maintain qualified teachers, including the authority to manage their personnel. PSBA also supports the ability and flexibility for boards to enter into collective bargaining agreements they believe are fair to employees and taxpayers. In doing so, PSBA resolves to work with professional school employees to provide a positive working environment for all teachers and a thorough and efficient education to all students in a manner that benefits employees, students and taxpayers.

The association:

1. Supports legislation that helps school districts attract and retain high-performing, competent educators and staff to public schools. PSBA also supports legislation that strengthens school boards' flexibility to improve performance accountability and that offers reforms of staffing mandates such as tenure, furloughs, employee benefits and any other requirement that restricts districts' authority to manage, support and compensate its employees.

2. Supports legislation enabling a comprehensive delivery of school health programs by granting school boards flexibility in staff certification and personnel options and by allowing boards to implement alternative healthcare services and programs.

3. Opposes legislation that exempts any class of teacher, administrator or educational specialist who works in a public school in the commonwealth from the continuing professional education requirements of Act 48 of 1999.

4. Supports current requirements for teachers assigned to English as a Second Language classes to obtain an appropriate program specialist certification and opposes any effort to establish a new instructional certificate specific to ESL.

5. Opposes legislation that would provide for a statewide teachers' contract.

6. Supports legislation to require that in order to approve a work stoppage, it must be approved by a majority of the entire bargaining unit in a secret ballot.

7. Opposes compulsory binding arbitration during contract negotiations.

8. Supports legislation that would impose financial penalties on teachers for each day of a strike that interrupts the delivery of scheduled educational services.

9. Opposes legislation providing for collective bargaining for school administrators and supports repeal of bargaining rights granted by Act 105 of 1996 to administrators in school districts of the first class.

10. Supports legislation that would prohibit court-ordered mandatory participation in collective bargaining between a school entity and an employee organization.

11. Supports legislation amending Act 88 of 1992 to remove the requirement that substitutes hired during the period of a strike must have been employed by the school district during the prior year.

12. Supports legislation to prohibit grievance arbitration of teacher dismissals.

13. Supports legislation that would require law enforcement agencies to provide school districts with student and employee criminal violation information.

14. Supports legislation that would require school employees to inform their employing school district when they are arrested for, plead nolo contendre to or are convicted of a criminal violation.

15. Supports legislation that would require the employer contribution rate floor for the existing plan of the Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS) to be raised to the employer normal cost. The employer's normal cost is the amount needed from school employers to fund benefits earned by active members for that year.

16. Supports legislation that would address the rising cost of the retirement system by implementing the “Fresh Start” approach, which revalues PSERS' assets to market and reamortizes its current and future gains and losses over 30 years.

17. Supports legislation that would create a two-tier retirement system for public school employees. The first tier would maintain the existing defined benefit plan for all current active members of the retirement system, with existing benefits remaining unchanged. The second tier, for those hired after a specified future date, would create a new hybrid plan that contains features of both a defined benefit plan as well as a defined contribution plan. Further, any increase in the school district portion of the employer contribution rate for both pension plans would be capped at the Act 1 (or successor) index, with the state to fund any remaining employer obligation. Additionally, the association opposes the enactment of any new benefit enhancements, for either plan.

18. Opposes legislation expanding retirement benefits without an increase in the employee contribution rate to fund the new benefit.

19. Supports legislation that would apply appropriate standards to protect the actuarial soundness of public pension plans and opposes the use of such retirement funds to meet short-term budgetary needs.

C. Educational Programs and Assessment

It is resolved that PSBA support local school boards' primary responsibility to develop curriculum and instructional policy and all efforts to enhance student learning through the increased use of technology and the latest developments on teaching and learning. Furthermore, the association is resolved to support efforts that encourage shared responsibility in developing instructional requirements and assessment systems for students that employ various measurements to gauge the progress of students and the quality of public schools and school districts.

The association:

1. Supports state-funded initiatives that enable school districts to provide voluntary, high-quality early childhood education programs in a flexible manner that meets the needs of children to prepare them for future academic success.

2. Supports initiatives to enhance secondary education and high school reform efforts that provide options to school entities to implement programs to raise the academic achievement of their students and enable them to graduate from high school prepared to enter college and/or the high-skills workforce.

3. Supports the renewal and annual increased appropriation for categorical funding initiatives such as the Accountability Block Grant program that provide school districts with financial assistance to implement effective educational practices to improve student achievement.

4. Supports legislation specifically authorizing all school entities to contract for educational services.

5. Opposes any efforts to reduce or remove the authority of local school districts to establish graduation requirements.

6. Supports legislation that would give school boards the authority to honor and enforce or to modify the expulsion of a student who has transferred from another public or private school.

7. Supports legislation revising the procedures for student expulsion by: 1) requiring parents or guardians to pay for alternative placements unless they can prove they lack access to adequate resources; and 2) relieving school entities of the responsibility for funding alternative placements for any student who had previously been expelled.

8. Supports student testing programs or assessment systems that: 1) recognize student diversity within school districts, buildings and classrooms; 2) properly reflect the diversity of individual school entities' instructional goals and enhance local control of curriculum; 3) are based on sound testing practices; and 4) are used only to promote improvement in local instruction.

9. Opposes the use of any single or inappropriate measure of student achievement for any high-stakes reason, such as the distribution of funds or consequences or rewards to students, schools and school districts.

10. Supports the periodic review of statewide academic standards and assessments.

11. Supports legislation stating that local school boards have the sole authority to determine what will be denoted on student records.

12. Supports initiatives to increase the minimum number of students, the “N” size, required to report disaggregated assessment data for the special education and limited English proficiency student subgroups.

D. School Choice  

It is resolved that PSBA support parental options within the public school system. PSBA believes that constitutional restraints must be upheld and that choice programs should not impose financial hardships on taxpayers. Commonwealth funding should be provided to support the costs of school choice initiatives.

The association:

1. Opposes legislation that would provide direct financial aid to, or tuition tax credits or vouchers for, residents of the commonwealth enrolled in nonpublic schools or that would divert or condition funding from existing federal and state programs.

2. Supports amendments to the Charter School Law that would allow school boards to operate charter schools; require full state funding to school districts to reimburse all net additional costs created by charter schools; ensure that transportation of charter school students is governed by local school board policy; require that any proposed charter school with significant enrollment from more than one district be organized as a regional charter school; and ensure access to all charter school records by any district with children enrolled in the school.

3. Supports legislation that amends the Charter School Law to clarify that the state Charter School Appeal Board (CAB) functions in an appellate role rather than as if the matter before the board were being heard for the first time, so that the CAB only may reverse decisions of school boards on an abuse of discretion standard.

4. Supports legislation to ensure that when a local school district conducts a half-day versus a full-day kindergarten program, the funding due a charter school attended by residents of that district shall be one-half the rate that the district pays for full-time elementary students from that district.

5. Opposes legislation that undermines a school district's right to adopt policies regarding the use of educational facilities and resources by students not enrolled in public schools.

6. Supports state efforts to require an audit of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit program to ensure that donations are being used for their intended purpose.

7. Supports legislation amending Act 88 of 2002 that would: 1) clarify the means by which special education services are provided to cyber-charter school students, so that no school district can be required to provide services it currently does not offer; and 2) require the department to approve any substantial increase in a cyber-charter school's enrollment over that set forth in its charter.

8. Supports legislation that reduces or eliminates the financial burden on school districts for cyber- and charter schools.

9. Supports legislation to ensure that if a district offers its students the option of a K-12 online curriculum, the students of that district who enroll in any other cyberschool would do so at the expense of the parent, not of the district.

10. Supports legislation amending Section 1748-A of the School Code to extend the timeframe in order for school districts to appropriately determine and challenge a student's residency. 

E. Special Education

It is resolved that PSBA support educational programs for students with special needs, along with efforts to reduce the regulatory burden of special education while protecting the rights of eligible students. Further, PSBA is committed to a system of funding in which the federal and state governments pay a substantial portion of the cost of special education, reflecting actual students served and costs incurred.The association:

1. Supports legislation to increase the state contribution for special education services based on actual cost incurred and students served.

2. Supports efforts that would further relieve school districts from state mandates concerning special education services that exceed federal requirements.

3. Opposes any reduction of state support for approved private schools for special needs students.

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