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ST. PAUL, Minn., Feb. 26, 2015 – Education Minnesota President Denise Specht released the following statement upon learning that the House majority would bring HF2 to a floor vote Thursday, despite the fact that estimates of the cost of the bill to local districts and state agencies were not finished.

“Reasonable people can disagree with the approach to teacher layoffs and licensing in HF2 – and we do – but it’s just reckless to rush a vote before the cost estimates are done,” Specht said. “The people pushing for an irresponsible vote either don’t care about the costs or don’t want the public to know them.”

The last major revision to employment law for teachers was also done without a good assessment of the financial impact on districts. The cost to districts of the 2011 Teacher Development and Evaluation law has now been estimated at more than $150 million a year, with the unfunded portion falling heaviest on the small, rural districts that don’t receive Q-Comp funding.

“Here we go again,” Specht said. “The fever to regulate layoffs could lead the House to drop another unfunded mandate on schools, with little regard for the cost to taxpayers or the effect of this poorly constructed bill on every teacher and school in the state.”

Specht dismissed claims that new layoff regulations would lead to improved teaching. She cited the latest data from the Teacher Supply and Demand Report from the Minnesota Department of Education, noting that in the 2012-2013 school year only 350 teachers were laid off in a workforce of 58,000. Meanwhile, 2,002 teachers quit before retirement that year.

“Anyone who looks at these numbers and concludes that layoffs are the issue is completely out of touch with what is happening in our schools,” she said. “We are headed for a staffing shortage, but the top education priority for the House is layoffs, layoffs, layoffs. No wonder teacher morale is so low.”

Despite the costs, Education Minnesota has supported the implementation of TDE. It has also endorsed the recent recommendations of the TDE/ATPPS Work Group, which would reconcile the policies of TDE with those of the Q-Comp compensation program. The work group also recommended equalizing funding between the mostly large, metro districts in Q-Comp with the rest of the districts in the state.

About Education Minnesota
Education Minnesota represents 70,000 professionals working together for excellence in education for all students. Education Minnesota’s members include teachers and education support professionals in Minnesota’s public school districts, faculty members at Minnesota’s community and technical colleges and University of Minnesota campuses in Duluth and Crookston, retired educators and student teachers. Education Minnesota is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association and AFL-CIO.