LAE Applauds Decision in LFT Act 1 Challenge
By: Lynn Vance
Updated: December 18, 2012
BATON ROUGE, LA - December 18,
2012 - The
Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE) congratulates the Louisiana Federation
of Teachers (LFT) on Judge Caldwell's ruling, which found a portion of Act 1 unconstitutional.
President Joyce Haynes said her organization will continue to defend LAE
members who face impacts from the requirements of the 1aw that are still
intact.
"Our approach will hopefully
bring order to the learning environment of students, rather than the overall
chaos created by Act 1," she said.
The LAE Board of Directors met
earlier this year to discuss taking legal action against several new education
laws passed in the 2012 Legislative Session. Board members authorized legal
challenges to Act 2 and Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 99, while reserving
actions against Act 1. Act 2 and SCR 99 dealt with constitutional issues
surrounding the public school funding formula; Act 1 set forth new requirements
for teacher contracts and salaries, school reduction in force (RIF) policies,
and due process rights. Due to the large number of potential legal scenarios
that could arise, board members felt as though association resources would be
best spent pursuing individual legal challenges on a case by case, parish by
parish basis.
"Whether it's an issue with
teacher evaluations or RIF policies, there are just too many different legal
violations that stand to come out of these new requirements," said Haynes.
"Rather than lump these variables together under one general action, the LAE
Board of Directors felt any legal action would best be pursued by honing in on
individual issues, with individual members in their respective school
districts. We also felt as though some of these issues might be worked out
collaboratively with school administrations and school boards."
Since the enactment of Act 1, LAE
staff and legal team members from across the state have been proactively
working on a number of ongoing challenges in several school districts
respective to the new requirements surrounding individual contracts, employee
salary schedules, building fair and transparent RIF policies, helping improve
teacher evaluation processes, and challenging those procedures designed to
punish teachers rather than foster improvement. The association has also taken
on legal cases where teacher tenure procedures were violated. In fact, during
the 2012 Legislative Session, LAE was the only organization to file legislation
designed to streamline the tenure review process and modify the teacher
evaluation law so that the evaluation process would help improve instruction.
"Educators' working
conditions are students' learning conditions, and we should be providing
quality conditions for teaching and lifelong learning," she said. "It's
imperative that we agree on the scope of salary, benefits, and working
conditions, so that we can focus on the importance of improving student
learning."
