By Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald Reporter
CHARLESTON — CHARLESTON — Education is in need of some repairs, and Gov. Joe Manchin is leaning toward devoting a healthy slice of an anticipated special legislative session to doing just that.
Or at least making a strong effort.
“If we have a special session, we’ve got to fix what’s broken in education,” Manchin said, a couple of hours before the gavel fell at midnight Saturday in the regular session.
The assured 180 days of instruction is one matter.
“There’s the 43 weeks when you really can’t have the flexibility in case you miss any time in the middle of snow like we did,” he said.
Manchin was noncommittal on the issue of charter schools, as outlined in a failed bill led by Sen. Erik Wells, D-Kanawha, one that touched off a furor by the American Federation of Teachers.
Judy Hale, the AFT’s president in West Virginia, has no problem with the concept of a charter school, but says any such education setting must include job security. This was the source of contention that split the union from Wells’ bill.
Hale says she can support a charter school legislation that raises academic achievements based on research while protecting employees.
“And those two things are not mutually exclusive,” she said in the final hours of the session.
Wells’ proposal, on the other hand, stripped teachers and service personnel of their employee rights, she said.
“I don’t think you have to do that in a good charter bill,” Hale said.
One provision in the Wells bill called for the implementation of uniforms in the proposed charter school, an idea that has been around in the Senate for several years, and one that Hale is comfortable with supporting.
“I have never opposed school uniforms,” she said.
“I do think that has to be a local decision where the principal has the parents, the students, buy into it. You have to build consensus and find a way to pay for it for those kids who can’t afford to pay for it. And I’m not opposed to year-round schools if they’re done in the right way. Our teachers who work in the year-round schools in Kanawha County love it. But they were given the ability to buy into it.”
Hale applauded the calendar bill as “a step in the right direction” and said the dropout package installed some meaningful changes.
Overall, she described the session as “pretty neutral” from education’s vantage point.
“The best thing to say about the session is that we’re going to have a special session on education soon,” she said.
“I think we’re going to see charter schools and I think we’re going to see action on Other Post Employment Benefits (OPEB).
“We have to deal with that,” Hale said. “That’s a huge impact on our profession.”
As for the money-tight atmosphere that imposed a dark cloud on this session, Hale didn’t appear disappointed the teachers were never considered for any salary improvements.
After all, the governor had cautioned all in the public sector well in advance the money simply wasn’t there this year.
“We don’t have our heads in the sand,” she said.
“We know what the situation is like across West Virginia. Many people have lost their jobs. We did not make a push for a pay raise this year.”
— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com
