Summary of Meeting with Senator Ford

Senator Ford urged teachers to share their ideas and views with him and that the best way to contact him is via his email address at the state capitol, where his secretary can sort out constituent emails to prioritize and send along to him. It is thus important to include your address in your email so they know you are a constituent and he asked you to please include a phone number. He noted that he was not impressed by OEA-driven mass emails where prepared statements are selected from a list and sent out by teachers from across the state, placing far higher value on personal communications from the teachers who are also his constituents. While Senator Ford pointed out he has not complained about teachers reaching him via school email, the BEA always advises teachers to use personal email accounts for such communications since the school email system, by board policy, is only intended for district business. 

You may write to Senator Ford at:  fordj@oksenate.gov

Budget Cuts

Senator Ford said the most important issue for the legislature to contend with this session is the $500 million shortfall in the state budget. He pointed out that the governor's budget prioritized education with a three percent cut versus a five percent cut in most other agencies. Where we will actually land is of course undetermined at this point.

The Teacher Retirement System

Senator Ford pointed out that the Oklahoma Teacher Retirement System (OTRS) is only 48 percent funded with a $10.4 billion unfunded liability. He assured the audience that teachers now in the system should not experience changes in their retirement other than these two areas:

• The unfunded liability is based on the assumption that the OTRS would have an unfunded 2 percent cost of living adjustment (COLA) for its retirees. If those COLAs were instead fully paid for when granted, the system's unfunded liability would improve. (Former State Treasurer Meacham's report says the system would then reach the recommended funding level of 80% in 25 years.) Senator Ford said there would be a push for that change, with no COLA provided unless funded by the legislature. Currently a 2 percent COLA for OTRS costs $170 million. He said that he thought the legislature should provide a funded COLA when that was feasible and not wait for the system to be fully funded as called for in some bills pending in the house. There has been some discussion of designating a funding source for COLAs such as revenue from the school land trust or even the Grand River Dam Authority, although he does not think using the GRDA as a source would be a good idea.

• The amount of a teacher's required contribution into the system can change. Currently the system is funded by a contribution equivalent to 7 percent of the salary by the teacher and 9.5 percent of the salary by the district. While the legislature could raise either amount, he said that had not been widely discussed in this session. (The current version of SB 892 has language capping a district's contribution at 10 percent. Note that in Bartlesville's accounting the district pays the teachers' 5 percent contribution on their behalf, a mechanism we began to employ years ago to lower a teacher's FICA-taxable income for Social Security and the like.)

Senator Ford pointed out that the legislature is legally bound to keep its contractual promises to retirees and existing system members (e.g. retirement age and how the pension is calculated), using as an example how those under the "Rule of 80" on minimum retirement age remain there while teachers who entered the system later are under "Rule of 90".

While house bills include eliminating unfunded COLAs, SB 892 looks at improving the system's funding by reducing benefits for new teachers. The retirement age would increase, the calculation of final average salary would allow for less manipulation through special compensation, and the retirement benefit would be reduced by dropping the calculation below the current one of "years of service x final average salary x 2 percent" (currently SB 892 changes that 2 percent to 1.5 percent). Whether the new retirement age would be 65, 66, or 67, etc. is under consideration. Again these latter changes would apply only to new teachers.

There also has been much speculation about defined benefit versus defined contribution systems. (Defined contribution systems are similar to a 401(k) account, while currently have a defined benefit system with a guaranteed pension income.) The senator said the bills did not seek to move those in the current defined benefit system to a defined contribution system, and that even if all new teachers were put into a defined contribution system that would do nothing to reduce the unfunded liability of the existing system.

New teachers might be given a choice between the two types of system in a hybrid or blended system. Responding to a question, he said payments by new teachers electing the defined benefit option would be considered part of the overall OTRS and would thus help fund its obligations, while he was not certain that payments for those choosing a defined contribution option would help with the system's liabilities.

A teacher asked about the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS), the other largest state retirement system, which is 66% funded with a $3.27 billion unfunded liability and operates under the assumption of 4 percent COLAs rather than the 2 percent COLAs for OTRS. The teacher pointed out that legislators were included in that system, with its better COLA, and asked if the ban on unfunded COLAs would include those systems or only the teachers' system. Senator Ford said he thought the ban should include both of those large systems. He noted that there are also several other smaller retirement systems (for firefighters, police, state troopers, judges, and wildlife conservation, with a combined unfunded liability of over $2.3 billion) and special circumstances might prevent some COLA limitations and other changes from being applied to some of them. There is a legal requirement on the COLA funding for one such system due to a court case, and he pointed out that raising the retirement age for firefighters is problematic since, for example, you cannot expect a 65-year-old firefighter to carry a person out of a burning building - hence their system allows early retirement after 20 years of service.

Charter Schools & Vouchers

Senator Ford sponsored SB 1, which makes it easier to start charter schools. But he pointed out that still no charter schools can occur in Washington County since they are restricted to large metro areas or districts with schools on the Needs Improvement list. Senator Ford pointed out that his own children graduated from Bartlesville, they received a great education here, and if the rest of the districts in Oklahoma were like Bartlesville he guessed that 90% of the legislation on improving schools would not be proposed.

In response to a teacher's concerns about charter schools taking the best students and leaving only students with lower abilities and impoverished backgrounds in public schools, he said that charter schools are classified as public, not private, schools and thus cannot selectively admit students. His example was that if a charter school has 200 openings, it must take the first 200 applicants, and if there are more than 200 applicants then admittance off a waiting list must be by lottery. So charter schools cannot "cherry pick" through restrictive admittance policies.

A teacher asked about bills providing tax credits for parents sending students to private schools. (The tax credits are a mechanism to avoid the state constitution's ban on direct financial aid to send a student to a private school; some call these "vouchers" but they are a variant on that theme.) Senator Ford said his interest was for areas where low-income families have students assigned to schools which are low-performing. Rather than force the student to remain at the low-performing school or, through a metro system's school choice program, be forced to ride a bus to a distant school, he wants parents to have the choice to receive some state support to send their student to a private school.

His argument regarding how public school funding would be impacted by such tax credits was that a study had shown a typical tax credit in another state with such a system had been $2,000. Since common education is 35% of the Oklahoma's state budget, the net loss to the state's public schools in that scenario would be about $700, but the student would no longer be a burden on the public system and the overall state common education system in a sense would come out ahead financially. (The same argument would say that schools "benefit" from every child in home school or a private school in that the burden of their education is not on the state.)

When asked about why regular public schools are held accountable for results of end-of-instruction tests and how their students' graduation is linked to them whereas charter schools have no such accountability, he said it might make sense to require end-of-instruction tests for graduation for charter school students. He expressed his opposition to the state's current end-of-year criterion-referenced tests, saying they and their results come too late to do much good. He supports State Superintendent's Barresi's call to instead have formative testing during the school year so teachers doing the instruction could act upon the results more promptly, and pointed out that Bartlesville already has some formative testing of its own devising.

Senator Ford said he expected charter schools and private schools to always be a small percentage of the overall education experience and throughout his lifetime and beyond the vast majority of students would always be educated in regular public schools. But he wants more choices for parents who are served by low-performing schools. He also supports expanding online learning opportunities so that students in smaller districts can still choose from a broad array of AP courses and electives not available at the local school.

Eliminating Trial De Novo

Senator Ford was asked about his bill to end trial de novo, by which a teacher may appeal a school board's firing decision to district court. He said his view was that the elected local school board had effectively chosen to hire the teacher and thus should have the right, after full due process, to chose not to re-employ him or her. He pointed out that his bill preserved/enhanced a teacher's right to full due process within the district with regards to requiring first a plan of improvement procedure rather than termination, and if that is not successful then a recommendation by the superintendent to not re-employ the teacher and a full hearing before the board of education with the right to call witnesses and present a case. 

When asked about the bill's language deletions which appeared to leave due process specifics to whatever is promulgated by the state department of education, he said a fellow Republican legislator had pointed out a concern about having the right to a full hearing spelled out and that an amendment would be made to clarify that the full due process procedure now in place at the district level would be required. (Note that teachers in their first and, at a district's discretion, second year of employment in a given district may be placed on temporary contracts. So at the end of the school year their re-employment is at the district's discretion and due process procedures do not apply. Bartlesville now uses this method so that teachers may be released from employment after their first or second year in the district, only being placed on a continuing contract beginning with their third year. This avoids the invocation of language in the negotiated agreement regarding a reduction in force, for example, for such teachers.)

Senator Ford said a reason he wanted to do away with trial de novo was the scenario of a district superintendent having some poor-performing teachers who might appeal firings and the district thus incur large legal costs and time. He worries that the superintendent would be tempted to instead shift such teachers to less visible positions in the district where expectations might be lower - possibly thus pairing some of the worst teachers with the most academically vulnerable students.

Third Grade Retention

A teacher expressed her opposition to the provision in HB 1550 where third-graders not reaching certain competency levels would have to be retained up to two years. She said one year of retention could make sense, but holding a student back for two consecutive years might greatly increase the likelihood of the student dropping out later on, create situations where students in a middle school class are two or even three years apart in age, etc. While he did not take a stance on the issue, Senator Ford listened to the concerns and said he had already had conversations about this same issue with other parents and grandparents and that it was important to think about the unintended consequences of any bill's efforts to make reforms.

Oklahoma School of Science and Math

Prompted by the discussion about cherry-picking bright students, Senator Ford said he had breakfast that morning with five Bartlesville students now attending the Oklahoma School of Science and Math (OSSM) in Oklahoma City. He wanted teachers' opinions about that program and the similar regional OSSM satellites across the state, given that the programs are very costly and whether it made sense to cherry-pick such students out of the systems. He allowed that he saw the value to students in providing a top-quality education in the fields not available in a home district, but wondered about the investment, its impact on home district programs, and whether such students return to contribute to our state after they graduate when many go out of state for college. He mentioned that in a previous session he tried to attach some strings to the state's OHLAP scholarship program where recipients would be required to pay back some of the scholarship unless they were a state resident for a period of time after college graduation, but that bill had quickly died. In response, AP Physics teacher Granger Meador said he regretted seeing several top-notch students not attend our senior high by heading out to the central OSSM after the Mid-High, but that he also saw the value in providing such opportunities to students, especially for those from areas of the state lacking the breadth and quality of AP programs we have in Bartlesville. Meador pointed out that if past efforts to open a regional OSSM at Tri-County Tech had gone through, that would have devastated AP science and math courses at BHS, to the detriment of the district's overall programs and remaining students. He added that he did, however, support the technology center's existing pre-engineering program, with its provision for robotics and similar training unavailable at BHS with its more limited resources, so long as its Bartlesville students still took physics and other science and math courses at BHS and not at the technology center.

This summary was prepared after the meeting by BEA Webmaster and Chief Negotiator Granger Meador from his personal recollection of the event, with his personal added remarks in italics, and any errors or omissions in this summary are both regretted and unintentional.