The Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature

[Donerail]

I, sjoycefla, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the Imperial Dominion of the South against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me Dave.

[Donerail]

    MasterSanders has disappeared & not shared any of his fried chicken. Shall we call his mandate vacated per the Legislative Vacancy Act & pick another member?

We shall.

I, being a proud citizen of the Imperial South and our Constitution, can't take over the seat that is being held by the Mechaman account since I am only three posts in.  In fact, I request Governor Pit and this legislature to uphold the laws of this state and, given Mechaman's disability, vacate the seat he was appointed to.

Apparently for two seats. Does this mean I'm now the third senior legislator behind Yelnoc and I think Pingvin (maybe Kalwejt, or maybe he resigned to run for VP, not sure there)?

[Donerail]

     MasterSanders has disappeared & not shared any of his fried chicken. Shall we call his mandate vacated per the Legislative Vacancy Act & pick another member?

Yes we should.

First off, I realize there are precedents against new Atlas posters appearing suddenly in the Atlasian Government threads (if in Atlasia at all, strict voting requirements) so please don't freak and chalk this up as a "zombie".

Second, the reason why I have chosen to post here is to deliver some bad news.  You see this morning, at around 7:42 AM, Mechaman's Mac Laptop computer literally came unglued.
Pardon the pun.

Anyway, a few months before that Mechaman got drunk and changed the password to his own account!  The next morning when he woke up he couldnt' remember it.  He went to Nym, he went to Dave.  Neither of them could really help him, given that he couldn't even remember the "Secret Question" for his account.
Sound famililar anyone?

Back to the present, as a result of Mechaman's profile pretty much being on all the time on one computer and him having no freaking way to find out or change his password, the laptop incident has arguably made it nigh impossible for Mechaman to come back on here.  Which is why I am now here.

I, being a proud citizen of the Imperial South and our Constitution, can't take over the seat that is being held by the Mechaman account since I am only three posts in.  In fact, I request Governor Pit and this legislature to uphold the laws of this state and, given Mechaman's disability, vacate the seat he was appointed to.

I swear this is the poster formerly known as Mechaman.  I am not some old sock with a grudge against him and making this up just to get him kicked out.  I know this will suck, given how many people were just appointed and all but well, rules are rules.

I'm sorry to hear that, Mecha.  Could you get in the chat sometime to verify that?

Apparently for two seats. Does this mean I'm now the third senior legislator behind Yelnoc and I think Pingvin (maybe Kalwejt, or maybe he resigned to run for VP, not sure there)?

I'm sorry, I haven't updated the almanac in a while.  Here is a list of seniority.

Yelnoc
MasterSanders (soon to be removed?)
Kalwejt
Mechaman (soon to be removed?)
sjoycefla

Kalwejt does not need to resign unless he is elected to another office.

And sjoycefla, we can begin debate on your bill in a few days.  We need to take care of this membership shake-up first, and this weekend will be particularly busy for me.

Of course; no use having debate if there's nobody to debate. Under the Legislative Vacancy Act, do we have to wait seven consecutive days to be able to declare Mechaman's seat vacant or can it be done expediently due to Drunkenpasswordlaptopgate?

[Donerail]

     Well, MasterSanders's seat has been vacated.

     Article II, Section 5 of the regional Constitution says that the Legislature can "judge the qualifications of its members", i.e. expel them. That's probably the quickest way to vacate Mechaman's seat.

So do we need to take a vote on that...?

[Donerail]

Keep. 3 vacancies to fill at once is too many.

Edit: Remembered Judicial Overlord seat is open too.

[Donerail]

     Needs more activity.

I introduced a thingymajigger, but it hasn't been brought up or whatever's done.

[Donerail]

Higher Education STEM Act

Charter School Act

Private School Administration Rights Bill

Help The Southeast Study For Serious Act

These are the only ones I found on the books. And I'd prefer to keep the title as it is, for rarely is the question asked.

[Donerail]

A few quick calculations:

A high school teacher with 5 classes of 20 students each would make $270,000 in a 180 school year.  A high school teacher with 5 classes of 30 students each would make $405,000 a year.  For comparison, an elementary school teacher, who only has one class of kids would make between $54,000 (20 kids) and $81,000 (30 kids).  From those figures alone, I do not think section 1 of this bill is affordable for the IDS, even when taking our budget surplus into consideration.  I also challenge the notion that paying teacher by number of students is a bad idea and could create a number of negative incentives for local school districts.  For example, districts in dire financial straights might hire an enormous amount of teachers so that they can have ridiculously small class sizes and therefore not need to pay their teachers nearly as much.  

With that in mind, I suggest Section 1 of the bill be stricken, to be replaced with other guidelines on teacher pay.  To that effect, I move e commission the SoIA to conduct a report on the average real life pay of teachers within the real life states that comprise the Atlasian IDS and deliver to us his findings stratified by elementary, middle, and high school sections.

That was just an attempt to set some kinda standards for pay; the intention was to make teaching competitive with other jobs (46% of teachers in public schools leave the profession within the first five years, citing salary/stress; because of teachers generally having a lower average salary than their similarly-educated peers, 62% of teachers have second jobs outside the classroom to be able to afford to teach). Based on your math, a sorta formula for that wouldn't make sense. I would also be in favor of just setting baselines/guidelines for pay, as was the original intent.

I support your motion to commission the SoIA to conduct such a report, or I could just do it...

[Donerail]

State

Starting Salary

Average Salary

Alabama

$31,368

$40,347

Arkansas

$28,784

$42,768

Florida

$33,427

$43,302

Georgia

$34,442

$48,300

Louisiana

$31,298

$40,029

Mississippi

$28,200

$40,576

North Carolina

$27,944

$43,992

South Carolina

$28,568

$43,011

Tennessee

$32,369

$42,537

Texas

$33,775

$42,537

According to Teacher Portal. For comparison, national average for a starting teacher is $34,935; nat'l average for a starting non-technical researcher is $37,541; management trainee is $42,123; registered nurse is $51,341; public accountant is $47,453; field engineer is $52,277.

[Donerail]

So that gives us a mean starting salary of $31,018 and a mean "average salary" of $42,740.  20RP12, we could still use a breakdown by school level (elementary, middle, and high).  Also knowing the national average starting and normal salaries and the highest normal and average salaries paid by any state would be useful for analytical purposes.

National: starting salary is $30,377 and average salary is $54,319.
Highest starting/average salaries: Starting is CT with $39,259, average is California with $59,825. Highest salaries relative to cost of living is Illinois (start of $37,500, average of $58,686).

[Donerail]

While we wait for 20RP12, we might as well talk theoretical (rather than focus on hard numbers).  So we will come back to section one.  Here is my view on the other sections.

2) I am strongly opposed to killing summer vacation.  With summer vacation goes  summer jobs, and my (potential) car with it.

3) Good idea, though we don't have any previous legislation on this so we will need to crunch numbers.

4) Not sure about this one.  I'm opposed to letting corporations out of paying their fair share of taxes.  Let's analyze how much the rest of this bill will cost and see whether we need the revenue before moving forwards.

5) Don't see anything wrong with it.

6) Ok.  We may need to grant a sum of money to this bullet; unfunded mandates are bad news.

7) Agreed

Agreed in theory, though we should consider the practicality of imposing a hard cap when it comes to local school district budgets.

9) Needs input; I'm not sure what I think about this bullet because I am unsure what the current process is.

10) Agreed on the first part.  I don't know that we should automatically pay for teachers to attain higher education.  That seems like it would be a drain and could potential open up loopholes for somebody to teach while getting their degree and then move on to their chosen career field.

11) Great idea but how much will it cost?  Will need to figure out the current ratio in the south.  I know my high school is way above that ratio but plenty of south Georgia schools probably still don't have any computers.

12) I know the fire marshal checks school buildings out.  I suppose an engineering contractor could be hired.  I would think this would already be standard procedure, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to standardize.

13) Call Loewen and Feynman, will you?    Just teasing.  Good idea I suppose, though perhaps books written by non governmental agencies might be a better choice.  Houghton-Mifflin or whatever that company's name is seems to produce high quality books.  Plenty of others like that.  So I challenge the necessity of this bullet.

14) I would knock it down to two years, since a lot of colleges only require two years and not everyone is good at learning languages.  That said, language learning should be encouraged and I fully support this bullet's sentiment.

2.) I'm not going to kill summer vacation, I'm going to chop it down to a month and a half and add a week to spring, a week to fall, and a week or two (whatever's left) to winter; this'd give you six weeks of work to get your car (and if you wanted to work over the now month-long winter break, you can do that too), it'd slow learning loss , and it'd shorten summer vacation (not sure about up north, but down here in Florida, summer is a miserable sweaty weeks of 90 degree sun time of the year).

3.) I'd assume that schools may already be self-funding some clubs or such through fundraisers/PTA money; this'd be the region providing additional support to that.

4.) I wouldn't think that $5000 would be a big chunk of a tax bill for, say, Walmart, but yeah, it's probably something we'll only implement if we have the revenue; the idea is they get a tax credit for however much they donate to education, so it is kinda a circular loop there (you get less taxes for giving more money to the government).

6.) We probably would (I'm in a magnet school in Florida right now (Center for Gifted Studies), so I know how well they work).

8.) Florida did a 22:1 cap or something; I'd be open to an amendment that reduces it to 40:1 for teachers that aren't core academic teachers (PE, health, art, cooking, computing, etc)

9.) Not like I know either. Shall we summon the SoIA to give us more numbers on this?

10.) Maybe put in a clause that "after attaining the degree they seek, degree recipient shall teach for at least five continuous years in an IDS public school." Ideally, we're not paying them, we're just letting them go to a public university (most likely a local community college or online college) without paying for it. In most circumstances, they'd already be teachers pursuing, say, gifted certification, and we'd just be making it easier for them to afford online classes or whatever they're taking.

11.) Summon the SoIA! And maybe add in something like "and are available for student use" (I just realized that they could give the administration a bunch of computers and say they have computers, even though students can never use them).

12.) Engineering contractor! That's the right word there. It's just an attempt to make sure that our students aren't going to schools that are architecturally unsound and might collapse on their heads and cause multi-million dollar lawsuits at the school system (and us).

13.) Perhaps just create the review board and have them pick out which textbook made by Pearson/Houghton-Mifflin/McGraw-Hill or whoever submits textbooks that they think is most accurate, and/or make editing suggestions to enhance historical accuracy (I know that companies already make textbooks according to state standards; Florida Edition, Texas Edition, California Edition, New York Edition are the most common, so the board could just set textbook standards that the companies would then meet).

14.) I'd say three years or even four years of language in high school would be a good amount (pretty sure that's the FL standard), but that it can include foreign language classes taken in 7th/8th grade, so it adds up to at most 2 years in high school.

[Donerail]

Thanks for pulling that together! Now we can get some real solution to this.

[Donerail]

Someone needs to brief me on what is going on. Do legislators get secretaries like we did in the Senate?

Right now we're debating/amending/discussing my education bill. And not to my knowledge.

[Donerail]

Omnibus Amendmentizations:

Amendment 1 to Is Our Children Learning Act: Strike Section 2 and insert the following amendment:

2.) In an attempt to minimize time spent away from education, and in recognition of the climate of the IDS, summer vacation shall be shortened to ten weeks, with an addition week off in November for Thanksgiving, two weeks off for Christmas and New Year's, two weeks off in March or April starting on Lazarus Saturday for Spring Break, a week off in February for President's Day, and a week off in October for Fall Break during the week of Columbus Day.

Amendment 2 to Is Our Children Learning Act: Strike Section 8 and insert the following amendment:

8.) Class size in schools shall not exceed a 25:1 student-teacher ratio for core academic subjects (including science, mathematics, English, foreign language, and social studies); class size shall not exceed a 35:1 student-teacher ratio for teachers not in those subject areas.

Amendment 3 to Is Our Children Learning Act: Strike Section 10 and insert the following amendment:

10.) In order to teach, teachers must hold a bachelor's degree with a major in an area related to the field in which they wish to teach, or be National Board Certified. The region shall subsidize tuition for teachers studying for a higher degree related to their chosen field (such as a Master's or Doctorate). If a teacher has their tuition subsidized by the region, after attaining their degree, said teacher must teach for at least five continuous years at an IDS public school unless terminated by school district before that time.

Amendment 4 to Is Our Children Learning Act: Strike Section 11 and insert the following amendment:

11.) All schools shall have Internet and computer access to a level of 10:1 students per computer available for student use at least.

Amendment 5 to Is Our Children Learning Act: Strike Section 12 and insert the following amendment:

12.) Schools shall be reviewed by an engineering contractor in order to assess the integrity of the building upon request of the principal or 40% of teachers; in the event that the school is found to be inadequate infrastructure-wise, steps will be taken to either fix the problems or to create a new building.

Amendment 6 to Is Our Children Learning Act: Strike Section 13 and insert the following amendment:

13.) An independent textbook review board, including notable professors such as James W. Loewen, Richard P. Feynman, representatives of the Atlasian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and others, shall be created to select standards for IDS textbooks and then select the most accurate textbook submitted by a textbook corporation.

[Donerail]

So there's your omnibus amendments thingy. I now only cut summer vacation by a couple weeks to be offset by President's Day/Columbus Day breaks. Hope that's an acceptable compromise. And ir we're discussing foreign models to copy, I'd prefer Finland.

But do give out your fuzzy ideas on reforming the IDS school system, and all you other legislators (Duke, Kal, Mecha), feel free to throw in your ideas too.

[Donerail]

     This sort of thing is not my forte, though I do suspect that including a dead guy on the textbook review board might be problematic.

Just be happy that I didn't put Howard Zinn on it like I almost did

[Donerail]

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That+the data we just got from 20RP12 is what we're actually going to do instead.

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Would you be open to shortening summer just by two weeks instead of six, adding on a week during Columbus Day and a week during President's Day?

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We just need to crunch some numbers on this.

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We do have one, it is looking like this.

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This wouldn't be any kind of busing, it's more of a "If you live in a bad school district and want to drive to another/if you live on the edge of a school district border and it'd be easier to go to another, you can" type of thing.

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Magnet schools are indeed mostly government-funded; my county (Pinellas) has quite a lot of magnet schools. This proposal would actually most be in line with Yelnoc's ideas for reform. My school system has a variety of magnet schools; I personally attend a gifted magnet (which basically sucks all the smart kids from one part of the county so they can all take challenging classes together), one of my engineery-type friends attends a technology magnet, there's an arts magnet near my house, there's a journalism magnet, IB magnet (where I'm going for high school), there's a business magnet, there's a Cambridge program magnet, construction magnet, medical magnet, marine science magnet, architecture magnet, cop magnet, and a national guard magnet. It's basically a way to allow more kids to specialize during high school so they know what they want to do and can do coming out of high school (medical magnet kids I think are certified physical trainers coming out of HS).

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Yeah, as in financially. Most do, but some don't.

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This was intended to be an all-encompassing education bill; the original bill was where I just vomited my ideas for reforming education onto a Textedit document and copied it over.

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There's an amendment that says they have to teach in an IDS public school for 5 years after they get the degree if the region subsidizes tuition for them.

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Not really a big problem, but there's probably a few school districts up in the Ozarks or somewhere in rural Mississippi or something that don't, so it'd help those schools.

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Most schools have a janitorial staff but they're not really trained for this kind of structural-integrity-checking.

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We're just setting up a review board for private textbooks in the latest amendment, to set standards for what'll be in IDS textbooks and then having private companies make books to those standards (which they already do; most of my school textbooks say "Florida Edition" on them).

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I've taken two years in middle school and'll take 4 in high school, so maybe just have em take it freshman and sophomore?

[Donerail]

I'm just going to add my thoughts whenever I can find the bill because it seems like a mess otherwise. We need to reformat how we debate these bills so they are easier to follow and improve efficiency. But that is for a later date.

Where is the original bill? Education reform is probably my lease knowledgable area, but I can give my thoughts when I find the bill.

Sorry to butt in, but this is one of the changes I pushed for in the Northeast. I don't think you will hear anyone asking to revert to this style of legislature.

So we should move to the independent threads for each bill?

[Donerail]

Anyone else have anything to say?

And I can see objection to a six-week reduction, but now it's only two weeks...

[Donerail]

I propose the following amendment:

Strike Section 1 of the Is Our Children Learning act and insert the following amendment:

1.) In an attempt to produce better students through the recruitment of better teachers, a minimum starting salary of $57,000 (to be adjusted yearly for inflation) for teachers shall be instituted throughout the IDS. A minimum starting salary of $28,000 (to be adjusted yearly for inflation) for full-time education service professionals (custodial, security, food services, health/student services, paraeducational, clerical, technical, skilled trades, and transportation workers in the full-time employ of a public school system) shall be instituted throughout the IDS.

[Donerail]

Changed to $28,000. And these are just baselines for lowest pay, so they have upwards flexibility.

[Donerail]

A minimum salary of $57,000 for ALL teachers? Is that a feasible amount to pay? I don't know many kids starting in other professions making that much, like in banking (not big banks). If we can afford that, then fine, but that seems like a lot for a starting salary.

Data from Charlotte says that the average teacher starts at $32,000, compared to $55,000 for technical/computer support and $47,000 for public accounting. In Houston, teachers start at $39,000, while project engineers start at $51,000 and registered nurses start at $47,000. In Austin, teachers start at $22,500, while project engineers start at $55,000. In DC, teachers start at $30,000, compared to $57,000 for public auditors. So yeah, $57,000 is a feasible amount to pay; the goal is to make teaching as good as (or better) than those other professions, so that kids aren't turned off of teaching due to the low pay; now it's comparable.

[Donerail]

     Oh, got confused. At any rate, we should offer these high paygrades to quality teachers. I fear that just giving every rookie teacher $57,000/year would stand to degrade the profession by attracting people who just want the money & don't care about the kids.

Any suggestions on what it should be then?

[Donerail]

     I could go for retaining the current base pay rates & have performance-based boosters. Problem is, that would require that we write standardized tests well enough that "teaching to the test" does not disservice the students. One of the common criticisms of standardized testing is that the questions are frequently irrelevant to any kind of reasonable curriculum.

     We also need to figure out how much this would cost & how we would pay for it.

I could see that, if we can avoid the "pineapples don't have sleeves" issue... We could also just pay them minimum wage, but count time spent grading papers, planning lessons, communicating with parents, providing help for students, setting up/taking down classrooms, writing grant proposals, shopping for school supplies, prepping for certification, coaching, and club advising in addition to time spent in the classroom.

[Donerail]

I'd accept a pay-grade system with performance based boosters.