By Jason Doyle Oden
House Democrats are upset at a proposal to reduce teacher health insurance benefits to raise their pay. While they site no active bill, they are concerned about the idea.
“Health insurance is one of the few fringe benefits teachers in this state receive,” said Rep. Donnie Condit, who is a retired educator and administrator. “It’s one of the tools we use to recruit teachers. Now the Republicans want to take away one of the few incentives we have to attract and retain quality teachers.”
Rep. Brian Renegar said teachers won’t stand for the swap.
Renegar
“Teachers aren’t stupid,” said Renegar. “They will not blindly accept a pay increase, which would include the withholding of income taxes, while simultaneously having their health insurance capped. Legislative Republicans want to give teachers a pay raise with one hand by removing money from their wallets with the other hand. This is a regressive idea.”
Rep. Jerry McPeak said the deal is akin to the Republicans playing games with teachers.
“I continue to be amazed at the number of bad-for-teacher bills that the Republicans have proposed this session,” said McPeak. “Stripping teachers of health insurance in the guise of a pay raise is absurd. This idea is simply an extension of the funding shell-game Republicans are playing at the expense of our public school teachers.”
Rep. Ed Cannaday said to beware of Republicans bearing gifts.
“The conversion of educators’ health insurance coverage into a revenue stream to be used to provide an increase in the state’s teacher salary schedule is comparable to the legendary Trojan Horse filled with hostile warriors in the guise of being a gift,” said Cannaday, also a retired educator. “This enabled the Greeks to enter the city of Troy and thereby win what has become known as the Trojan War. If this conversion is allowed to be done, public school systems of this state will equally be destroyed by another form of subterfuge.”
Oh, for Heaven’s sake, WHEN are Republicans going to stop alienating and making enemies of the TEACHERS????? This state is already second from the bottom in teacher pay (whereas ADMINISTRATION is sixth from the top), and I am paying over $670.00 per month just to have my wife on my plan (on a teacher’s salary), and now you want reduce MY insurance, too?
Then we wonder why nobody wants to go into teaching, why current teachers are bolting for the Red River, and why we have so many “emergency certification” positions—common sense, anyone? It becomes very hard for me as an educator to go to work everyday and be proud to be a Republican when all the Republicans ever do is denigrate public education and wipe their feet on the teachers.
They aren’t wrong. The attempt is an act of craven political desperation.
Jonathan, We expect craven political desperation moves from Democrats, not from the Republicans we send to the capital. Have you heard a single ONE of them actually think innovatively and put forth proposals that would actually fix anything with regard to streamlining the stranglehold of mind-numbing regulations and compliance costs that bog down public schools?
How about some tough choices about consolidating these micro-districts that are, by ANYBODY’S standard, too small to constitute a “district” and should be conjoined with neighboring districts? Why no talk about the necessity of reducing super-sized athletic programs (complete with a well-paid athletic director and twice as many history-teacher-coaches as the school actually needs)? Why aren’t they mentioning the six-digit salaries being paid to the bloated administration in many of these schools–administration that really could be taking care of county-wide complexes of districts from a central office? No–it’s easier to try to fix the budget by talking about taking something else away from the teachers—it’s less politically dangerous to do so.
Solve Oklahoma education issues by eliminating unions:
http://www.will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Untold-Act-10-apple-cover-FINAL.pdf