Haslam Sidelines Class Size Proposal

Governor Bill Haslam is backing off an attempt to let local school boards increase class size. The governor says he didn’t adequately explain what he was trying to do.

The governor’s proposal relied on raising some class sizes in order to free up money to teach other subjects.

The argument in favor was complex. But the argument against was simple and short – smaller classes are better. Haslam admits he was losing the battle of the message.

House Speaker Beth Harwell, his ally in the lower chamber, says calling off the current effort is a good decision.

“Again, I think his original goal was good restoring flexibility to our local governments to allow them to pay teachers, um, more in areas that are hard to teach to allow them to have smaller classes in such subjects as physics or advanced chemistry.”

The House speaker says one pressure to go slow came from lawmakers who heard opposition from their constituents.

Senator Jim Tracy of Shelbyville was relieved by the delay. The legislator had worried the measure could backfire.

Before he was a state senator, Tracy was a teacher and then a member of the Bedford County Board of Education.

Tracy says the increase in class sizes would change the numbers the district plugs into the Basic Education Program formula, and could actually lower the amount of state money going to the local school system.

He says postponing the issue for the year gives educators a chance to fine-tune the idea.

“I applaud him for …pulling back away from it now, and putting everybody in a room, working on it, with school superintendents, principals, teachers, school boards, to see how they can come up with a plan to do it. I do applaud the effort but it is more complicated than what people thought.”

The governor says he’ll bring the idea back to the legislature next year.

WEB EXTRA
The bill is SB 2210 Norris / HB 2348 McCormick was fought out without ever being officially brought up before a standing committee of the legislature.

The governor says he’ll return to the issue next year. Here’s a copy of the summary of this year’s effort.

But next year, the bill would have to be re-filed and re-numbered. Bills from this year will be dead.

Speaker Harwell says the issue is complicated by class size differences in different school districts.

“We do have an issue of being able to pay teachers that are teaching in the hard-to-teach subjects, like physics and science and math. A lot of rural areas just don’t have but five or six students that are going to be taking that physics in the senior year.

I think that …the concerns expressed regarding the importance of classroom size were ones that really we’re going to have to work with our locals a little bit more, to get them to fully understand what the governor was attempting to here do originally.

So again, I think the governor’s goal was a good one, but I think it just shows this governor’s ability to work well with all people involved to come up with the best solution for everyone. So, I just think he may the right decision.

Q: The best solution in this case was abandoning it?

A. Well, I think he was hearing from legislators who were hearing from their districts and I think the governor took a lot of time to meet with school superintendents, with teachers themselves, and he listened to their concerns and I think that is really a credit to him as a leader – that he would listen to all interested parties and say okay let’s step back from this and let’s revisit it another time.”

House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley issued a statement after the governor told House leadership at the Wednesday morning breakfast he would step back from the class size revamp.

“We are glad that Governor Haslam has decided to abandon his plan to increase classroom size in Tennessee. As Senator [Reginald] Tate and I pointed out in last week’s Commercial Appeal, this proposal would have had disastrous effects for our students, our teachers and our local governments. While we support the Governor’s continued efforts to improve education for all Tennessee’s children and look forward to working with him in the future, we hope this proposal is permanently off the table.”