[Vision2020] Otter says he, Luna ready to talk about fixing education

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (November 8, 2012) Spokesman-Review.

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Otter says he, Luna ready to talk about fixing education
BOISE – After Idaho voters decisively rejected the Students Come First school reform laws on Tuesday, leaders on both sides were calling Wednesday for a new start on education reform.
Mike Lanza, a Boise father of two who chaired the successful referendum campaign, said, “We want to sit down with our elected leaders – and that includes Superintendent (Tom) Luna – and begin the hard work that is required to forge real education reform.”

Luna, the author of the reform laws, said Wednesday in a statement that his proposed reforms were “critical,” from rolling back teachers’ collective bargaining rights to instituting merit pay and technology upgrades in Idaho classrooms. “I do not believe any Idahoan wants to go back to the status quo system we had two years ago,” Luna said.

But Idaho Gov. Butch Otter said he and Luna are ready to talk. Otter said he’d already been in touch with legislative leaders about getting that started. “We’re prepared to sit down and find a path forward with all of the stakeholders,” he said.

Idaho’s GOP-dominated Legislature enacted the sweeping reform plan in 2011 over loud and sustained objections from opponents. It passed without a single Democratic vote in either house and with bipartisan opposition. When opponents appeared close to gathering enough signatures to force a voter referendum on the plan, lawmakers pushed through emergency clauses so the laws would take effect immediately.

Now, they’re repealed, including the cancellation of a just-signed $182 million, eight-year contract with Hewlett-Packard Co. to supply laptop computers to every Idaho high school student and teacher. The contract is being terminated at no cost to the state; no laptops had been delivered at the time of the election.

Otter said he’d be opposed to trying to just re-pass the same laws the voters have rejected. “That isn’t a course that I think is positive; that isn’t a course that I think would be productive,” he said. “I do think what we need to do is take each (law), each idea of reform, and sit down and say, ‘What did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it? If you had a chance to change it, how would you change it?’ And those things that we can agree on, and each and every one of those … is what we ought to go forward with.”

Penni Cyr, president of the Idaho Education Association, which strongly opposed the measures, said, “Now that the voters have spoken, it’s up to us, the adults, to model … for our students how grown-ups with diverse views can come together and put their differences aside and go forward.”

Senate Education Chairman John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, who defeated two challengers Tuesday to win a seventh Senate term with 57 percent of the vote, said he’ll “withhold judgment on how serious the IEA is on looking at education reform” until he sees what vision the teachers union proposes for future reforms.

“If the union is sincere in looking at reform, I think they need to be included,” Goedde said. “But if it’s going to be ‘not only no but hell no,’ which has kind of been their prior approach to this, then it’s a futile effort to include them.”

Goedde also said he’s mulling whether to continue as Senate Education Committee chairman or move to a different committee.

In final but unofficial results, Proposition 1, which curbed teachers’ collective bargaining rights, failed with 57.3 percent of the Idaho electorate voting no. Proposition 2, the merit-pay bonus plan, failed with 58 percent voting no. And Proposition 3, which included the laptops and a new focus on online learning, failed by the biggest margin, with 66.7 percent opposing it.

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Little change
Every North Idaho incumbent legislator who sought re-election won it on Tuesday, from conservative Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Gardens, to liberal Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow. In addition, despite some new faces and some upsets elsewhere in the state, Idaho’s Legislature kept the same party split it had before the election: 81 percent Republican, with just seven Democrats in the Senate and 13 in the House.
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Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .
"Moscow Cares"
http://www.MoscowCares.com  

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
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