Education Week - July 8, 2015 - 20

House, Senate Appropriations Bills Supreme Court Case
Would Cut Back Ed. Dept. Funding Threatens Financing
Of Teachers' Unions
By Lauren Camera

Despite a veto threat from President Barack Obama, Republicans in
both chambers of Congress are pushing through appropriations bills for
fiscal 2016 that adhere to congressionally mandated spending caps and
would cut billions of dollars from the
U.S. Department of Education and
eliminate a slew of federal education
programs.
The Appropriations Committee in
the House of Representatives passed
its funding bill on a party-line vote,
30-21, on June 24. The proposal
would provide $64.4 billion for the
Education Department, a $2.8 billion cut from fiscal 2015, and eliminate 20 programs, including School
Improvement Grants, the Preschool
Development Grant, and Investing in
Innovation.
A day later on the other side of the
Capitol, the Appropriations Committee in the Senate passed its spending
plan on a party-line vote, 16-14. The
proposal would provide $65.5 billion for the Education Department,
a $1.7 billion cut, and eliminate 10
programs, including Investing in Innovation and Preschool Development
Grants-both major Obama administration initiatives-and Striving
Readers, a literacy program.
Both bills would provide increases
for a handful of programs, including
bumps of more than $100 million
each for the Individuals with Disabil-

ities Education Act and Head Start.
The Senate bill would also include a
$150 million increase for Title I grants
for low-income students, and both
bills would provide small increases for
grants to support the creation of new
charter schools.

Democrats Rebuffed
During the markup process, Democrats' pitches to increase or restore
funding were outright rejected,
though in the House, Rep. Tom Cole,
R-Okla., the appropriations-subcommittee chairman, said he was interested in working with Democrats to
find some way to increase funding for
early-childhood education.
"If we had a larger allocation, this
is probably the number-one place
I would turn to put additional dollars," Rep. Cole said. "I will continue
to work with [Democrats] to see what
we can do in this area. I do think this
is money well spent, and it's money
that saves money down the line."
It's been more than six years since
both the House and Senate appropriations committees cleared their
appropriations bills, which also include funding for the departments
of Health and Human Services and
Labor. More than anything, lawmakers focused on the need for a budget
deal that relieves them of their selfimposed across-the-board spending
caps known as the sequester.
"These caps were tight," conceded

Fresh Entrants
2016 In GOP's Quest
For White House

TION
ELEC

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who officially
entered the 2016 presidential race June 15, has
perhaps the most extensive record on education
among all the Republican
presidential hopefuls.
Mr. Bush, who served two
terms as Florida's governor
before leaving office in 2007,
has since left his role as head
of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, the national K-12 policy group he
founded. He had used the foundation to lobby
other states to adopt policies similar to those he
championed when he was governor regarding
school choice and literacy.
As governor, Mr. Bush successfully pushed his
state to adopt a plan holding schools accountable using A-F letter grades. Under him, the
state also instituted a voucher program, later
struck down by the state Supreme Court. And
in 2001, he signed into law a tax-credit scholarship program used by about 70,000 low-income
students in the most recent school year.
In 1999, Florida also allowed alternative certification for teachers. And in 2003, the state
ended social promotion for 3rd graders who
could not demonstrate literacy.
More recently, although many other gop pres-

Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., the chairman
of the Appropriations Committee. "I
point out that that was required by
the law, the Budget Control Act, and
until we change that act, we have to
live with what the law is."
For the last two years, those caps
have been avoided thanks to a budget
deal brokered by Sen. Patty Murray,
D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.,
back in 2013. But that deal expires
at the end of this fiscal year, Sept. 30.
"First and foremost, [the Senate appropriations bill] doubles down on the
automatic budget cuts that Democrats
and Republicans agree are terrible
policy and should have never become
law," Sen. Murray said. "That deal
expires this year, and until we reach
another one, each of these bills ... has
no chance of becoming law."
President Obama has vowed to
veto any spending bill that locks in
sequester-level funding, meaning
that the current appropriations bills
moving through both chambers likely
won't see the light of day. And while
lawmakers on both sides of the aisle
recognize that the end of the fiscal
year is just a few months away, they
have yet to come up with a Plan B.
"We could make the choice today
to work together on a deal to remove
the sequester and fund the government," said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.,
the ranking member of the House
Appropriations Committee. "I do hope
we can come together soon to find a
solution to mindless austerity caps."

idential hopefuls have come out against the
Common Core State Standards, Mr. Bush has
vigorously defended them.
-ANDREW UJIFUSA

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
In his newly launched bid for the 2016
Republican presidential nomination, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal brings a K-12 record
heavy on positions involving
the common standards and
school choice.
In 2012, for example, he approved a statewide expansion
of vouchers to cover a greater
range of students based
on their household income
and the rating of the public
schools they attended.
On the issue of the common core, Gov. Jindal
was initially a supporter but now opposes the
standards, as well as the aligned tests from
the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness
for College and Careers. He has made
numerous, albeit unsuccessful, attempts in
state court to ditch the standards and parcc.
He still has an anti-common-core lawsuit
against the federal government moving ahead
-A.U.
in federal court.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who announced his candidacy for the presidency on
June 30, has a complex record on education
policy that has attracted fierce supporters and
detractors.
The Republican, who took office in 2010, once
backed the common core, but officially repu-

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

istrative cost of bargaining policies
that benefit all teachers, such as salary increases.
The Supreme Court's decision
to take up the case was not a
surprise.
The precedent permitting publicsector unions to collect fair-share
fees, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, narrowly dodged a bullet
last year when the court stopped
short of invalidating it in its ruling
in Harris v. Quinn.

A Ground-Shifting Case
In that 5-4 decision, the court
held that unions couldn't compel
payment of the fees from Medicaid
home-healthcare workers because
they were not truly public employees, and therefore not covered
under Abood. But writing for the
majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito
Jr. devoted page after page to undermining Abood, calling it "an
anomaly" that doesn't fit well with
First Amendment rights. In effect,
the ruling invited a more focused
challenge to the precedent.
Enter Friedrichs, which takes aim
at the California chapter of the National Education Association and
several local affiliates.

diated the standards in May. He has said the
state would begin work on reviewing and improving them.
His efforts to revamp the Newark district have
been controversial. His 2011
pick as superintendent of
the state-run district, Cami
Anderson, recently said she
would step down, and Gov.
Christie has said the state
would return Newark schools
to local control.
Gov. Christie also altered
the state's laws governing teacher tenure in
2012, making tenure harder to obtain. He
earned a reputation early on as a K-12 budgetcutter, but in his 2013 re-election campaign, he
said the state was providing a record level of
school funding. The fiscal 2016 budget he just
signed, however, has reignited claims that he's
slashed support for public education.
-A.U.

Real Estate Developer Donald Trump
Real estate developer Donald Trump,
who announced his intention to join the 2016
gop presidential-primary
field June 16, has made
clear where he differs from
at least one rival on the
hot-button issues of the common core.
"The last thing we need is
another Bush," Mr. Trump
said of fellow candidate former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at the Iowa Freedom Summit this year, according to a C-SPAN
transcript. "He's totally in favor of common
core."
-ALYSON KLEIN

The plaintiffs' argument in Friedrichs, in essence, contends that the
very act of collective bargaining is
political because the teachers' unions
sometimes take positions-on seniority or evaluation, for example-that
nonmembers may not support.
The teachers bringing the case
also object to the annual procedure
for opting out of union membership.
The nonunion teachers lost in a
federal district court, and the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled last
year that they could only win if
Abood were overruled by the Supreme Court.
The legal theory behind the suit,
Mr. Adler said, represents a profound re-envisioning of the balance
between individual and collective
rights to political assembly that
have guided about 50 years of employment and labor law.
"There has been a gradual evolution of a constitutional doctrine
holding that being forced to pay
dues violates an individual's right
to associate politically-and coerces
one to be aligned with union policies
and objectives in a way that violates
First Amendment rights," he said.

Unions Embattled
According to its most recent federal labor filings, the
3 million-member nea has some
90,000 additional nonmember
fee-payers. The American Federation
of Teachers, which represents 1.6 million members, did not give a figure
for nonmembers who pay fees.
The loss of fair-share fees would
sting, but a bigger blow could be
the potential departures of members who joined their local unions
only because of the typically slim
difference in cost between the fairshare fee and full membership. If
the fair-share fee is eliminated,
many such teachers may choose to
boost their take-home pay by dropping their memberships.
Meanwhile, the case comes on
the heels of several years of political attacks on unions. The nea saw
thousands of member losses after
the 2010 election tilted statehouses
rightward and several states prohibited or restrict collective bargaining.
Critics of the fees have also doubled down. In March, Michigan
became the 25th state to pass a
right-to-work law prohibiting the
collection of fair-share fees.
"We hope the high court will follow
through on last year's Harris decision
and ensure that no public employee
will ever again be forced to pay union
dues to get or keep a job," said the
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation in a statement.
Unions generally see the attack
on fair-share fees as another attempt to weaken public-sector
unions. They note that the push
to overturn Abood and to craft
right-to-work legislation has been

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