Lobby Day 2008

Lobby Day 2008

In Search of Morgan

VEA celebrated Lobby Day 2008 on Monday February 4, 2008 and ten RCEA members attended the gala in Richmond. Actually, our troop (Bud McWhorter, Sarah Hollett, Tammy Wood, Sara Cann, Sheila Salisbury, Tim Summers, Linda Hogan, Thom Ryder, Sherry Foti, and Theresa McGuire) loaded up several cars and headed for Richmond on Sunday afternoon.

VEA staff, Rob Jones and Doris Boitnott briefed the standing room only statewide delegation at a 5:30 gathering and then pizza eating and Super Bowl viewing was the order of the day. In the briefing, however, Rob and Doris highlighted several points of emphasis for our discussions with legislators.

1. We are seeking money for the state share of a 5% salary raise for teachers.We are seeking the Rebasing of the SOQ’s. The SOQ’s are the regulations and funding components that reflect how the state will support public schools in Virginia. The SOQ are rebased each biennium, the rebasing takes into consideration changes to average daily membership, changes to the composite index as-well-as revisions to the lottery proceeds, sales tax distributions and other factors which help determine the recalculation of the state share of the SOQ.

2. We support legislation (SB48-Whipple) to provide a guaranteed 30-minute planning period for elementary school teachers. Currently 68 localities have it and many others are within 5 minutes of hiving it, but a bill would provide a mandate to convince the recalcitrant school divisions to provide this most basic professional courtesy.

3. We oppose tuition tax credits/vouchers.

4. We oppose any further erosion of VRS funding and support making VRS fully funded.

5. We oppose the Homestead Exemption as it will potentially starve local school divisions of local funding sources.

The RCEA delegation left the hotel bright and early on Monday morning heading to the General Assembly building in search of senators and delegates with whom to speak. Pat Wood, our Uniserv staff leader, had scheduled several appointments with local representatives for us. Our first stop was the office of Delegate Morgan Griffith. Delegate Griffith, Speaker of the House and representative from Salem, could not schedule an appointment with us due to his busy schedule. We were especially hopeful to check in with Delegate Griffith to see if he had made any headway on finding money for the state share of a 5% pay raise for teachers. Dauntless and full of hope, we waited outside his office door. Unfortunately, Delegate Griffith’s assistant informed us that Morgan had already headed off to committee meetings. She advised us to come back in an hour.

At 9am, we split our delegation. Half of us went to the education subcommittee meeting and watched Delegates William Fralin and Onzlee Ware work within this large committee. The other half went to visit with Senator Ralph Smith, the new state senator from Botetourt. Mr. Smith was gracious, although he seemed a bit quiet when we mentioned our opposition to tuition tax credits and vouchers. We were pleasantly surprised that he stated his opposition to the Homestead Exemption. He said he might be a lone voice voting in opposition, but he felt that it was a political ploy and would not serve localities very well.

The delegation visiting Senator Smith then crammed into elevators to drop by Morgan Griffith’s office again. This time we were met by a different office worker who was running copies. She kindly stopped her copying and came over to speak with us. She told us that the Delegate was extremely busy and hadn’t returned to the office yet. We wrote down our names and gave them to her and secretly vowed to return for our meeting with Morgan (we were beginning to feel like Michael Moore in the movie Roger and Me).

The next stop was a meeting with Delegate Onzlee Ware. Delegate Ware is a staunch friend of public school education. He opposes vouchers. He did seem confused about the elementary planning period bill. He said that others from our group suggested he be opposed to it. We asked him who those people were, and he couldn’t remember exactly. Then we clearly suggested that he SHOULD support planning time for elementary teachers. He told us that he now clearly understands our position. (Rob and Doris…I have more to tell you about this conversation sometime.)

After our meeting with Delegate Ware, we had just enough time to stop by Morgan Griffith’s office. In an exciting development, we noticed that his office door was ajar just a bit. We spoke with the lady with whom we first spoke early that morning. She didn’t seem to remember us. We explained again that we were teachers from Roanoke County here to see Delegate Griffith. There was a pause…then another lady came over from the copy machine to tell us that Morgan was due in House Conference Room #1 in the Capital Building at 11:30. She suggested that our best hope for contacting him was to stop him outside the conference room.

Our next appointment was with our good friend, Senator John Edwards of Roanoke. The Senator was detained in a meeting, but his most gracious assistant, Allison Byrd, spoke with us. Senator Edwards is a 100% friend of VEA. Near the end of our time, Senator Edwards arrived and spoke briefly with us.

Meanwhile, half of our delegation, led by Sarah Hollett, was visiting with William Fralin. Delegate Fralin had supported several bills that concerned us. One bill he sponsored sought to clarify the role of religious expressions in schools.

“Board of Education; regulations governing limited public forums and religious viewpoints in the public schools. Provides that a student's voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject must be not be discriminated against by local school divisions. Also, local school divisions must establish and implement a policy to ensure that the school division does not discriminate against a student's publicly stated voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint. Requires the Board of Education to promulgate and implement regulations regarding a limited public forum and voluntary student expression of religious viewpoints.”

I always get nervous when legislators start telling people to “promulgate and implement.” Delegate Fralin believes that this topic needs clarification and direction so that practice is in line with the religious liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. Sometimes, however, regulation can make something simple far too complex.

With 11:30 approaching, we hustled as best we could down the stairs and across the courtyard into the capital building. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get through security soon enough to make our way to the conference room to stop Delegate Griffith, and thus ended our quest to speak with Morgan.

As we were about to head for the final rally, Sarah Hollett was contacted by Dr. Lange. A bill that the school division had sponsored by Senator Smith had been moved up to Monday to be heard. Dr. Lange was stuck in Roanoke and asked Sarah to speak to it for her if needed. So Sarah was whisked away by Delegate Fralin and through security where she could be briefed on the bill.

“Reports of Class 1 misdemeanors to school authorities. Provides that local law-enforcement authorities shall report to the school division superintendent and to the principal or his designee all offenses, wherever committed, by students enrolled in the school if such offense would be a Class 1 misdemeanor if committed by an adult.”

After a brief meeting of our complete delegation minus Sarah in the old Senate chamber in the capital building, it was decided that we would head off to lunch and then home. Sarah told us later that she indeed was called upon to speak to the bill, but it was sent away for wordsmithing.

All told, we had a successful trip. Almost all of our area legislators were friendly and accessible. While we didn’t actually see Morgan Griffith, we hope that word gets back to him that we were looking.

After completing this report of our visit, I found a little article on the automatic General Assembly news search feature on this blog. The feed comes from The Richmond Times. The light-hearted piece chronicles a typical day with Morgan Griffith. Here is an interesting tid-bit from that piece:

After another such private meeting, he[Morgan] sneaks quietly back into his office.

Literally.

He was one of the first, if not the first, to have a door put in from his assistant's office to his own three or four years ago.

"I could never get out of my office without being stopped," he says, adding that his staff is instructed to draw visitors away from his door toward a corner area nearby.