Legislation

The latest attempt by PA Republicans to pass an education savings account/voucher bill (Senate Bill 2) got a major boost this week when an anti-voucher senator on the Senate Education Committee left the committee and was replaced by an SB 2  sponsor. Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie, who voted NO on the ESA/DeVos voucher bill in an unrecorded, tie committee vote, resigned as a member of the Senate Education Committee and is being replaced by Sen. Rich Alloway, R-Franklin, SB 2's sponsor. 

Thanks to the advocacy by AFT Pennsylvania members and the entire labor movement in Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Dec. 12,  the House defeated Senate Bill 166, an anti-union bill that would have prohibited public employers from negotiating to deduct voluntary PAC contributions from public employees’ paychecks.

A new law in Pennsylvania makes significant changes to the way that teachers, school nurses, librarians and other professional education employees are laid off (furloughed), reinstated and realigned following layoffs. The Q&A provides information about the new language in the school code. Download the FAQ here.

Changes to Pennsylvania's charter reform bill are long overdue, but House Bill 97 misses the mark by a long shot. The House approved the bill, which AFT Pennsylvania opposes, and sent it to the Senate. 

AFT Pennsylvania opposes taxpayer-funded school vouchers, education scholarship tax credits (Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs), which are back-door vouchers that use tax breaks to subsidize private and parochial schools. Vouchers represent a false hope for a few children, while most vouchers/scholarships are used by students already attending private schools. Vouchers do not deliver better outcomes for students and leave fewer resources for public school programs that are proven to work.

AFT Pennsylvania's Executive Council has approved a resolution opposing legislative efforts to eliminate school property taxes across the commonwealth. The resolution was approved unanimously by the Executive Council March 10. The property tax elimination bill has not been introduced yet.

PA senators are considering a bill that removes mandatory paid sick, bereavement and sabbatical leaves from the school code, leaving them subject to collective bargaining in every school district.

The Pennsylvania Senate passed a so-called "paycheck protection" bill that redefines normal union activities such as legislative advocacy and non-partisan voter registration drives as "political" and then bar unions from using automatic payroll deductions to fund those activities. 

AFTPA is monitoring mandate relief legislation (House Bill 135), which would reinstate a Mandate Relief Program from 2000-2010 and does not include the harsh, anti-union features of similar bills proposed in the previous legislative session.