Pointed criticism from some members of her own party has forced the sponsor of a teacher tenure bill to abort an effort to get the senate to pass it. 

Senator Jane Cunningham wants to kill teacher tenure. She says it lets too many poor or mediocre teachers keep their jobs.  The best she could do this year was get a proposal extending the time to quality for tenure from five years to ten. 

But when she tried to gain final senate passage she ran into Senator John Lamping, who says there are more important education bills that should be considered first–so he would vote no.  then Senator Kevin Engler, who wants to kill tenure too, but not until teachers are protected from arbitrary actions by school board members, indicated he wouldn’t support the bill. .

And Springfield Senator Bob Dixon strongly criticized Cunningham for running the bill through her own general laws committee instead of it going to the education committee…”To try to bypass a committee that deals specifically with educations when we’re talking about an education bill…I just think that is …not unlike the substance that is referenced in the book of Nehemiah that was placed in a special part of the city after it is expelled from the back end of a camel,” he said. 

He also alluded to the proposal as “half-baked” before Cunningham interrupted him to withdraw the bill from consideration.  She could still try to get it passed, but she’s running out time and, perhaps, support.

 

Here’s the entire debate—with the addition of “the rest of the story” about the cranberry bread:

 AUDIO: The debate 17:00