Senators are now questioning Luna aide Jason Hancock about details of some of the wording in the lengthy school-reform bills, including a line that appears to suggest a school district could give a teacher just one day to accept and sign a contract before declaring that teacher's job vacant. Hancock said the idea is to give districts more flexibility; current law requires at least 10 days. Another clause of SB 1068 bans paying a teacher if they're not certified and prevents a teacher thus denied pay from ever recovering the lost pay, regardless of other laws. Hancock said it's unlikely such a situation would come up, or that a district would make an error on the certification issue. Those clauses are on page 3 of the 25-page bill.

Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d'Alene, asked what types of things local school boards might use as "objective measures of growth in student achievement," which the bill, on page 4, says must make up 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation. Hancock referred to a list in the other bill, SB 1069, including things like student test scores, graduation or dropout rates, participation in extracurricular activities or  how many students go on to post-secondary education or military service.

After Sen. Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, questioned whether there are sufficient protections in the bill against a teacher's evaluation being influenced by things like religious bias, Hancock said, "Nothing about a teacher's pay is linked to their performance evaluation in this bill, nothing." Goedde noted, "We've been on two pages now for about 40 minutes."

Discussing provisions on page 5 of the bill regarding appeals of a decision to fire or suspend a teacher, Sen. Edgar Malepeai, D-Pocatello, asked, "Are we telling the courts what they can and can't do?" Hancock replied, "Yes, I think that's what this language does." Malepeai said, "It seems to me that's a violation of separation of powers."

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