Policy work is a team effort. It requires reading between the lines, listening with an open mind, and playing out a complex array of potential scenarios to ensure that the greater good has a chance of coming to fruition.
Senate Bill 5062 and House Bill 1128 have raised concerns for private schools with early learning programs, religious childcare providers and Montessori Programs, among others. People concerned about this legislation are not anti-union; they care deeply about the well-being of early learning teachers. Their concern is that the Workforce Board is controlled by the union, which will set payscales above those already required in State law without funding, establish mandatory training and decide who can offer that training, dictate union meeting attendance by all early learning educators, and have the authority to conduct investigations of early childhood programs.
This proposed legislation conflicts with independent schools’ ability to design early learning programs aligned with their mission and values. The bill mandates employers provide employee contact information to unions – an unprecedented and inappropriate intrusion into teachers’ right to privacy. Additionally, the standards appear to depend on accepting government funding, which raises significant concerns for independent schools. Private K12 schools with early learning programs provide an integrated, mission-based community that state licensors, state agencies, and local health officials already oversee.
WFIS leaders raised these concerns in meetings with legislators and consistently received assurance or understanding about why private schools should be left out of this legislation. We also heard concern that this bill risks preempting federal law by introducing state-level labor standards for private employers, opening the door to significant legal challenges.
WFIS has submitted a rewrite that “excludes those working in early learning programs operated by State-approved K12 private schools that do not take subsidies.” Of course, even with this exclusion, the bill’s passage into law would set an unfunded precedent for industry standards for all programs and would not protect non-school-based programs that oppose the bill.
