By Maggie Lee / Staff

In a major policy speech last week, outgoing Gov. Sonny Perdue touted tying teacher pay to merit, although the budget he submitted just ahead of a three-day weekend is rather grim for educators. Sidestepping the hot-button issue of ethics, he also suggested a state health care provision that even President Obama might applaud. Perdue also hinted that the legislature would receive a treaty in the tri-state water wars before the end of the calendar year (and mentioned Sandy Springs as a water-management model).

AND THE SURVEY SAYS …

Teacher pay must be tied to student performance because that’s what teachers want and what best serves students, Perdue declared at the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s annual Eggs and Issues breakfast at the Georgia World Congress Center.

“Our current system only incentivizes the academic degree, not the degree to which students learn,” Perdue said. Of about 20,000 teachers who answered an e-survey conducted by Perdue’s office, 80 percent agreed that teachers “should be evaluated on both observation of planning and instruction and the degree to which they help students grow academically.”

However, the Georgia Association of Educators is not ready either to support or reject the governor’s plan, according to its president, Jeff Hubbard. First, there are 120,000 Georgia certified teachers, according to the organization’s count, making Perdue’s results dubious in Hubbard’s opinion.

Besides that, he said, he has yet to see how Perdue proposes to quantify student achievement and thus can’t say whether the method is field-tested or how it might grow once students hit achievement goals.

“It would be better to redo the survey after teachers have seen the nuts and bolts of the proposition,” Hubbard said.

Score-based incentives have in the past seemed to encourage cheating. Last year, two DeKalb County school administrators were suspended and others were investigated after students’ test answers were changed in order to meet federal standards.

Perdue said his bill would create a statewide evaluation standard for teachers, but only half of a teacher’s overall rating would be tied to student performance.  New-hire teachers would join the scheme; others could opt in. Because the program would grow slowly, Perdue insisted, funding it would not be a problem.

He suggested that teachers should be eligible for pay comparable to that of state champion football coaches.

Perdue recommends a $285 million budget increase for K-12 education in 2011;  federal funds will enable the whole appropriation to reach $9.74 billion.   However, to keep the money flowing to classrooms, teachers and staff may have to pay more for health care and, in 2010, take three more unpaid furlough days.

The charter school appropriation, though tiny overall, would grow by 50 percent, to $15 million. Perdue also proposes to save $7 million by eliminating pay raises for teachers who earn a National Board Certification.

INTERSTATE INSURANCE

As for health care, “we can do more, particularly in the individual market, to encourage those that are uninsured to find a plan that works for them,” Perdue said.

Ironically, his plan does something that Obama also wants to do: expand the private insurance market.

“I will introduce legislation this year that will allow individuals to buy health plans that have been approved for sale in other states,” Perdue announced. “This restriction on interstate commerce has never made sense.”

However, he denounced the prospect of federal law requiring people to buy health insurance, which drew applause from the hundreds of businesspeople in his audience.

And Perdue called finding water for Atlanta a “critical” issue.

Under a ruling by a U.S. District Court last year, the metro area must stop using Lake Lanier’s water by 2012 because the lake was not created for that purpose. Since the ruling, Perdue and his counterparts in Alabama and Florida have been working on a water-sharing deal that they plan to present to their legislatures by the end of the calendar year.

DRINK TO SANDY SPRINGS

Using less water will be part of the plan “to show our neighbors that we are serious about being responsible stewards of our resources,” Perdue said.

“We’ll do it through a light mandate and a strong incentive program with our water utilities,” he said after the major speech. “Sandy Springs is a great example of using incentives in the right way.”

Sandy Springs refunds up to 100 percent of building permit fees for commercial and residential builders who choose such water-conservation practices as using low-flow plumbing fixtures, limiting impervious surfaces, and reusing gray water. The rebates, adopted in June 2009, grow as builders choose more measures.

The overall plan Perdue endorses, drawn up by his Water Contingency Task Force, puts sharing with Alabama and Florida first, and then conservation combined with reservoirs, arguing they’re in the long run cheaper than water reuse. Lieutenant Gov. Casey Cagle, during his remarks at the breakfast, emphasized the need for “expanding the system of reservoirs as well as planning for regional reservoirs.”

None of the reservoirs in the WCTF plan is in north Fulton County.

Perdue emphasized one item’s budget increase this year: the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. That department provides, among other services, care for Georgians who have mental development disabilities. It has been under a court order since 2007 to improve conditions in client housing. In 2001, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed evidence of abysmal conditions and some 163 deaths under questionable circumstances in state group homes in the previous five years.

Perdue’s budget suggests a boost to seven state hospitals of some $20 million; however the hospitals had asked for more than twice that, which would have given them a budget of $196 million.