Weekend, overnight exploits by purchased ideologues and rank amateurs in the Kansas State legislature stripped KS public school teachers of due process rights. This will require all teachers to renegotiate their contracts without any union or other support and make them subject to termination if they don’t. Or if administrators randomly feel like it, or are pressured to do so by rank amateurs, apparently.

Local papers talked about it airily in distant terms, couching the breaking of thousands of teacher contracts in dismissive, second-hand terms. The Kansas City Star characterizes it as a solution to long intractable problems but still gives some substance of this evisceration, just farther down the column.

More substance of the bill being sent to Governor’s desk came from Topeka Capitol Journal on Sunday. This article has Tim Carpenter managing to point out that the state supreme court had showed that the state legislature had failed to provide enough school funds to areas with a lower taxbase. So this bill is how the legislature responded.

A rallying cry in the chamber apparently went up by the bill’s proponents of ‘What was so bad about state education before ‘Brown v Board of Education?’ as it was prepared for vote. This bill will take the state’s education system to a point prior to 1957 when teachers did not have tenure rights.
Another local article on weekend actions make it seem like a pleasant walk down some cheery crime-free suburban lane. Even acting like this is ‘democracy in action’, without getting into the demoralizing substance of the bill.

But hundreds of KNEA members showed up to protest the sweeping destruction of cherished long-held rights deemed as ‘safety’ and ‘protection’ of actual teachers. They stayed thru Sunday.

An Helpful timeline of this weekend’s surprise attack was posted here as actions happened.

If you want a closer look of actions concerning this by people affected, the hashtag #ksleg has been busy this weekend.

There have been irregularities in this weekend’s process that some opposed to the bill have said should be looked at by the courts.

Governor Sam Brownback expects to sign the bill, since he apparently got what he wanted.