AEA agenda not dead yet

Alabama legislators wanting to preserve positive changes in the two-year college system should remember the myth that a snake doesn’t die until the sun goes down.

The point of the saying is to be cautious.

Legislators had better be on guard until their presiding officers gavel the 2008 regular session to an end sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning.

The Alabama Education Association’s Executive Secretary Paul Hubbert is no snake but his political bite is deadly. He’s a formidable opponent who doesn’t give up easily.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Hubbert said Monday, however, that AEA is giving up on undoing legislation pertaining to the two-year schools and will concentrate on the budgets on the final day of the session.

Indeed, that sounds prudent, given the shortfall expected in both the Special Education Fund and General Fund and the certainty that Gov. Bob Riley would veto the school bills. But as long as either of the two remaining college bills have even a flicker of life, Mr. Hubbert won’t give up.

“They tried four different ways to stop our reforms and failed on all four,” Chancellor Bradley Byrne said this week.

Indeed, AEA seems stymied, even defeated, in its attempt to retain its power over double-dipping legislators and State School Board members.

One remaining bill would overturn a school board policy that prohibits two-year college employees from serving in the Legislature or statewide office after 2010. The other would have the Department of Public Safety do criminal background checks on junior college employees rather than using a private firm that the chancellor chose.

The two dead bills that AEA pushed would have created a new board to oversee the two-year colleges and would have given legislators oversight for all rules that the school board enacts in the future for the two-year schools.

The purpose of the four bills was to give politicians a greater hold on public education, and AEA more influence with legislators because of its ability to influence elections.

This Legislature doesn’t have an outstanding record but it can be remembered as the one that stood up to Mr. Hubbert and the teachers’ union for the good of public education.

Our advice to legislators is to keep their eyes on Mr. Hubbert until way after the sun sets Monday, and then celebrate.