Education groups and lawmakers reach agreement on Facebook law

JEFFERSON CITY, MO (MISSOURI DIGITAL NEWS) - Missouri lawmakers have compromised with education groups on language in the highly debated Facebook bill.

The Senate Education Committee voted in favor of revisions to the social networking law.

This unanimous approval came after the Missouri State Teachers Association signed on to the approach.

The MSTA previously contested the law restricting all teacher-student communication on social networking sites, like Facebook.

The bill's sponsor, St. Louis County Republican Senator Jane Cunningham, says she has worked with education groups to clarify the language of the bill.

"We are absolutely giving the local district the responsibility to develop their own policy at their local level," Cunningham said.

The bill will go before the full Senate in the 2012 legislative session.

Mariel Seidman-Gati, Missouri Digital News

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First health insurance exchange hearing held in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCUR) - A Missouri Senate committee tasked with drafting recommendations for a state health exchange held the first of at least three statewide hearings in Kansas City on Tuesday.

Exchanges are new organizations under the federal health law, intended to provide a more organized and competitive market for buying health insurance.

But yesterday’s hearing wrestled with the very notion of developing one in Missouri.

The eight-member committee focused the majority of the nearly four and a half hour, packed hearing, on asking the state’s Insurance Director and Attorney General about the legalities of an exchange, what kind of role the federal government would have in one, and how an exchange would actually work.

Senate committee member Jane Cunningham worried that creating an exchange would weaken Missouri’s and other state’s legal challenges to the federal health law, and its requirement that people buy health insurance. But Attorney General Chris Koster said, "I don’t think that however the legislature decides to move will affect the outcome of the case."

Koster also said if an exchange does not require people to buy coverage in it, then it doesn’t appear to violate proposition C – that’s the legislation that prohibits insurance mandates in the state. At least two others hearings are scheduled next month for Columbia and Jefferson City.

Elana Gordon, KCUR

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Mo. Senate considers eliminating teacher tenure

JEFFERSON CITY, MO (MISSOURI DIGITAL NEWS) - The elimination of teacher tenure is a possibility with its inclusion in another bill heard by a Missouri Senate Committee.

Another bill eliminating teacher tenure was debated as a solution to bring up Missouri's K-12 test scores.

St. Louis County Represenative Jane Cunningham is the sponsor of this bill and says teacher tenure along with teacher evaluations and performance based pay are all possible solutions to better teaching methods.

However, Mike Wood of the Missouri State Teacher Association says performance based pay is ridiculous.

"To put teachers across the hallway in competition with each other for increases of salary at their expense just doesn't lend itself to being conducive in a learning environment," Wood said.

On the other hand, Cunningham says she has more good faith in teachers.

"What a deregatory statement to a professional," Cunningham countered. "To say a difference in pay would make them so they are so jealous they can't work together for the betterment of a child. I'm embarrassed by a statement like that."

The committee took no vote on the bill, with just five weeks left.

Sherman Fabes, Missouri Digital News

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