A bill substituting for House Bill 628, dealing primarily with eliminating teacher tenure, was expected to be voted on in the Missouri House of Representatives Wednesday morning, but has since been postponed.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Scott Dieckhaus, R-Washington.

“The bill doesn’t have support from the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee,” said Todd Fuller, Missouri State Teachers Association Spokesman. “So the sponsor of the bill, Representative Dieckhaus, is having trouble getting it out of committee.”

According to the Missouri School Boards’ Association’s website, the substitute bill would eliminate the original bill’s plan to rank teachers and pay them according to their rank in a tier system. Teacher tenure would still be eliminated, though.

Fuller said MSTA has had many of its members call their representatives about the bill who have told them they won’t vote on it. He said representatives on the education committee said they did not vote the bill out to the floor because they did not want to open up debate on a bill which is not written as well as it could be.

Fuller said MSTA feels they are creating legislation to do something that the legislature doesn’t need to do because tenure isn’t as strong in Missouri compared to other states.

Missouri School Boards’ Association Spokesman Brent Ghan said their group initially agreed with the original bill with a few reservations.

“The substitute that is now under consideration has for the most part taken out those considerations we were concerned about,” he said.

Ghan said the MSBA is in favor of replacing the tenure system with another system. He said the larger issue is that while there is a process in place to dismiss teachers with tenure, it is expensive and time consuming. Therefore school board administrators don’t want to tackle the issue of removing a teacher.

Fuller said it is not the school board association’s job to make the decision for school administrations and that some board members do not understand tenure.

“If they were to really understand how teacher tenure works, they probably would not be as concerned about it as they are,” he said.

Rep. Mary Still, D-Columbia, said strong administrations would do their job to fire bad teachers who do have tenure.

“I think we need to be supporting our teachers, not bashing our teachers,” Still said. “I’m tired of the Republican party doing nothing but trying to erode us in our public schools. The theory on tenure that it is impossible to fire a bad teacher is not true; a strong administration will do that.”

The substitute for House Bill 628 has not yet been posted online and is not currently on the House calendar according to their website.