By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

TOPEKA, Kan. – Don’t expect any Wisconsin-style teacher protests in Kansas this year.

On Thursday, top Republican legislative leaders confirmed they won’t be muscling through a proposed law that limits the collective bargaining privileges of teacher unions, reports the Associated Press.

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Instead, lawmakers are giving members of the education establishment – the Kansas National Education Association, the Kansas Association of School Boards and the Kansas School Superintendents Association – “a chance to work out a compromise (bill),” the AP reports.

“We decided to give them a chance to actually work together,” said state Rep. Marvin Kleeb. “Hopefully, some good can come out of this.”

The original bill – which has been set aside – would have only permitted teacher unions to bargain over pay, holidays, sick and personal leave, and the hours teachers work outside their classes. Unions would not have been allowed to negotiate over teacher evaluations, layoff policies or other basic issues governing day-to-day school operations, the AP reports.

The 25,000-member Kansas National Education Association – the state’s largest teachers union – had viewed the original legislation as an act of “war,” the news group reports.

When Wisconsin lawmakers passed a law curtailing the collective bargaining privileges of teacher unions and other public employee unions in 2011, it triggered ugly labor protests at the state capitol and sparked a series of recall elections.

The KNEA’s “war” talk may have rattled Kansas Republicans a bit. Perhaps the lawmakers think they can avoid a Wisconsin-style showdown in Topeka by extending this olive branch to the teacher unions and their allies.

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The KNEA and the rest of the alphabet soup gang say they will produce a compromise bill by year’s end, so legislators can consider it next year, writes the AP.

While Kansas taxpayers will have to wait until December to see the “compromise” bill, it’s doubtful the education establishment’s offering will contain much in the way of genuine reform.

At that point Rep. Kleeb and his fellow Republicans will have to choose between going big on education reform – and risking a bruising political battle – or going soft and settling for meaningless changes that do nothing to lessen the destructive influence of organized labor in public schools.

Stay tuned.