By Sheryl Swingley—
MUNCIE, IN—At the American Association of University Women Muncie Branch and League of Women Voters of Muncie-Delaware County’s annual joint meeting Saturday on the “State of Education in Indiana,” at least 63 attendees learned that Indiana House and Senate members have introduced a record 112 education bills – 67 in the House and 45 in the Senate.
The majority of bills are about K-12 education with about 15% to 20% of those bills dealing with issues in higher education. All of the bills currently are under consideration. Some have made it out of committee, which means they might be ready to be voted on or might be assigned to another committee.
One of the bills getting the most attention is House Bill 1136, said Joel Hand, an attorney for the Indiana Coalition for Public Education who was one of two speakers at the Saturday meeting.
The other speaker for the meeting was Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, president of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, who explained the history and roles of ICPE, which includes keeping well-funded public schools.
In a Jan. 7 article in the online publication Indiana Capital Chronicle, by Ball State University journalism graduate and reporter for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Casey Smith, she wrote:
The bill [HB1136] “seeks to go a step further, giving the state the authority to dissolve public school corporations and turn them into charters if more than 50% of students in a given district do not attend the traditional public schools in that area.
“A legislative fiscal analysis estimates the bill’s provisions could dissolve five school corporations and transition 68 schools to charters by 2029. The affected districts include Indianapolis Public Schools, Gary Community School Corporation, Union School Corporation, Tri-Township Consolidated School Corporation and Cannelton City Schools.
“Roughly a dozen other Hoosier districts are at or near the 50% threshold.
Charters are public schools, but they’re not run by school districts. Instead, they’re headed by nonprofit boards and are overseen by their independent authorizers.
“The state’s largest teachers union opposes the bill, which the group argues would ‘strip away’ locally elected school board governance, ‘replacing it with a state-appointed board and eroding the foundation of democracy in public education.’
L-R: Joel D. Hand, attorney and lobbyist for ICPE; and Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, president of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education were guest speakers at Saturday’s joint meeting of the Muncie Branch of the American Association of University Women and the League of Women Voters of Muncie-Delaware County.
Hand did note that HB1136 could have the potential to turn all public schools into charter schools, but added that such efforts go against Indiana’s Constitution, which says:
“Knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement; and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.”
“Without charge” and “equally open to all” are key phrases that support a mandate for Indiana to have a public education system, Hand said.
The direction Indiana is going by providing more financial support to religious, private, homeschoolers and charter schools means less money for public schools, which also might be required to share their facilities with charter schools and provide transportation for charter, private and religious schools if HB1501 passes.
In addition, it’s only public schools who are open to all students.
“Not a single charter [religious or private] school is open to all children,” Hand said.
Fuentes-Rohwer said, “While charter schools, which are considered public schools, are not allowed legally to discriminate as private and religious schools do, charter schools can put caps on enrollment or not offer services needed by a student, which usually stops enrollment. We also see evidence that after accepting a student, charter schools are not worried about saying your child is not a ‘good fit,’ especially under strict discipline policies, and you need to enroll him or her in another school.”
Hand asked, “What happens to the students leftover – who don’t fit in at a religious, private or charter school [if public schools don’t exist]?”
A catch-all 138-page bill in the Indiana House is HB1002. There are 70 items in the bill. The first would eliminate any qualifications for the Indiana secretary of education, who is appointed by the governor. Prior to the current Indiana secretary of education, it was an elected position.
Currently, the requirements for the Indiana secretary of education are that the person must be a resident of Indiana and have at least five years of teaching and/or administrative experience, which means the person would have at least a bachelor’s degree or higher in an area of education.
Under this bill, the Indiana secretary of education could live out of state and have no degrees.
Other significant parts of HB1002 relate to charter schools and would reduce reporting and operation requirements for these non-traditional public schools.
Senate Bill 146 deals with ensuring Indiana teachers a base salary of $45,000. The minimum pay for a teacher currently is $40,000. Social workers and psychologists were left out of the bill.
Also, having enough counselors in Indiana schools continues to be a problem but has not been addressed in this long session’s proposed legislation. Indiana has a 694 to 1 ratio of counselors to students. Nationally the ratio is 376 to 1. The American School Counselor Association recommends 250 students for one counselor.
Delaware County’s Sen. Scott Alexander, District 26, attended the AAUW / League education meeting, and Hand noted that Alexander has introduced SB359. Alexander’s bill would require the Department of Education in consultation with the Office of the Secretary of Family and Social Services to approve and make available student mental well-being resources for certain schools. The program would help students build resiliency and grit by learning to manage their thoughts, emotions and behaviors, so the students are ready to engage in, learn and create positive personal change and growth.
Muncie House Rep. Sue Errington, District 34, also attended the meeting. According to the League of Women Voters Bill Track 50 database, Errington is a sponsor of HB1440, which would require each school corporation to develop a plan to notify a child’s parents if the child is a victim of bullying or if the child expresses suicidal thoughts and to provide the child’s parents with certain suicide awareness materials and firearms storage materials.
Neither House Rep. Elizabeth Rowray, whose District 33 includes Yorktown and parts of Madison County, nor House Rep. J.D. Prescott, who is the House representative for parts of Delaware County, District 33, attended Saturday’s meeting, but each has one or two education bills they are sponsoring, according to the League of Women Voters Bill Track 50 database.
Rowray’s bill is HB1210, which establishes the behavioral health fund for the purpose of improving funding for individualized education programs that have a behavioral intervention plan component for certain schools. The bill also provides a procedure for a principal to place an aggressive student who has been removed from a class into the aggressive student’s original class, another appropriate class or placement or arrange for in-school suspension.
J.D. Prescott has two bills: HB1230 and HB1231. HB1230 deals with school board elections and provides that for school board offices, each candidate’s affiliation with a political party or status as an independent candidate must be stated on the ballot.
HB1231 requires each school corporation to place a durable poster or framed picture representing the text of the Ten Commandments in each school library and classroom.
An education bill in the Indiana Senate that also deals with religion is SB255. During the 2024 legislative session a bill was passed to allow K-12 students to miss up to 120 minutes per week for religious instruction away from school during school hours. This year, SB255 gives high school students approximately 250 minutes of school they can miss for religious education. In each case, the principal must allow the student to miss school no matter what instruction he or she might be missing in school.
Another bill Hand discussed was SB483, which would impose requirements on a parent who withdraws his or her chronically absent child from a public school in order to homeschool the child. There currently are no home-school regulations for parents choosing that option.
Most bills about education come out of the House’s and Senate’s Committee on Education. One bill that would affect public schools, as well as charter schools, however, is coming out of the Judiciary Committee. It’s SB289, and it is an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion law.
SB289 requires a school corporation, charter school, state agency, and political subdivision to post on its website certain training and curricular materials concerning nondiscrimination, diversity, equity, inclusion, race, ethnicity, sex and bias. A school corporation, charter school, state agency or political subdivision may not require or otherwise compel a student of the school corporation or charter school or an employee to affirm, adopt or adhere to certain beliefs or concepts.
Two bills that relate to universities are SB235 and HB1348.
SB235 is an anti-DEI law at the university level.
An attendee at the meeting asked about SB235. The description on the General Assembly website is vague. The title of the bill is “Prohibition of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Expenditures.” Access to a PDF of the bill is here. The online publication, Chalkbeat Indiana, also featured an article about the introduction of SB235.
The bill mandates the elimination of diversity requirements for hiring and training in the workplace or in admission to schools.
This past week the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported that there were four hours of debate on this bill, but it passed out of committee.
In the opening of the proposed law, it says, “As used in this chapter, ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or ‘DEI’ means any effort to do any of the following:
“(1) Manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of employees with reference to race, sex, color, or ethnicity, which does not include ensuring color blind and race neutral hiring in accordance with state and federal antidiscrimination laws.
“(2) Promote differential treatment of or provide special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, sex, color or ethnicity.”
The bill also lists 15 words that cannot be used in official positions of an agency. Hand reported no one is sure how these words can or cannot be used or how lessons public school teachers and university professors teach will be affected.
The words are bias, cultural appropriations, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, group marginalization, antiracism, systemic oppression, social justice, intersectionality, neopronouns, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender theory, racial or sexual privilege or any related formulation of the concepts of the words listed above.
“These are becoming known as the 15 words you cannot say in Indiana,” said Linda Hanson, president of the Indiana League of Women Voters and spokeswoman for the League of Women Voters of Muncie-Delaware County.
HB1348 tells universities that they must accept high school diplomas from people who run nonaccredited, nonpublic schools, and who report to the university that the student has met the requirements needed to complete high school. Universities also may not reject or otherwise treat a person differently based solely on the source of a diploma or credential.
More information about education bills before the Indiana General Assembly is available in an article Chalkbeat Indiana published Jan. 27.
All three of the groups involved in Saturday’s AAUW / League of Women Voters meeting are nonpartisan and nonprofit but do support and oppose issues. All three support legislation that ensures that Indiana lives up to the state’s constitutional obligations.
The mission of AAUW is to promote public education, equity for women and lifetime education and self-development, as well as social justice and change. For more information about AAUW, contact Sheryl Swingley, sswingley@bsu.edu, or check out the organization’s Facebook page.
The League of Women Voters encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues and influences public policy through education and advocacy. For more information about the League, go to its website.
Both AAUW and the League are organizations committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in principle and in practice. Both women and men are welcome to join their organizations.
The Indiana Coalition for Public Education is dedicated to preserving and improving public education for all Indiana students. ICPE believes that all Indiana children deserve an equitable, fully funded education system under the local control of parents and citizens. For more information about ICPE, go to its website.
