Vic Smith provides more details on why the General Assembly should reject SB 305.
1. Public schools would lose an average of $7000 per ESA student.
2. More than 30,000 homeschool parents would get an ESA totalling more than $250 million.
3. Taxpayers who are paying the bills would have no say in what was taught. No elected school board would be there for fiscal and educational oversight.
4. In an era when extremist ideology from the left and from the right is a major concern, there is no protection in SB305 from funding home schools run by extremist parents.
5. Parents getting the ESAs are not required to meet any standards except to take the ILEARN test, however, there are no consequences for their students who fail ILEARN.
Write or call members of the education committee before Wednesday, January 25. Email addresses are included, below.
For more details on these reasons and links to the members of the education committee, continue reading Vic's Statehouse Notes #369, below.
Vic Smith writes the Statehouse Notes for the Indiana Coalition for Public Education. Statehouse Notes are an important source of information about education-related bills in the Indiana General Assembly. Subscribe to the Statehouse Notes and become a member of ICPE. You can join by clicking HERE.
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Vic's Statehouse Notes
By Dr. Vic Smith
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Dear Friends,
We have until next Wednesday, January
25, to convince Senate Education Committee members that Senate Bill 305
would fatally wound public education.
Will you help defend public education?
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The Threat to the Existence of our Community Public Schools
Fifty years ago the economist Milton
Friedman proposed a plan to end government involvement in public
schools. His followers have brought his plans to life one step at a
time. Senate Bill 305 would give the parent of every student an
Educational Savings Account via an online application to the Indiana
Treasurer. The ESA (Education Scholarship Account) would be equal to
100% of the money now given to the public school district, an increase
from the current 90%.
Public schools would lose an average of $7,000 per ESA student.
The parent would have full control of
approximately $7,000 to direct to private providers of their choice,
providers approved by the Indiana Treasurer.
It’s a formula that would strangle the
funding for our public schools in just a few years, as more and more
home school parents and independent micro school parents take the
diverted money.
This is a watershed
bill for public education. This is a test of whether public schools will
survive and thrive in Indiana or instead will enter a death spiral.
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No one mentioned Milton Friedman in Wednesday's hearing on Senate bill 305. Fourteen testified against the bill and thirteen testified for
the bill. The charge that the bill would bankrupt our budget when some
37,000 home school parents get an ESA at a total cost of $259 million
was deflected by the bill sponsor, Senator Buchanan. He said the costs
would be capped by the Appropriations Committee in the budget, as they
are capped now at $10 million for the special education ESA’s. He
repeated two different times that he would be happy with a new $10
million cap for SB 305.
When pressed on who would get the
ESA’s if the budget is capped, he said it would be decided by “first
come, first serve.” This obviously implies that future budgets will have
higher and higher caps.
Several of those testifying for the
bill were parents currently getting an ESA for their special education
student. They clearly don’t realize that if the bill passes, opening the
gates to all students on a “first come, first serve” basis, some of
them will lose their current ESA if they are not quick to apply. The
bill does not set aside dollars to fund previous ESA parents, and they
could lose out.
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The Threat to our Democracy
Taxpayers who are paying the bill
would have no say in what is taught in the home schools or micro schools
of ESA students. The new required civics course would be ignored.
When the debate about vouchers for private
and religious school tuition heated up in 2011, Senator Brent Steele
sent a letter to every legislator alerting them to his deep concerns
that school tuition money might go to private schools teaching
extremism. He authored an amendment that to apply for tuition vouchers,
schools must agree under penalty of perjury to follow the same civic
education statutes supporting democracy that public schools are required
to follow. Those provisions in the voucher law still stand today, but they are not included in the ESA bill, SB-305.
In an era when extremist ideology from
the left and from the right is a major concern, there is no protection
in this ESA plan from funding home schools run by extremist parents
using your tax dollars. The opening to discrimination and to teaching
prejudice is clear. This is a real threat to our democracy.
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The End of Standards in Indiana
Parents getting an ESA are not
required to meet any standards except to take the ILEARN test. There are
no consequence for failing the ILEARN.
There is no requirement to study specific
subjects. All a parent needs to do to get the money that normally goes
to schools is to fill out a simple online application saying they will
spend “part of the money” so their student studies “reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies or science.” Note the “or” in that sentence. No art, no music, no foreign language will be required.
After two decades of exhaustive work,
the high standards Indiana has adopted for its students will be
gone. Businesses thinking about moving to Indiana will not be impressed
that we are allowing state standards to be ignored.
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The vote will be during the Senate Education Committee meeting Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at 1:30 p.m.
Senate
Education Committee members need to hear from hundreds of public school
advocates that Senate Bill 305 is wrong! Giving education money
directly to unaccountable parents instead of to public schools run by
public school boards is wrong for Indiana!
It
would undermine all that has been done to build up our public schools
over the last 170 years as the centers of our communities and the
cornerstone of our democracy.
You can copy these e-mail addresses and paste them into the "TO" field of your email:
Write or call committee members before Wednesday, January 25!
Thank you for your active support of public education in Indiana!
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Vic’s
Statehouse Notes and ICPE received one of three Excellence in Media
Awards presented by Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, an
organization of over 85,000 women educators in seventeen countries. The
award was presented on July 30, 2014 during the Delta Kappa Gamma
International Convention held in Indianapolis. Thank you Delta Kappa
Gamma!
ICPE has worked since 2011 to promote public education in the Statehouse and oppose the privatization of schools. We
need your membership to help support ICPE lobbying efforts. We need all
ICPE members to renew their membership if you have not done so.
Our
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Click the button below to visit ICPE’s website at www.indianacoalitionforpubliced.org for membership and renewal information and for full information on ICPE efforts on behalf of public education. Thanks!
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Vic Smith is a
lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969, serving as a social studies
teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation
consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies
supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association
staff member, and adjunct university professor.
Vic received a
Distinguished Alumni Award from the IU School of Education, he was named
to the Teacher Education Hall of Fame by the Association for Teacher
Education and received the 2018 Friend of Education Award from the
Indiana State Teachers Association. | |
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