INDIANAPOLIS — About 15,000 educators from more than 100 Indiana school districts took to the streets Tuesday in downtown Indianapolis, circling the Statehouse and demanding higher wages and lenience on new standardized test scores.
Donned in red — fitting, as the rally was dubbed “Red for Ed Action Day” — educators used their teacher voices, at one point chanting, “We will vote,” an apparent warning to lawmakers inside the Statehouse.
The organized rally, led by the Indiana State Teachers Association, happened on a day legislators were expected to gather for organization meetings ahead of their 2020 session.
Among the crowd were hundreds of Johnson County educators.
Edinburgh, Clark-Pleasant, Franklin and Center Grove schools canceled classes Tuesday after nearly 400 local educators called off work. Even more had the opportunity to join the protests with no obligation to classrooms full of students.
Those who couldn’t fit in the crowd, which spilled onto the sidewalks around the Statehouse lawn, found themselves watching from the tops of buildings across the street. The participating educators had their reasons for attending the largest Indiana teacher protest of the century, but almost all those reasons had to do with a perceived disconnect between Indiana lawmakers and the thousands of schools the state funds.
“Standardized testing and unfunded mandates; we have a ton of them,” said Dawn Phelps, a Franklin Community Middle School special education teacher. “The state doesn’t fund the dyslexia mandate. In kindergarten through third grade, all students must be tested, but there is no money and we have to hire staff members to test them.”
In May, voters passed a Franklin Community Schools referendum, which raised property taxes 23 cents on every $100 of assessed value, pulling in $3.5 million per year for eight years starting in 2020. That extra money will go toward mental health services and teacher salary increases.
But Franklin teachers still want additional funding from the state so school officials don’t have to go to the community for more money once those eight years are up, Phelps said.
Along with a goal of increasing the average teacher salary to $60,000 from $52,000, the Indiana State Teachers Association, the state’s teachers union, also wants school districts to not be held accountable for the results of the ILEARN exam. The standardized test debuted this year and stumped students across the state.
The third and final goal of the march was for lawmakers to put an end to the requirement that teachers earn credits through corporate externships to renew their licenses.
An increase in state funding is especially important for Center Grove Community Schools, which was unable to get its proposed referendum passed by voters earlier this month, Center Grove High School English teacher Casey Tedrow said.
“I’m disappointed the community didn’t pass the referendum, and I think we definitely need to secure funding since the community didn’t,” Tedrow said.
Additional funding is needed for mental health services with more and more students struggling in that area, said Molly Wirt, a fourth-grade teacher at Pleasant Crossing Elementary School.
“I’ve been teaching about 10 years, and I felt funding and things starting to go downhill,” Wirt said. “It’s getting worse and worse. More kids come in with mental health issues. We are trying to educate students in an archaic system. We’re not able to meet the needs we’re seeing in the classroom.”
To meet those needs, more state funding is needed so schools can hire more teachers and classroom aids, Wirt said.
Speaking from the top of the Statehouse steps to a sea of red, Indiana State Teachers Association President Keith Gambill told the crowd of educators gathered that Indiana is in last place of any state and the District of Columbia for teacher pay increases.
“The children of Indiana are counting on us and we will not let them down,” Gambill said. “We will work with anyone who will do what is right for kids, teachers and the public school system. We are focused, driven and determined to make a lasting change for students.”
