<em>This editorial was originally published March 26 in the (Terre Haute) Tribune-Star.</em>
Ten days from now, the Vigo County School Corp. will begin offering after-school tutoring to help kids overcome a loss of learning during the disruptive pandemic.
The tutoring in language arts and math stands as one of several strategies the school district will use to address the learning losses for local elementary, middle and high school students. The VCSC also plans to offer in-person summer school for middle and high school students, and a jumpstart program for elementary kids just before next school year begins.
Notably, the after-school program and other learning-loss recovery programs to follow in Vigo County are being funded through federal CARES Act. The amount of funding the county will receive through that second round of COVID-19 will be less than the initial estimates of $13.5 million, but it will be substantial. The VCSC has until September 2023 to spend the funds.
“We have an opportunity to do some really innovative, major things,” said Bill Riley, the VCSC director of communications.
Vigo schools and others throughout Indiana and the country will receive an additional infusion of funding through the American Rescue Plan, approved early this month by Congress.
It is refreshing to see funding provided to public schools to meet their needs, especially after such a grueling year of teachers, students and families toggling between in-person classes and remote learning; juggled schedules; postponed commencements; contact tracing; and quarantines.
Attitudes toward the needs of Hoosier public schools are quite different among the leaders of the ruling party of the Indiana General Assembly. At a time when public schools desperately need financial and moral support, with a shortage of teachers being exacerbated by the hardships of the pandemic, Republican legislators are pushing forward with plans that brush aside those predicaments.
There is no surprise that school boards, school administrators, teachers and support staffers feel disregarded by their elected representatives.
Those legislative leaders’ policy decisions reflect a willingness to carry out national school reformists’ desires, rather than those of everyday Hoosiers who want their community schools to thrive. Those schools educate more than 90% of Indiana children. Public schools are held to a gamut of accountability measures, from the State Board of Accounts to the U.S. Department of Education and their local school boards, and must accept all kids, as the Indiana Constitution stipulates.
Not so with private and charter schools.
Yet, the Republican leadership in the Indiana Legislature is forcing through legislation that directs a lopsided share of taxpayer funds into a vouchers and educational savings accounts for private- and charter-school educations. About 10% of Indiana kids attend private and charter schools.
Despite that, the legislation would divert $144 million of the total $378-million pie toward private education. That amounts to more than one-third of the total funding.
Never mind Gov. Eric Holcomb’s priority to make Indiana teacher salaries — which had the nation’s smallest growth in the first two decades of this century — competitive with other Midwestern states. A state commission recommended allotting an additional $600 million annually to do so.
Never mind that the results of the Legislature’s actions will dissuade more prospective teachers from entering the profession.
Never mind that a majority of Hoosiers favor state increases for teacher pay and taxpayer funds going to public schools rather than for private school vouchers, according to results of the 2020 and 2015 annual Hoosier Surveys by Ball State University’s Bowen Center for Public Affairs.
A marathon Indiana Senate School Funding Subcommittee hearing Thursday night provided the public a last chance to speak out in the General Assembly about the proposal. The session went on for six hours, but the bill is moving forward in the Legislature. It may underprioritize the needs of Indiana’s public school kids and their teachers, but never mind.
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