Friday, October 14, 2022

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #367

Vic Smith, founder and board member of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education (ICPE), sent out this email about the upcoming midterm election.

Click the link at the end to read the entire post.
Vic’s Statehouse Notes #367

Dear Friends,

The threat to public education by Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) is clear. ESAs could be expanded to all students in the upcoming session of the Indiana General Assembly.

Before the election, ask every candidate for the Indiana House or the Indiana Senate: Will you oppose expanding Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) to all students?

If the candidates don’t answer with a clear “YES” to oppose ESAs, they should not get your vote.

Take action before the election on November 8.

This election could decide whether public education is further privatized and undermined in Indiana.

What are ESAs?

For those who would privatize our public schools, their goal is in sight.

Followers of Milton Friedman in Indiana have long had a plan to undercut our public schools and give tax dollars for K-12 education directly to parents rather than to our public schools. In Indiana, the mechanism is called Education Scholarship Accounts.

The 2021 General Assembly, despite our vigorous opposition, already approved ESAs for special education students by attaching the proposal to a popular budget. Now, a proposal to expand ESAs to all students, known as universal Education Scholarship Accounts, the holy grail of school privatizers, is getting behind-the-scenes support from key leaders in the General Assembly. That support appears to be enough to put ESAs in a glide-path to be included in the budget.

The only apparent way to stop ESAs is the election.

Read the rest at Vic’s Statehouse Notes #367

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Thursday, October 6, 2022

President's Letter - October 2022

Phyllis Davis, President 260-403-3550

Dear Allen County Retired Educators,

Our second of four 2022-2023 annual meetings will be held on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2022 at Coyote Creek Golf Club, 4935 Hillegas Rd, Ft. Wayne 46818. We will begin our luncheon at 11:00 a.m. Please arrive by 10:30 – 10:45 a.m. to check in and pay for your lunch and meet with friends and colleagues.

Most of you are receiving this meeting notification via email. As we discussed at the last meeting, we cannot continue to print and send letters due to excessive costs. We appreciate your understanding as we use email to save our limited funds.

RESERVATIONS: Please make your reservations with MARY JO PURVIS at 260-492-6992 or mpurvis1111@gmail.com by WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19th . Your lunch will cost $20.00 payable when you arrive (cash or check made out to AREA).

PROGRAM: Lorelei VerLee, founder of “Creative Women of the World” will share how she assists women from around the world with entrepreneurial resources to develop sustainable businesses and access income for their families.

DUES: This October meeting is the 2nd meeting of the 2022-2023 AREA year. For those of you who paid your dues at the August meeting, thank you. Our treasurer will collect $20 dues from those of you who are paying at this meeting. In addition, if you need to change your personal information or add an email for the AREA directory, please send any changes to Pam George at 260-471-5952 or pamgeorgeph@comcast.net. She also has information regarding IRTA (Indiana Retired Teachers’ Association) membership. You might consider automatic dues deduction from your TRF pension to join IRTA. Membership is $35/year. Membership support is greatly needed to impact state retirement benefits and education change.

EYEGLASSES: Bring your used eyeglasses to any meeting and they will be forwarded to the Lions Club by Nancy Caryer.

FUTURE 2022-2023 MEETINGS:

Tuesday, April 25, 2023, at Pine Valley Country Club, 10900 Pine Mills Rd., Ft. Wayne, IN

Monday, June 26, 2023, TBD

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

President's Letter - June 2022

Dear Allen County Retired Educators,

Thirty-three members attended our Welcome Back meeting in April. It was great to be together and see familiar faces and some new ones. We want to reach out to retirees from the years we didn't meet in 2020 and 2021. You can help us by passing on the information in this letter to anyone who retired during those years. We now have 2022 retirees to welcome to AREA, too.

Our next meeting/luncheon is Monday, June 27th at

4010 W. Jefferson Blvd
Fort Wayne, IN

Arrive at 11:15 to check-in and pay for your lunch ($20). Jackie Gruesbeck, our treasurer will also be collecting dues $20. Your dues cover printing expenses of the agenda, treasurer and secretary minutes, postage expenses, honorarium for our presenters, and projects AREA supports like Gift of Books.

RESERVATIONS: Please make your reservations with Mary Jo Purvis at 260-492-6992 or mpurvis1@frontier.com by Monday, June 20th. If you are unable to attend after reserving a spot, please cancel with Mary Jo Purvis so someone else can attend and you won't be charged.

PROGRAM: What's new with Promenade Park in 2022?

MEMBERSHIP: Any questions on membership contact Pam George at 260-471-5952 or pamgeorgeph@comcast.net. She also has IRTA (Indiana Retired Teachers' Association) information. You might consider automatic dues deduction from your TRF pension to join IRTS. IRTA dues are $35/year. A membership year is July 1 through June 30th. Support is greatly needed to impact state retirement benefits and education change.

EYEGLASSES: Bring your unused eyeglasses to any meeting and they will be forwarded to the Lions Club.

FUTURE 2022-23 MEETINGS:
August
October
April
June

Monday, April 19, 2021

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #356 – looming threats and flaws

From Indiana Coalition for Public Education's Vic Smith...
Dear Friends,

With only three days left in this General Assembly session, a dangerous threat to our state remains to be fixed. Education Scholarship Accounts are still in the budget bill, and the bill language does not protect Indiana from extremists, from criminals or from the sudden elimination of all standards and accountability.

Will you send messages today and tomorrow to your legislators and to party leaders who are deciding what will go into the budget about these looming threats and flaws that could be fixed with last minute additions to the bill language?

Fix the Flaws!

What are the glaring problems that have still not been fixed in the current budget bill language on Educational Scholarship Accounts?
Threats include no standards for ESA parent grants, no protection against extremist curriculum, and no background checks for where tax payer dollars will go.

Click here to read the rest and share. You can find your state legislators by clicking here.

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Friday, March 5, 2021

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #353 – March 4, 2021

Dear Friends,

Milton Friedman, the famous economist who passed away in 2006, wanted to end public schools and get the government out of education. He proposed to just give tax money directly to parents to let them pay for their child’s education from vendors or schools in a competitive private marketplace.

He didn’t see public education as a public benefit to teach about democracy to each student in each new generation. He wrote in Free to Choose (1980):
  • “compulsory attendance laws are the justification for government control over the standards of private schools. But it is far from clear that there is any justification for the compulsory attendance laws themselves.” and
  • “The possibility exists that some public schools would be left with the dregs.”
Amazingly, Friedman’s stark view of parent-run schools has been approved for Indiana by the Indiana House in House Bill 1005 for 187,000 eligible students, about one in six Hoosier students. No supervision, no accountability, no community responsibility.

The parent grants to be given out through an online portal estimated to cost $5 million and run by the Indiana Treasurer are now called Education Scholarship Accounts (ESA’s).

Eligible students in House Bill 1005 include special education, activity military, and foster students. The real goal pursued for years by Friedman’s wealthy followers who have spread campaign cash across Indiana and the United States is to give ESA’s to all parents and to end public education.

In HB 1005, the ESA camel’s nose is under the tent.

The House Vote

The vote was 61-38. While 9 Republicans opposed this caucus-priority bill, it was not enough to stop it. The roll call is listed below. Now it must be stopped in the Senate.

Representative Behning, the author of HB 1005, cleverly mixed the radical Friedman plan into the bill alongside a “traditional” expansion of payments for current private school vouchers. Most of those who testified for the bill wanted to see bigger voucher payments, and that section of the bill is what the media has focused on. Bigger voucher payments would cost over $60 million over the next two years.

The real danger, though, is giving money to the parents of eligible students (approx. $7000 plus up to $9100 for special education students) with no regard to their support of extremist ideologies or their support of the U.S. Constitution. Parents can get these public funds simply by applying online but the flaws are obvious:
  • the parent “must agree that” they “will use part of the money” for the “student’s study in the subject of reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies, or science” or the student’s “individualized education program”. These quotes are directly from HB 1005.
  • That’s all! It’s the lowest standard imaginable, and no one will monitor even this parent responsibility because the bill specifically bans curriculum oversight by the state.
  • Criminal background checks, required for teachers, are not required for parents to get their ESA money. Parents with records of neglect or abuse or fraud are not excluded by HB 1005. No restrictions on parents are included in the bill!
HB 1005 carries the seeds of fraud and partisanship. Home schools using taxpayer funds to teach extremist ideology are an obvious possibility. Did the proponents really read this bill before approving it?

Bipartisan Opposition and Partisan Support

Those voting against HB 1005 in the House represented a bipartisan opposition:

Republicans Voting to Oppose HB 1005
Democrats Voting to Oppose HB 1005
Those voting to support HB 1005 in the House were all Republicans:
The 9 Republicans and 29 Democrats who opposed HB 1005 and stood up for public education deserve messages of thanks from public school advocates.

What Can You Do to Protect our Democracy from ESA’s in the Second Half of the General Assembly

Bills now switch Houses for consideration, so House Bill 1005 will be considered by the Senate. Write the Senators on the Senate Education Committee to let them know of your strong opposition to the flawed and dangerous threat to our democracy, House Bill 1005.

House Bill 1005 is not currently on the committee agenda for March 10th but could be heard in committee as early as Wednesday, March 17th.

Let the Senators on the committee know you oppose the dangerous concept of Education Scholarship Accounts and the expensive expansion of the current voucher system, especially when teacher pay has not been addressed. The committee members (click on the name for email addresses) are:

Senator Jeff Raatz
Senator Scott Baldwin
Senator Brian Buchanan
Senator John Crane
Senator Stacey Donato
Senator J.D. Ford
Senator Dennis Kruse
Senator Jean Leising
Senator Eddie Melton
Senator Fady Qaddoura
Senator Linda Rogers
Senator Kyle Walker
Senator Shelli Yoder

In the final days of the first half of the session, Senate Bill 412 was not passed out of committee. Senate Bill 413 was amended to reduce voucher expansion to only one element: foster students would become eligible for Choice Scholarships. It passed 32-15 and now goes to the House. Your messages certainly helped tamp down these flawed Senate bills.

Thank you for your active support of public education in Indiana!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith

“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. As of July 1st, the start of our new membership year, it is time for all ICPE members to renew their membership.

Our lobbyist Joel Hand is again representing ICPE in the new budget session which began on January 3, 2017. We need your memberships and your support to continue his work. We welcome additional members and additional donations. We need your help and the help of your colleagues who support public education! Please pass the word!

Go to www.indianacoalitionforpubliced.org for membership and renewal information and for full information on ICPE efforts on behalf of public education. Thanks!

Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools. Thanks for asking! Here is a brief bio:

I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969. I served 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. I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009. I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998. In 2013 I was honored to receive a Distinguished Alumni Award from the IU School of Education, and in 2014 I was honored to be named to the Teacher Education Hall of Fame by the Association for Teacher Education – Indiana. In April of 2018, I was honored to receive the 2018 Friend of Education Award from the Indiana State Teachers Association.

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Friday, February 5, 2021

Need Fast Help For Legislation

Dear IRTA Members:

Our bill, HB 1227, that will give us a 13th check with a $50 supplement is well on its way through the House of Representatives. The Legislative Committee is asking you to send a note to your representative, asking him or her to please vote for HB 1227 when it comes to the House floor for the final vote. This will happen soon so emails need to go out asap. An email should go to h__@iga.in.gov. (Fill in the blank with your house district number.)

If you need to look up your district and the representative, go to the Indiana General Assembly's “Find my Legislator” page at iga.in.gov/legislative/find-legislators/. Fill in your address and the House member’s picture and the district number will be on the screen that comes up.

These notes only need to be a few sentences, but if you can include a story about how the 13th check really helps in some specific way, that would be good. We want to flood the House membership so that we will have their support when the bill goes to the Senate. We are concerned that we’ll face some difficulty there.

I know we can rely on you to help us get this bill passed. If you have any questions, email me at tols2528@aol.com.

Thank you for the support,

Nancy Tolson, IRTA Legislative Committee chair