Monday, November 4, 2024

In Case You Missed It – November 4, 2024

Here are links to last week's articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.
This week's post focuses on Tuesday's (November 5, 2024) election.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Braun claims to want to raise teacher salaries, but he also wants tax cuts that will make that all but impossible. Look closely at his agenda, and you’ll see he wants to increase funding for some schools and teachers, those that he deems effective. In other words, teachers and public schools will fight each other – and private schools – for what money is available.

In his TV ads, Braun says he will “fix the schools” – an extraordinary admission that Indiana schools are broken after 14 years of Republican rule and one supposed fix after another."
-- Steve Hinnefeld in School Matters Blog post, Teachers should lead charge for McCormick, Wells

JENNIFER MCCORMICK FOR GOVERNOR

The 2024 election in Indiana will determine the direction of public education for the next two to four years. Republicans have controlled the governor's office and both of Indiana's legislative houses for the last two decades. Each election season they promise to "fix" the public schools with privatization schemes (vouchers and charters) and laws stripping autonomy and power from the state's experts in education -- its teachers.

It's ironic then, that Republican Gubernatorial candidate (and current U.S. Senator) Mike Braun is still talking about "fixing" the schools.

We have given the Republicans enough time. Give Democrats a chance at the Governor's office and legislature. Support public education in Indiana.

Teachers should lead charge for McCormick, Wells

From School Matters
Twelve years ago, Hoosier teachers and their families and friends rose up and got a Democrat elected to a state office, the last time that’s happened. Outraged at the policies and rhetoric of Republican Tony Bennett, Hoosiers ousted him as superintendent of public instruction and chose Glenda Ritz.

The same thing should happen on Nov. 5. Mike Braun, the GOP candidate for governor, and Todd Rokita, the Republican seeking re-election as attorney general, would be much worse for public schools and educators than Bennett ever was.

Braun, a current U.S. senator and former state legislator, just doesn’t seem interested in education. He’s outsourced his policy proposals to a political action committee headed by conservative super-lawyer Jim Bopp. His top plan is to “expand school choice,” extending public funding of private school tuition to the very wealthiest families.

Braun claims to want to raise teacher salaries, but he also wants tax cuts that will make that all but impossible. Look closely at his agenda, and you’ll see he wants to increase funding for some schools and teachers, those that he deems effective. In other words, teachers and public schools will fight each other – and private schools – for what money is available.

In his TV ads, Braun says he will “fix the schools” – an extraordinary admission that Indiana schools are broken after 14 years of Republican rule and one supposed fix after another.

The Indiana GOP's forgotten word

From John Crull in the Statehouse File dot com
At the last Indiana gubernatorial debate, Libertarian candidate Donald Rainwater made a telling point.

The Republican candidate, U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana, had tried to blame Hoosier Democrats—and Democratic standard-bearer Jennifer McCormick in particular—for the defects in state public policy.

Rainwater replied by saying, in effect, “That’s rich.”

Then he pointed out that Republicans such as Braun have occupied the governor’s office for the past 20 years. The GOP has owned a supermajority in the Indiana House of Representatives for the past decade and the same supremacy in the Indiana Senate for even longer.

NATIONAL ELECTION

On November 5, vote for the well-being of children

From the Network for Public Education
Earlier this year, the Board of Directors of the Network for Public Education Action endorsed Kamala Harris for President and Tim Walz for Vice President of the United States.

Our endorsement was as much a rejection of Donald J. Trump as it was an embrace of the Harris/Walz pro-public education ticket. There can be no romanticization of the Trump years. His choice of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, a zealot for private school vouchers, damaged the public’s faith and allegiance to public schools. They sought to slash federal education funding in every budget proposal. Ms. DeVos has made it clear she would be eager to return to the job to dismantle the Department of Education and public education itself.

Brookings Institution: What Project 2025 Means for Education

Just say "NO!" to Project 2025.

From Diane Ravitch
A group of scholars at the Brookings Institution analyzed Project 2025’s proposals for education and their implications.

What struck me as most bizarre about Project 2025 was not its efforts to block-grant all federal funding of schools, nor its emphasis on privatization of K-12 schools. (Block-granting means assigning federal funding to states as a lump sum, no strings attached, no federal oversight).

No, what amazed me most was the split screen between the report’s desire to hand all power over education to states and communities, and the report’s insistence on preserving enough power to punish LGBT students, especially trans students and to impose other far-right mandates, like stamping out critical race theory. You know, either you let the states decide or you don’t. The report wants it both ways.

It’s also astonishing to realize that the insidious goal of the report is eventually abandon federal funding of education. That’s a huge step backward, taking us to 1965, before Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose purpose was to raise spending in impoverished communities. I essence, P2025 says that decades of pursuing equitable funding “didn’t work,” so let’s abandon the goal and the spending.

LOCAL NEWS

Fort Wayne Community Schools board advances $12 million in various projects

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
About $12 million in various Fort Wayne Community Schools capital improvements – including upgrades at three high school auditoriums – advanced this week with board approval of the projects’ architect/engineer...

..The board didn’t elaborate Monday on the proposed work, which was described in meeting documents as eight projects addressing building envelopes, general building systems and mechanical and electrical needs, among others.

Together, the construction contracts are estimated to cost nearly $12 million, with individual projects ranging from $271,300 for flooring at unspecified locations to $2.48 million for heating, ventilation and air conditioning improvements at the Helen P. Brown Natatorium.
**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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Monday, October 28, 2024

In Case You Missed It – October 28, 2024

Here are links to last week's articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Indiana Republicans have expanded school choice so aggressively since 2011 that you’d think there would be almost nothing left to do. We know there will be a push to make the voucher program “universal,” extending public funding for private school tuition to the wealthiest 3% of Hoosier families – a top priority for GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Braun. But legislators may have other tricks up their sleeves. The 2025 legislative session stars in January, so we’ll find out soon." -- Steve Hinnefeld in School Matters blog, ‘School choice’ backers bankroll Indiana GOP

WHO PAID FOR INDIANA'S REPUBLICAN SUPERMAJORITY?

‘School choice’ backers bankroll Indiana GOP

The "Hoosiers" behind school "choice" funding are not all from Indiana.

From School Matters
Why is “expanding school choice” always at the top of Indiana Republican’s policy agenda even though few Hoosiers are clamoring for it? The old saying holds true: Follow the money.

Hoosiers for Quality Education, which advocates for private school vouchers and charter schools, is one of the top contributors to Republican legislative candidates’ campaigns. It gave GOP candidates and committees nearly $250,000 in the past six months.

The group gave $150,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee, far more than any other PAC. (Indiana Realtors were in second with $40,000). It also gave generously, as much as $10,000, to individual candidates.

While the group calls itself “Hoosiers,” nearly all its money comes from out of state. This year, it got $375,000 from Walmart heir Jim Walton of Bentonville, Arkansas. In the past five years, Jim Walton and his sister, Alice Walton, have given the group over $1.2 million.

Hoosiers for Quality Education, the political arm of a nonprofit called the Institute for Quality Education, gave far more to Republican legislative candidates than groups that are often thought of as GOP cash cows, like the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, the Insurance PAC and the Builders’ Association. Only the Realtors gave significantly more, and some of its contributions went to Democrats.

And it’s not the only group that’s pushing school choice at the Statehouse. Hoosiers for Great Public Schools, organized by former Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, spent $151,000, nearly all of it in contributions. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, has bankrolled the group with $1.2 million since 2020.

Hoosiers for Quality Education and Hoosiers for Great Public Schools donate exclusively to Republican candidates...

EDUCATION TOPICS - PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Support public education in this year's election.

Children and the Presidency: X-Rated or Fine for Prime Time?

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website
As the election approaches, the stakes of how and what children learn, what they see and hear from both Presidential candidates, couldn’t be more different and critical for the future of America’s children. Breaking it down for kids, one candidate is X-rated, and the other is fine for prime time!

For years, former President Trump’s behavior has created problems in how parents and teachers teach children good behavior and respect for one another. His vulgar ramblings often have nothing to do with policy.

The other candidate, VP Kamala Harris, reaches out to voters even if one has some policy differences and speaks respectfully. The TV can be left on when children are in the room. She appears to genuinely care about people.

There have been concerns about how Trump’s behavior affects America’s children and schools.

Anti-Public Schools

Trump said he’d defund public schools, democratic schools owned by Americans, if school officials don’t do as he says. How must this sound to a child who likes attending their public school?

His claims are often outlandish. He has accused teachers of doing sex change operations!

Has Donald Trump ever visited any public schools?


Kamala Harris Is the Right Choice. She Would Be an Education President

From Jan Resseger
Trump’s Election Would Endanger the Public Schools

First Focus on Children’s education policy director, Lily Klam defines core principles that have long been understood as the foundation of the institution of public schooling: “The purpose of public education has always been to give the nation’s children the knowledge, skills, tools, and development they need to thrive as individuals and as citizens of our democracy.” Klam describes the federal government’s role: providing “strong federal oversight of education to ensure that all children—including those from low-income families, those with disabilities, those experiencing homelessness, English language learners, and other underserved student groups—have the same access to the resources they need to thrive, regardless of their family status, the state in which they live, or other disparities. In addition to serving the needs of students across diverse parts of the country, our federal education infrastructure also houses the Office for Civil Rights, making it the nexus of student protection.”

Trump has already declared his support for several of the dangerous policies described in Project 2025, a proposal developed by the Heritage Foundation and many former Trump administration officials. If Trump is elected and follows through on his education promises, Klam fears the implications: “One of the (Project 2025) agenda’s most alarming proposals advocates for giving all parents ‘the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account (ESA)’… (T)axpayer dollars will be used to subsidize the private, oftentimes religious, education of wealthy students, at the expense of the nearly 90% of U.S. students who attend public schools. It’s hard to overstate the destruction that this plan would inflict on the U.S. public education system. Directing each child’s education funding share to an ESA would rob public schools across the country of the funding they need to operate and would force tens of thousands of them to shut down or drastically reduce education services to children. This scenario has already played out in many states that have enacted school voucher and privatization schemes. Executed at the national level, these schemes would radically exacerbate existing inequities, cause extreme teacher shortages and layoffs, and create huge disparities in access to a quality education… The largest federal education (funding) streams, including Title I and IDEA, were created to ensure greater equity for students with disabilities and students in low-income families. The Project 2025 agenda is designed to do the exact opposite: Use government funds to create more inequity in education, especially for the most underserved students.”

STATE POLICIES MATTER

Policies Matter

Down ballot races matter, too. State and local elected officials have an impact on education.

From Sheila Kennedy
[An] article...from the American Prospect—focuses on educational vouchers, a policy choice I frequently discuss. The article warns that Red state expansion of universal school vouchers is likely to have profound impact on the lives of young people.
As states race to pay for families to send their kids to private schools, blowing up state budgets in the process, the schools attended by the vast majority of kids will be left with far fewer resources, blunting their prospects. By design, funds are being shifted away from students in poor and rural areas and into the pockets of affluent parents, entrenching inequality in the process.
Among the other detriments of these programs is an almost-total lack of oversight. In Arizona, for example, parents are allowed to direct education funds, not just to the school of their choice, but to anything they might call “education.”

ANOTHER CHARTER CLOSES ABRUPTLY

D.C.: Celebrated Charter School Closes Its Doors Abruptly

Choose public schools for stability.

From Diane Ravitch
A charter school in D.C. that opened in 2003 and had a reputation built on its services to students with disabilities suddenly closed, with minimal notice to students, teachers, and parents.

Its finances had been shaky for a long time, and its enrollment had declined. Yet no one anticipated its sudden closure.

As it happens, the Network for Public Education reported only days ago on the frequency of charter school closures. Its report is called Doomed to Fail. It’s sad but true that charter schools have an unusually high record of transience. Parents can’t be sure that the charter school they chose will keep its doors open for more than a year, or three, or five.

Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

Monday, October 21, 2024

In Case You Missed It – October 21, 2024

Here are links to last week's articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.
2024 Candidate pledge from the Indiana Coalition for Public Education website.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"[Candidate for Indiana Governor, Jennifer McCormick]...wants to place limits on the state’s private school voucher initiative: The program grew to encompass more than 70,000 children in 2023-24, a 31% increase from the year before. The state allocated $439 million in tuition grants to private parochial or non-religious schools last year — up from nearly $312 million the year before.

McCormick said the program, which might have been intended for lower-income children, is often utilized by white suburban families and is too expensive."
-- Quoted in Diane Ravitch's blog, Indiana: Vote for Jennifer McCormick for Governor

ELECT PRO-PUBLIC EDUCATION CANDIDATES

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #389 – Candidate Pledge

Ask your local candidates to sign the Public Education Pledge from the Indiana Coaltion for Public Education.

From Vic Smith, Indiana Coalition for Public Education
This election could determine the survival of public education in Indiana. The plan to give ESAs to all parents in a “universal voucher” system has already been presented by Senator Mishler. The disastrous consequences of universal ESAs were detailed in the previous Statehouse Notes #388.

To survive, public education must have strong support from more legislators. This fact is the focus of a recent opinion piece written by ICPE board member, Dr. Tony Lux.

A “Candidate Pledge” to support public education is found on the website of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

JENNIFER MCCORMICK FOR GOVERNOR

Indiana: Vote for Jennifer McCormick for Governor

Jennifer McCormick wants to protect Indiana's public schools.

From Diane Ravitch
Jennifer McCormick was the last elected state superintendent of schools. She switched parties because of the Republicans’ hostility to public schools.

She is running for Governor of Indiana against Senator Mike Braun, who is a far-right Republican. Braun and his running mate, an evangelical extremist, want to get rid of public schools.

The 74 reports:
U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, a conservative Republican, is still ahead in the state’s gubernatorial race but his lead among Indiana voters over Democrat Jennifer McCormick has shrunk in recent weeks.

Polling released this week by the Democratic Governors Association shows Braun just three points in front of McCormick, 44% to 41%. That’s a dropoff from the Sept. 17 results of an Emerson College Polling/The Hill voter survey that had Braun with roughly 45% of the vote and McCormick with 34. Libertarian candidate Donald Rainwater also picked up more support but less dramatically so, going from 5.8% to 8%.

Indiana has not elected a Democratic governor since 2000 and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a comfortable 14 percentage point lead, 57% to 43%, over Democrat Kamala Harris, according to an ActiVote poll released Tuesday.

PUBLIC DOLLARS GOING TO RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS

Only One True God: How Religious Schools Use Taxpayer Dollars to Promote Their Extremist Ideology

How our tax dollars are used...

From Thom Hartmann in Milwaukee Independent
Five Republican-controlled states are in the process of letting vouchers ghettoize their entire public-school systems. As The Washington Post noted:
“Billions in taxpayer dollars are being used to pay tuition at religious schools throughout the country, as state voucher programs expand dramatically and the line separating public education and religion fades.”
Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, flies an “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside his official congressional office that, since 2013, has been the semi-official logo of a militant arm of charismatic Christianity involved with January 6th. Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito flew a similar flag outside his summer home.

Another man flying that flag is outspoken Catholic evangelist Leonard Leo, who now controls over a billion dollars and helped run the process that selected Trump’s picks for the Supreme Court as well as hundreds of federal bench nominees. As ProPublica pointed out in a story about the man that remade the American judicial system:
“Leo is a major supporter of the [Catholic Information Center], and its unabashed projection of political power aligns with the central role of religion in Leo’s political project.”

LOCAL NEWS

Fort Wayne Community Schools seeks buyer for vacant southwest parcel

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
Fort Wayne Community Schools is seeking potential buyers for land it has owned for more than 20 years on the city’s southwest side.

The board agreed Monday to sell the vacant property at the northwest corner of Sandpoint Road and Ardmore Avenue to the person with the highest and best qualified offer.

The district doesn’t anticipate any future need for the site, which is smaller than an acre and requires ongoing maintenance, officials said.

Online property records indicate the district bought the land for $85,000 in March 2003. At that time, the tract was immediately north of Elmhurst High School, which closed at the end of the 2009-10 academic year. FWCS sold that site for $600,000 seven years ago to Hanson Aggregates Midwest, which operates nearby Ardmore Quarry.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library coming to Allen County; ACPL fundraising goal met

From WANE.com
After just a few months, a campaign to bring Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to local kids has brought in enough funds to move forward with the reading program.

The Allen County Public Library announced Monday it has met its $100,000 fundraising goal for the campaign, which was launched in June. That means the Imagination Library could be implemented in the coming months.

The country music icon’s program provides free books to children up to age 5, encouraging literacy starting at a young age. Kids around the globe who are registered in the program get books in the mail each month.

There are already over 1,500 children on the waiting list for Allen County’s program. Families can join the list on the Imagination Library website.

Indiana marching bands are heading to the 2024 BOA Super Regional. Find out who'll compete

From IndyStar
THE LATEST: See who made finals at the Indianapolis Super Regional here.

For the next few weeks, it's marching band season at Lucas Oil Stadium (except when it's Taylor Swift season, that is).

Marching bands in Indiana competed last week for a spot in the ISSMA Semi-State competition, which takes place Oct. 26. This week, there's a two-day Bands of America Super Regional bringing high school performers from around the region (and a few from beyond) to the stadium.

More than 110 bands also will come to downtown Indy in mid-November for the 2024 Bands of America Grand National Championships.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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