Here’s What Will Happen With CECI Responsibilities, Personnel
We might be saying goodbye to the Center for Education and Career Innovation, but the agency’s duties, responsibilities and staff will not disappear from Indiana’s education scene.
Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana
Along with her colleagues, Claire Fiddian-Green, co-director of the Center for Education and Career Innovation, will be moving out of the agency when it formally disbands Feb. 20.
CECI leadership had known about the move a few weeks before Pence made his announcement, according to the governor’s communications director, Christy Denault. Plans are already in the works to finish accomplishing the agency’s goals, as the governor alluded to during his speech last week.
“Our commitment to aligning statewide efforts in education and workforce development remains undiminished,” Pence said. “I believe [CECI] has laid the groundwork necessary to accomplish these goals through other existing agencies and programs, and so we will.”
The five agencies that operated under the CECI umbrella – including the State Board of Education, the Education Roundtable, the Indiana Career Council, the Regional Works Councils and the Indiana Network of Knowledge – will continue operating and fulfilling their statutory obligations. With the exception of the Roundtable and the State Board, the others will fall under new management.
That job will go to the Department of Workforce Development, who is finalizing details with the governor’s office. Along with each agency’s responsibilities, the DWD will take on their existing staff as well.
The Roundtable and the State Board will be responsible for hiring and managing their own staffs.
What about CECI personnel?
Claire Fiddian-Green, CECI co-leader and Gov. Pence’s special assistant for education innovation, will leave government to head up the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, an independent grant funding organization.
Fiddian-Green has been a key member of the A-F panel, whose work to modify the state’s school accountability system should be completed by the time CECI officially disbands February 20. Board members adopted final A-F rulemaking recommendations at their December meeting, and will vote on rule language to being the public hearing process in January.
Fiddian-Green’s counterpart, Jackie Dowd, will move over to the Department of Workforce Development.
As for the rest of CECI’s employees, we’re not sure if they will be assigned to other agencies or have to find other jobs themselves. We do know that they will not be absorbed into the Department of Education – a bureau that, along with state superintendent Glenda Ritz, has not gotten along with the agency since its creation.
