The Indiana Statehouse. (Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
Indiana lawmakers may require schools to provide more information about a controversial practice: secluding and restraining children.
Under state law, physical restraints and seclusion may only be used as a last resort to calm students and never to discipline. The state requires schools to report all uses of seclusion and restraint by school staff. The practices are generally used for students with severe disabilities who have violent outbursts.
A House Education panel voted unanimously Tuesday to add school resource officers to reporting requirements. These officers work in schools but may not be technically employed by the district.
Supporters of the bill say it’s a necessary step to get a true snapshot of the way restraint and seclusion are used.
Indiana lawmakers are considering a measure which would annually notify teachers of their right to change representation, if union membership drops below 50 percent at a school. (chancadoodle/Flickr)
Schools would be required to publicly display the percentage of teachers involved in a union under a Republican-backed measure moving through the Indiana Statehouse.
In cases where union participation falls below a certain amount, the measure would require the state to annually notify teachers they can dispense of or change representation. The bill was approved Monday in a 60-38 vote by the Indiana House of Representatives.
“It’s just information,” says Rep. Gerald Torr (R-Carmel), the bill’s sponsor. “Making it transparent and easy to find.”
Labor unions say it stokes anti-union sentiments in the state. At a hearing last week, representatives from the Indiana State Teachers Association called the measure a “poke in the eye” from Indiana lawmakers trying to clamp down on organized labor. The American Federation of Teachers have also come out against it.
Senate President Pro Tempore David Long, left, and Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma, right. (Brandon Smith/Indiana Public Brodacsting)
A Senate committee approved a controversial bill Monday that would change the Superintendent of Public Instruction from an elected position to an appointed one.
During this General Assembly, both the House and Senate sponsored bills to make the state’s education chief an appointed position. The House passed its version of the bill, but the Senate, in a surprise move the first half of session, voted theirs down.
It seemed the issue would die this year since Senate rules prevent a similar bill from being considered in the same session. But an amendment approved in the Senate Rules and Legislative Procedure Committee Monday altered the House bill enough to revive it.
The bill passed the committee 8-4. It now heads to the full Senate.
Indiana lawmakers eyed bills around prayer in school, union involvement, student journalists and collective bargaining this week. (Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
We’re now firmly in the second half of the 2017 legislative session at the Indiana Statehouse. Indiana lawmakers are busy putting final touches on bills they hope will become law: on topics from preschool to prayer.
Jennifer McCormick, Indiana superintendent of public instruction, says Indiana schools would be affected by the proposed federal education budget. (Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
Indiana schools stand to lose about $56 million for teacher training and after school programs for low-income students, under proposed budget cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Jennifer McCormick, Indiana superintendent of public instruction, says the proposed budget would be “a big hit” to the state. She says cuts would hamper efforts to attract teachers, stifle new programs under a new federal education law and reduce programs for low-income students.
“Is it concerning? Absolutely,” McCormick says. “We need as much money to flow into our traditional public schools, and our public charter schools that are struggling, [as] we can get there.”
Trump’s proposed budget would slash the U.S. Department of Education’s budget by $9 billion, a 13.5 percent reduction.
It would eliminate funding for two major programs. The first is the Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants program, or Title II funds, which provides money for teacher training retainment. The second is the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which funds after school programs for low-income students.
The Indiana Department of Education is set to receive $55.9 million for the two programs during the 2017-18 school year.
Proposed legislation that would require guidelines for religious expression in public schools passed the Senate Education Committee, with an amendment altering the original intent.
House Bill 1024 would protect open prayer and religious dress, writings or other religious expression in schools.
But Sen. Dennis Kruse, (R-Auburn), says it won’t be easy for schools to execute. So he moved to strike Section 5 of the bill — that would’ve given student’s time and a microphone at assemblies or sporting events to discuss their different faith beliefs.
“This is going to be somewhat of a challenge for schools and school corporations to implement but I think it serves a worthy purpose,” Kruse says. “And I think section five pushes them a little too hard in that regard.”
Others sought to expand the bill as a way to arguing against it, including Sen. Mark Stoops (D-Bloomington). He urged lawmakers to require all K-12 schools in Indiana that receive public dollars to follow its guidelines, including religious schools.
“If it is good for public schools, charter schools it would also be necessary for private schools that receive vouchers,” Stoops says.
Stoops amendment was struck down.
The bill also requires the state attorney general’s office to author example policy about religious expression that schools can chose to adopt.
HB 1024 passed 8-to-2 and now heads to the full Senate.
The proposal was authored by Rep. John Bartlett (D-Indianapolis). He has maintained that lack of faith by teens and young adults has resulted in many of the problems facing Indiana, such as drug use and killings.
Caleb Pierson looks over a cabinet project he designed for Heartwood Manufacturing. Pierson is a graduate of a Batesville High School program that teaches manufacturing skills. (photo credit: Claire McInerny/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
Manufacturing companies all over the state have open positions and can’t find qualified workers to fill them. These jobs require specialized training because the new world of manufacturing requires more technology-based skills. So companies are finding new opportunities to teach them.
The Problem In One Manufacturing Town
Batesville is a town of less than 7,000 people, and half a dozen manufacturing companies employ hundreds of them. But they would like to employ more.
This is a problem Brett Hofer, safety and training coordinator at Batesville Tool and Die, knows well.
“We’d post the positions for some of our technical, trade positions, and it would be really hard to find somebody who had those skills and could come in right away,” Hofer says.
Batesville Tool and Die is a metal stamping company that employs about 400 Batesville residents. Its main products are auto parts, and as technology evolves, its jobs requires more computer skills.
“If they’re having a problem with a part, if something is not to spec, they have to be able to get in there and find out what’s causing this, why is this doing this, and from there making the adjustment to the pieces,” he says.
So leaders at Batesville Tool and Die spearheaded an effort to create more workers to take these positions. They created a feeder system.
“Working with the schools we were able to get the 17-, 18-year-old students start coming in and seeing our facility and potentially getting them a head start in the training for some of our technical trade positions,” Hofer says.
Adding Manufacturing To K-12 Education
This feeder system is a partnership between Batesville High School, the local Ivy Tech campus and a few Batesville manufacturing companies. They created a new program for high school juniors and seniors. Students spend half their days in traditional high school classes and the other half in manufacturing classes at Ivy Tech. Eventually they intern with a local manufacturing company doing entry level work. The hope is that both student and employer will want to continue the working relationship.
That’s exactly what happened with Caleb Pierson and his boss, Joe Meyer.
Meyer and Pierson walk through the wood shop at Heartwood Manufacturing, the company Meyer started and leads as CEO. On the big, loud, assembly floor, employees cut wood on large machines and furniture sits on the floor in various stages of completion.
Pierson shows off a set of cabinets he designed. It will be shipped to a hospital in another part of the state.
“On this job in particular, we went up, we met with the project manager of the hospital, measured all the rooms, they gave us drawings of what they wanted,” Pierson says. “Then me and him designed everything on the computer and designed it.”
Pierson is 19, and he learned the computer technology he used to design these cabinets in the Batesville High School program.
“Before I was in this program I really had no idea what manufacturing was,” he says. “I probably would have thought it was standing in a dark factory, not moving for 8 hours a day and just moving a part from one conveyer belt to another. I thought it actually sounded pretty boring.”
At the beginning of high school, Pierson thought he wanted to be engineer. But after seeing first hand what manufacturing jobs looked like.
“I realized I didn’t want to be an actual engineer,” he says. “I wanted to do something more along the lines of designing stuff but still being able to do the hands-on stuff,” Pierson says.
Which is exactly what he does now at Heartwood. He interned with the company his last year of high school, and when he graduated, he took a full time job as a designer.
And this is becoming the participating companies’ preferred way of hiring. Meyer, Pierson’s boss, says it’s more effective.
“For us, it’s sort of an extended job interview over a two-year period,” Meyer says. “It’s hard to put a dollar figure on it, but without a program like this we spend a lot of time in the hiring and firing process, trying to determine if someone’s gonna last.”
This is the fifth year of the program, with two graduating cohorts. So far, the school district estimates, of the 10 students who have graduated, 75 percent are employed by manufacturing companies. And they plan to continue offering this opportunity, so students like Pierson and companies like Heartwood can continue to find each other.
“If it wasn’t for this program, I probably would have ended up going to college, because I used to think that’s what you had to do,” Pierson says. “So I would probably be somewhere spending a lot of money on an engineering degree, only to graduate in three years and learn that is not at all what I want to do. So this is saving me a lot of time and money and I know I’m in the right field I want to be in.”
Ivy Tech Community College is second in the nation for students using Pell Grants to attend college. (Kyle Stokes/Stateimpact Indiana)
The newest federal budget presented by President Donald Trump dramatically reduces money for grants designed to help low-income students go to college.
The budget would eliminate the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, money for students with exceptional financial need, and proposes a $3.9 billion reduction in Pell Grants, the primary federal college grant program.
Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College system, the nation’s largest statewide community college system, ranks second in the nation for Pell Grant recipients. In the system, 30,766 students receive over $57 million in Pell Grants.
U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) opposes the cuts.
“Destroying the Pell Grant program is one of the worst ideas you could possibly have,” Donnelly says. “Pell Grant hits right in the sweet spot of working families who are looking to figure out ‘How can I get my kids an education?'”
The Pell Grant program is the largest federal grant program for undergraduate students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The program annually provides qualifying students with up to $5,920 for college. Students whose family income is $50,000 a year or less can qualify.
As Muncie Community Schools battles a $15 million budget deficit, school leaders could turn to school closures, emergency loans or forgoing building repairs to help the ailing district.
The news of the district’s financial troubles comes weeks after the districts’ top financial official resigned.
Muncie Community Schools CFO Bruce Perry resigned Tuesday just two months after he was hired. The announcement came just days after he announced more than $9 million budgeted for building repairs is not actually in the bank.
“It sort of feels like the Muncie financial crisis is like a game of hot potato,” parent Josh Holowell said.
The central Indiana school district of about 5,700 students has seen enrollment drop dramatically in the past five years. Since 2012, district enrollment has gone down by more than 1,000 students.
Far fewer students in the district means far less school funding from the state reaching the district. In Indiana, districts are funded based on per-pupil headcounts taken twice a year. Muncie students carry about $5,000 of state funds to the district with them.
And the change in enrollment has led to a number of factors. Continue Reading →
The Indiana Statehouse. (Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
For nearly eight hours Wednesday, the Senate Education Committee slogged through a dozen bills, including some of the session’s thorniest issues: prayer in school, preschool funding and reducing the current accountability for private schools receiving publicly-funded vouchers.
Senate lawmakers passed five bills out of committee: HB 1004, was amended to mirror the Senate own preschool funding bill; HB 1079, criminal background checks for school staff; HB 1136, extended latch key programs at schools offering preschool; HB 1396, speeds up the teacher licensing for military spouses; and HB 1430, suicide prevention training for teachers.
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