Capitol Insider

Capitol Insider 

April 26, 2021 

Recess!  Not Adjourn 

At the close of the legislative session on April 22, the House and Senate recessed in order to come back in the fall to do redistricting.  They are also planning to return May 10^th to make technical corrections.  Sadly, as the Governor signed the hateful SB 251 into law, I guess we don’t have to worry legislators will use May 10 to override his veto for which so many of us had asked. 

They have until mid-November to come back to do redistricting.  Action you can take is to continue to contact your representatives and senators to ask them to use an independent, non-partisan body to draw those lines.  Left in the control of the supermajority, look for supermajority in ALL CAPS. 

HEA 1001: Bolstered by Revenue Forecast and Biden’s ARP   

Teachers have rallied, sent post cards and letters, made phone calls and even made a drive-by visit to the Governor’s Mansion, all in an effort to convince legislators to provide funding in the budget that would go to teacher salaries.  Many non-supermajority legislators filed bills that would have addressed teacher pay.  All of those bills were never heard.  Ignored. 

Then came the April revenue forecast that projects $2 billion more in the next two years on top of existing $2 billion in reserves.  Then the Biden Administration ushered through the American Rescue Plan that sent nearly $3 billion in federal dollars to Indiana’s schools.  Put it all together and lawmakers decided to increase school funding to approximately 9.1% or $1.03 billion – not all of this will go to traditional public schools.  Public schools will see about a 3.5% in each of the next two fiscal years.  

Sen. Eddie Melton, SD #3, serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee will zoom with AFT Indiana members Tuesday, April 27 beginning at 6 PM CDT or 7 PM EST.  Members can request the zoom link from their local president. 

Some of the bill’s specifics 

• Urge districts to have beginning salary at $40,000 – and if not, explain why not. 
• Required districts to use a minimum of 45% on teacher salaries. Earlier this week presidents received a link to the teacher pay commission report.  Start at page 174 https://www.in.gov/gov/files/Teacher-Pay-Report-FINAL.pdf to find how much your school currently uses. 
• Teacher Appreciation Grants remain in the budget at $37.5 million. 
• CTE is funded at 2021 levels; keeping existing programs intact. 
• ELL increased by $5 million. 
• Special Ed increased in each of two years. 
• Complexity increased by only $100. 

  It’s Not All Good for Public Schools 

  And then there are those parts of the K-12 funding that go to other than traditional public schools: 

• Vouchers – Choice Scholarships – will all be given at 90% of foundation funding.  Legislators eliminated the 50% and 70% tiers.  So a family of four making $145,000 (300% of Free/Reduced Lunch) qualify for this.  This is about 3 times  
• SGOs – Scholarship Granting Organizations – see an increase in tax credits for donations. 
• ESAs – the bill established and funds Education Scholarship Accounts currently limited to special ed students. 

  Public announcements or press conferences can be misleading to general public listeners. 

  Be sure to read this piece to understand the roll call votes 

  This is important to understand.  Once a conference committee report is done and voted upon, or if a concurrence is received without the need of a conference committee, bills more often than not, are palatable.  Or they have some one thing that is so important to a legislator that he/she votes for it, even if there are bad parts to a final bill.  I would guess many of our “friends” had qualms about the conference committee report on HB 1001, the budget bill.  AFT Indiana understood the dilemma and supported legislators’ who wanted to support those increases for teacher salaries in HB 1001 yet continuing to oppose the voucher/ESA funding in the bill.   

  In a press statement, President Dunham said the budget “invests in public education.”  She acknowledged your work and AFT Indiana priorities.  “Thanks to the advocacy and engagement of AFT-Indiana members across the state, Indiana legislators have proposed a budget that invests in public education,” said GlenEva Dunham, President of AFT Indiana.  “Our members have worked hard and long advocating for public school funding that provides for student needs as well as increases to our lagging teacher salaries,” she continued.  Recall the words of Oliver Goldsmith and know “we live to fight another day.” 

  The roll calls below are on bills either on their 3^rd floor reading before any concurrence or conference committee work or they are on amendments that would have made the bills better.   

  SB 205: Teacher Training. Provides yet another “alternative” route to teacher licensure.  Through an online vendor, anyone who is at least 26 years old, with a Bachelors from an accredited postsecondary institution, and goes through this online training will be awarded an initial practitioner license. Bill was slightly improved to add required student teaching and mentoring.  With nine other alternative routes, this one is unnecessary.  Supporters argued it would help with teacher shortage.  We asked why the other 9 were not helping with that and told them teacher pay would go further to help with teacher shortage.  The roll call votes are on 3rds in each chamber as well as on the Conference Committee Report before the Senate. The bill passed.  We opposed 205. 

  SB 251: Deduction of dues to exclusive representative.  In yet another attack on teacher unions, this bill contrives the process for payroll deduction. Rep. Hatfield offered amended #1 (roll call 357) that simply added “and subject to an affirmative decision by the school employer.”  Meaning: Local Control. The amendment was defeated 62-31.  Sadly, the Governor did not support teachers by vetoing this bill as many of us had asked him to do. We opposed 251. 

  SB 413: Education Matters. One of those with both good and bad in it.  Good: hold harmless for school year 2020-2021, and if corporation closes a building, they must have a place for the preservation or transfer of memorabilia, etc. The Bad: unions and administrations must certify to IEERB that certain public meetings have occurred – in fact, they’ve added yet another requirement that reads: 

  Within forty-eight (48) hours after the public hearing, both parties shall certify to the board, in a manner prescribed by the board, that the public hearing described in this subsection has occurred. After June 30, 2021, any collective bargaining agreement ratified without holding the public hearing described in this subsection is null and void. 

  Now who do you suppose asked for this?  Not the unions.  Not the school boards.  Not the superintendents.  Not our communities.             We opposed this language. 

                In amendment #1 offered by Rep. Porter (Roll call 408), with the passage of a local school board resolution, the parties could bargain hours, working conditions, student learning conditions such as class size, prep periods, and more. You guessed it.  Amendment failed 29-67. 

  SB 414: Various Education Matters.  At the time of this vote, the bill included voucher expansion (Choice Scholarships). We opposed this language. 

  HB 1001: State Budget. The ever-evolving budget bill will be one of the last settled. In roll call votes charted below, we’ve looked at amendment #7, Rep. DeLaney, which would have created a “Teacher Retention Grant that would have secured specific dollars for teacher salaries.  It failed 29-68 (roll call 168).  Remember at this time, ESAs were not in the budget.  On 3rd reading in the House, the bill passed out 65-30.  In the Senate, Sen. Melton offered amendment #24 (roll call 382) to increase funding for schools.  Again, the amendment failed 14-36.

Not related to school funding, but important to Hoosiers, Sen. Taylor offered amendment #9 for a Redistricting Procedure, that as you can guess failed 11-39.  And finally, the 3rd reading in the Senate (roll call 409). 

Voting Record 

It’s been a personal debate how to calculate NV (Not Voting) and E (Excused).  Trying to decide whether to determine percent with AFT Indiana by including or excluding those non-votes.  I have decided I must consider them rather than calculate only on votes cast.  You can guess by the voting pattern whether the vote would have been with us or not.  But, after all, that is a guess.  There seemed to have been more than usual excused absences this session.  

We often exclaim “Remember November.”  We must.  House reps won’t stand election again until November 2022.  The terms is 2-years.  Senator elections are staggered and held in even numbered years – so 2022.  A senator is election for a 4-year term. 

1 = Correct vote                 0 = incorrect vote              E=Excused                NV=Not voting 

*  O’Brien was appointed to fill the term of Sullivan who was appointed to Secretary of State. 

1 = Correct vote                 0 = incorrect vote              E=Excused                NV=Not voting 

Helpful Links 

• General Assembly page that will take you to almost anything you could want regarding the legislature and legislators. 
• Find your own state legislator. 
• For a list of ALL legislators, start on home page, see upper right (Search, Code, Bills, Legislators) – click on Legislators.  You have the option of ALL then download a pdf. 
• All committees (then choose the one you want). 
• Senate daily committee calendar. 
• House daily committee calendar. 
• If you click on “legislation,” you can get to bills by number, or choose by legislator, or by subject.  Resolutions are there, too. 
• When the House and Senate are in session.       

Sally J Sloan