Take Action: Support locally elected school boards directly accountable to taxpayers and parents
03/17/2015

 

Tell legislators to oppose Gov. Pence’s bill, HB 1009, which replaces locally controlled public schools based on an experimental “opportunity culture” model. This bill enables a minimum of two educators, administrators or other individuals to establish a “freedom to teach” school, zone or entire district, usually partnered through an outside company.

 

Only two public hearings within 35 days is required to create one of these schools within a district or among districts. This fast-track process diminishes transparency in government and local taxpayer and parent buy-in.

 

The bill’s goal, and the model its supporters base it on, is to pay teachers more—that in and of itself may be a laudable goal. Where this bill falls apart—and where all of these school governance proposals fall apart is with the funding. Without additional funding, the only way to significantly increase some teachers’ pay is to decrease the number of teachers in a school and/or create larger class sizes. 

 

The bill sets up more charter-like management entities with fees associated with these arrangements.  The track record of these types of entities is disappointing. Currently, nearly 60 percent of charter schools in Indiana received a D or F school grade compared to just 10 percent of community-based public schools.

 

The new environment created under the bill could pit teacher against teacher, department against department, and school against school by creating separate “freedom to teach” departments, zones, schools, and entire districts. Also, these arrangements are predicated on the school employees giving up their due process rights, concurrently would fracture the collective bargaining unit, and any salary increases in these freedom to teach departments, schools, zones, districts are not collectively bargainable.

 

Further, any statute relating to a school board is not applicable to freedom to teach entities other than those few laws regulating charters , laws on teacher evaluations, and laws on school accountability. For example, laws on public records and meetings would not apply to these freedom to teach schools.

 

Finally, HB 1009 creates a one-time pot of money (in the Republican budget (HB 1001) that is $2 million each year of the biennium) to freedom to teach entities engaging in a “career pathways program” to provide “differentiated pay for qualified teachers based upon a qualified teachers demonstrated effectiveness and additional responsibilities in advanced roles.” It is important to note that the ultimate goal of the program under this grant is to guarantee by the third year of the plan that at least 75 percent of the students in English/language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science have teachers of record who are highly effective.

 

Again, the question remains—how can this program become sustainable without an additional infusion of funds—unless the district reduces the number of staff and/or increases class sizes?

 

HB 1009 is not well thought through, is experimental, is another “trust us” bill and, in the end, devotes time and resources toward adult-centered issues—rather than student-centered program help.