By Rick Muir

President, Indiana Federation of Teachers

Indiana Legislators spent January, February, March and April working on legislation including a new state budget. The budget failed in the final minutes of the regular session.

Last week, the 12-member special committee met to begin work on the governor’s reportedly simple budget proposal. The 180-page plus proposal was anything but simple.

Many bills that failed either on the floor or in committees were injected into the governor’s proposal. Think about it, several pieces of legislation that were debated, open for public comment, researched and voted down were resurrected into the governor’s simple budget proposal.

In addition, citizens were told that the governor was taking care of education. We must have differing interpretations to “taking care of education.”

Citizens believed reports that schools would see an increase of 2 percent in each year of the biennium. That is true on its surface, but citizens must understand that most of that is federal stimulus money that can be spent only in specified ways — and that is not on the general school budget. Schools will receive the money and it must be spent according to specific Title I rules. While it is not yet clear how much money the governor proposes to come from Indiana’s general fund, it is estimated to be about .25 percent per year. That’s right, one quarter of 1 percent!

Additionally, the English Language Learners funding was cut from $7 million to $3 million; $5 million for professional development has been zeroed out.

If that is not enough, vouchers — public tax dollars for parochial and private schools — were put back into the budget albeit under the guise of tax credits. Listen to this, when individuals or corporations donate a total of $10 million to a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO), then 50 percent of those donations will receive a tax credit. That’s $5 million NOT paid in state taxes. Then the SGO distributes up to 90 percent of that $10 million and keeps 1 percent ($1 million) presumably for operating expenses. The distribution of the $9 million goes for tuition to parochial and private schools.

In other legislation, HEA 1389 improves enrollment opportunities for the 21st Century Scholars Program. The governor signed the bill into law on April 8, 2009. The goals of the 21st Century Scholars are to reduce dropouts, increase postsecondary enrollment, decrease drug and alcohol use by students, increase economic vitality, and improve quality of life by enrolling low-income sixth-grade students in the program. The student commits to meeting the conditions of the scholarship and the state commits to setting money aside for tuition to college. Now the governor is attempting to amend the program by inserting a failed amendment into the budget bill that would allow the state to renege on its part of the commitment. How audacious! It’s unconscionable.

Believe me, there is even more bad news about this simple budget bill. We absolutely must stand up, again, and say “no.” Say no to manipulating numbers to create the pretense of supporting public schools. Say no to using tax dollars or credits to pay parochial and private schools. Say no to reneging on a commitment to Hoosier school children who can make a better future for themselves, their families, and the state of Indiana.

Rick Muir is president of the Indiana Federation of Teachers, AFT/AFL-CIO. IFT represents nearly 7,000 teachers and school personnel in Indiana. He can be reached at (765) 643-5432. Muir is also president of the Anderson Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 519.