Letter to the Editor

State rep's mailer on education misleading

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

To the Editor:

In regard to the recent mailer that went out across the State of Indiana with boilerplate language, I want to discourage our current State Representative, Jim Baird, from using such literature to represent his work. It is grossly misleading.

It contained the heading: Investing In Our Future: Hoosier Children. This is far from accurate. Baird (or someone else who gives him credit for creating this mailer) states that the budget increases education funding by $474 million. That equates to a 2.3 percent statewide average increase each of the two years of the biennium. Average means that some schools will receive more and some less, in other words, we will have some winners and some losers. Rep. Baird should only be concerned that the schools in his district are winners. Would you not agree?

Total school funding for the school districts in HD 44 are as follows:

District20162017
State Avg.2.3%2.3%
N Putnam1.8%1.3%
Greencastle-0.7%-0.7%
S Putnam1.3%0.5%
Cloverdale-7.4%-1.6%
Clay Comm.1.3%1.4%
Spencer-Owen-1.3%0.8%
Eminence-3.4%-3.0%
Monroe-Gregg2.2%0.7%
Martinsville1.0%0.6%

As you can see, the 2.3 percent increase did NOT occur for most of the school corporations in District 44. Rep. Baird voted for a budget that did NOT provide well for the school corporations in his district. Is he representing his constituents? Rep. Baird "hopes" that the per-student increase to $5,088 by 2017 will "help ensure that schools have the necessary resources to boost student achievement." This means little to all of the public school that are actually losing ground and laying off teachers to the detriment of our traditional public school students.

In addition, to make matters worse for District 44, the budget that Baird voted for supports the expansion of charter schools and private school vouchers in OTHER areas, where he does NOT represent constituents.

A new charter school grant program of $500 per student is created for certain charters. This will cost the state $10 million each of the next two years. This was supported by Baird. A new charter school loan program of $50 million is created to provide low-interest loans (lower than rates for traditional public schools) from the State's Common School Fund. This was also supported by Baird.

According to the Indiana Department of Education, the following school districts in District 44 have been directly impacted by public tax dollars leaving the public schools for private voucher schools:

Districts 12-1313-14
Spencer-Owen$7,306$23,045
Clay Comm.$32,630$32,929
Martinsville$35,809$219,675

Rep. Baird's mailer states that teachers will be rewarded with $70 million in performance funding for highly effective and effective teachers. These ratings are largely determined by student standardized test scores. This legislation in 2011 was also supported by Baird. Funding for Fiscal Year 2016 will remain at the current $30 million level.

Now that ISTEP test results will be delayed, it is unclear when teachers will see those funds. Funding for 2017 will increase to $40 million statwide. However, Indiana's data on teacher salary increases is dismal. Indiana shows the second worst decline in teacher salaries in the nation. As for the "Teacher Tax Credit," teachers have spent much more than $100 out of their own pockets on classroom supplies for their students for years.

What Rep. Baird calls "innovation" prevents teachers from cooperating and working with the administration to find the best solutions to improve student learning locally, without input from those not in District 44.

Enough is enough, Rep. Baird. The constituents of House District 44 deserve much better.

Kimberly A. Fidler
Greencastle