Rally cry: 'Save our schools'

[hippiechick]

http://www.indystar.com/articles/5/235021-1145-102.html

By Kim L. Hooper
[e-mail]
April 7, 2005


Indiana doesn't have a public education advocate in Gov. Mitch Daniels and too few lawmakers are interested in adequately funding the state's 1,909 public schools.

That message resonated in a rally Wednesday at the Statehouse, where supporters protested proposed cuts to education spending. "Save our schools!" shouted the 1,500 protesters who carried handmade signs and tiny U.S. flags.

Organized by the state's largest education associations, the event drew teachers, parents and students critical of what they called a crisis in state funding.

...

Lawmakers are struggling to craft a new two-year spending plan. Funding for Indiana's 293 public school districts takes up nearly 40 percent of the state's $24.2 billion two-year budget.

Senate Republicans have shaped a K-12 funding plan that provides 1.2 percent more in 2006 and 1.3 percent more in 2007. Schools are used to increases of at least 2 percent a year. Even though the plan would provide overall increases in education spending, 129 public school districts would receive less in 2006 than they now receive.

"The school funding formula is not the issue. The issue is there's not enough money to adequately fund schools," said Lowell C. Rose, a consultant for the Indiana Urban Schools Association. Other groups that helped organize the rally were the Indiana State Teachers Association, the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents and the Coalition of Growing and Suburban School Districts.

As governor, Rose said, Daniels has turned his back on traditional public schools in favor of alternative charter schools and voucher proposals.

... more ...

Welcome back to the Middle Ages, Indiana; barefoot, ignorant, pregnant, and "God fearin' " ...

:eyes: