Dem gov. candidate, Indiana schools superintendent discuss state education
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick said of all the various challenges she faces, one of the things she worries about most in terms of Indiana education is funding.
At an Education Town Hall conducted over Zoom and streamed on Facebook live, Woody Myers, the Democratic candidate for governor, spoke with McCormick about a plethora of issues, from funding to loss of teachers.
“I have seen over a decade, close to two decades now, as far as the inadequacies with funding,” McCormick said. “I know people will say it’s not all about the money, but it’s very difficult to serve students to the opportunities they deserve when there’s inadequate or inequities in our state funding.”
McCormick said while the state’s funding formula is complex, Indiana is “just not keeping up.”
She called Indiana’s placement of 50th out of 50 in the nation on salary increases for educators since 2002 “unacceptable,” and talked about the importance of the governor’s race, in addition to the House and Senate races, which she noted are extremely important as far as breaking the super majority.
“We have policies that are expensive and inefficient,” McCormick said. “That is a direct reflection of our state leadership.”
Also during the event, Myers noted Indiana’s loss of teachers to neighboring states and the decrease of those going into the profession coming out of universities.
He said educators leaving schools, unfilled vacancies in positions and a lack of people entering the profession can all go back to the issue of funding.
“All of that, in many respects, is part of the funding problem,” Myers said. “It’s not just that folks don’t make enough money to bring home and take care of their families, but it has ramifications throughout the system.”
Often, teachers will leave the profession between one and three years after they begin, and their departure is a crisis, McCormick said.
While teachers leave, many universities are struggling with the pipeline of new students going into the profession, and about 4,500 teachers are on emergency permits, which means t hey ’ r e teaching a subject outside of their expertise or formal training, McCormick said.
“COVID has really accelerated our retirements,” she said. “We know that as more great educators leave the profession, which is really hard to replace that experience, we simply have very few options to replace them with.”
McCormick and Myers also talked about the elements of the pandemic that have affected teachers throughout the state.
“COVID has truly affected your superintendents, your teachers and our students across the state of Indiana,” Myers said. “I’ve taken the opinion that we should have given much more public health leadership to our superintendents as they struggle with the difficult situations of when to do distance learning, when to do hybrid learning — I just believe we could have done a much, much better job than that.”
McCormick said districts have done the best they can through the difficult situation and have been working with local and state health departments, though quarantine numbers have still continued to rise.
While quarantine numbers rise, McCormick said teachers, administration and students have all continued to do the best they can in the circumstances.
“They have done an amazing job during COVID,” McCormick said. “Nothing’s perfect, nothing about COVID is perfect, nothing about our procedures are perfect, but my goodness, they have stepped up to the plate and have done an amazing job.”