‘Give Gary schools back to Gary people’
City teachers urge state lawmakers to return district to local control
A delegation of teachers from Gary were on hand Tuesday when the American Federation of Teachers gathered at the Statehouse on Organization Day to voice their public education concerns to legislators.
“What we are here for is to talk about our list of concerns, possibly demands, some ideas we like to see take form in the upcoming legislative session,” said Randy Harrison, AFT vice president.
“Teachers are in the house to ask our lawmakers to put politics and partisan party relationships aside and do what is best for our students . ... We are here to urge state legislators to deliver what our kids and our communities need. We are all about the kids,” he said.
State Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, joined the union in its call for education reform.
Qaddoura said it is time for legislators to return local control to the Gary Community School Corp. GCSC has operated under control of the Distressed Unit Appeal Board for the past five years and does not have a locally elected school board, giving local residents no voice in the schools.
“Gary needs local control of their schools,” he said to cheers. About a third of the teachers in the audience were from Gary.
Qaddoura called it fiscally irresponsible for the legislature to be sitting on billions of dollars in a rainy day fund when they do not want to fund important programs such as statewide pre-kindergarten, which has been shown to have the strongest correlation to helping youngsters learn to read.
Indiana’s public schools are operating at a 2010 funding level,
which needs to change, he said. Instead of offering ideas on how to improve schools, legislators pushed legislation to police school boards, filter through history books and share funds with private schools and charters.
Last session, the Indiana General Assembly passed a bill — over the governor’s veto — that would ban transgender girls playing on a girls sport or team in K-12 schools. It also passed a law that would limit teachers’ ability to discuss “divisive concepts” like racism, LGBTQ+ rights and the Holocaust, and considered other legislation that would have allowed teachers and librarians to be criminally charged if children were exposed to books that described nudity and sexual conduct, among other things.
Public schools need more funding to adequately staff their schools and provide needed services and opportunities, he said.
“Do your job. Fund our schools. Fund our teachers,” Qaddoura said.
Harrison called on legislators to work with teachers as professionals to address concerns and enact legislation that would improve the educational environment.
He said Indiana’s public schools are suffering from defunding and destabilization as the state gives more and more money to private school voucher programs and charter schools that do not produce the same results as public schools. Ninety percent of Indiana’s students attend public schools, he said.
Disinvestment in public schools has led to increased class sizes, no nurse on duty, and lack of mental health support for students, teachers and support staff among other issues, Harrison said.
“Also, as we all know, our teachers’ salaries are lagging. Indiana is about 13th from the bottom in teachers’ salaries,” he said.
Teachers know this lack of respect, defunding efforts and low salaries lead to what people are calling a massive teacher shortage, Harrison said.
“In my book, I call it a massive teacher exodus,” he said.
Legislators can fix many of the problems by tapping into the state’s $6 billion surplus in the rainy day fund. He said American Rescue Plan Act funding has helped public schools a little but it is not enough.
“Again, we ask you to list to us. Fund public schools,” he said.
Harrison said legislators need to end the massive standardized testing system so teachers can focus on education instead of test preparation. Efforts to weaken teachers’ unions, such as preventing the automatic deduction for union dues from paychecks, must stop, he said. Teachers’ unions should be on the same playing field as other unions across the state which are allowed to deduct dues from workers’ checks.
“Why single us out? It’s amazing. We are asking the legislature to say no to these kinds of bills,” he said.
What teachers would like to see is bills fostering the concept of community schools with wrap around services including healthcare and food assistance; modern, safe and welcoming school buildings, and policies to keep schools safe, he said. Teachers support ideas that fund schools so programs like music, sports, career development and industrial tech are not cut.
“We need to get back to the basics and teach reading, math and other skills to make our public school students productive members of society,” he said.
“The General Assembly has the authority to do better. They can do better,” he said.