ICPE 2021 Legislative Positions
Keeping Public K-12 Funding with Public Schools
- ICPE supports a moratorium on the expansion of funding or enrollment for voucher, charter or innovation network schools as well as any expansion of tax credits for contributions to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). At a time of financial uncertainty, Indiana must focus on its Constitutional requirement to fund its traditional public schools, which educate over 90% of Hoosier students.
- ICPE opposes other mechanisms that divert state taxpayers' dollars away from traditional K-12 schools and into private hands through state-funded proposals such as “Education Options Accounts” (or any other variation of Education Savings Accounts), ”microschools” and home-schooling.
- ICPE supports legislation that would maintain funding levels at or above those from the previous biennium and adjusted for inflation.
- ICPE supports legislation that would maintain ADM per-pupil funding at or above levels from the previous biennium.
- ICPE supports legislation that would maintain 100% funding for virtual education by “brick and mortar” schools for emergency situations.
- ICPE supports legislation that would provide a remedy to the school funding formula with a recalculation and expansion of additional exceptional pupil count weights.
- ICPE supports legislation to provide additional funding to increase teacher pay.
- ICPE supports tax credits for public school families for textbooks and related education expenses equal to the tax credits received by home school and private school families.
- ICPE supports legislation that requires all Indiana schools receiving public funds to be financially transparent and have the same reporting requirements.
- ICPE supports legislation that requires all Indiana schools receiving public funds to meet and report the same academic, operational and accountability requirements. All schools receiving public funds must also adhere to legal standards and be held to the same equal access and public access requirements as those of traditional public schools.
- ICPE supports legislation and policies that promote transparency in the state budget regarding Scholarship Granting Organizations and how tax dollars are being used in choice scholarship (voucher), charter and innovation network schools.
- ICPE supports holding our public schools “harmless” in every respect from the latest state test results (ILEARN) and supports disconnecting the link between test scores and their use in the evaluation of teachers and schools.
- ICPE supports a moratorium on assigning A-F letter grades to schools and school systems because there is no way to accurately evaluate or compare academic progress of schools during this pandemic. We support the use of multiple measures when evaluating our schools.
- ICPE supports maintaining Indiana's constitutional mandate to provide K-12 public education by keeping an independent Department of Education which is focused on K-12 education.
- ICPE supports a requirement that the Governor-appointed Secretary of Education have K-12 traditional public school superintendent experience in Indiana.
Read more about ICPE's legislative positions here.