Fiscal tug-of-war stalls Indiana voucher expansion
A plan to make vouchers more widely available to families has met a roadblock: So despite the momentum, lawmakers say they want more time to look at the voucher program approved two years ago.
A plan to make vouchers more widely available to families has met a roadblock: So despite the momentum, lawmakers say they want more time to look at the voucher program approved two years ago.
The Senate proposal would allow siblings of students already receiving vouchers to qualify for the program, raise the value of each voucher by $200 and eliminate a one-year waiting period in public schools for students who attend "failing" schools.
The Indiana Senate Education Committee is signing off on a limited expansion of school vouchers one day after the state's highest court deemed vouchers constitutional.
In a 5-0 vote, the justices rejected claims that the law primarily benefited religious institutions that run private schools. The decision paves the way for a possible expansion of the program.
Any expansion of Indiana's already ambitious school voucher program may have to wait after senators pushed for more information Wednesday to determine the effects of the fledgling program.
A proposal to expand Indiana's private school voucher program was denounced during a Statehouse rally on Tuesday as a step that would take millions of dollars away from the state's public schools.
The fate of a proposal to expand Indiana's private school voucher program by making kindergartners and some other students immediately eligible could come down to something that no one seems to know — how much it will cost.
Supporters of Indiana's charter schools and private school vouchers packed a Statehouse corridor with hundreds of children from those schools for a rally Monday as they backed expansion of those programs.
Kindergartners and some other students in Indiana would be immediately eligible for the state's private school voucher program under an expansion plan the House approved Thursday.
Indiana's new Democratic state schools superintendent would no longer oversee the private school voucher program that she has opposed under a proposal approved Tuesday by a Republican-controlled legislative committee.
The House Ways and Means Committee removed a provision that would have opened the voucher program to current private school students by not requiring them to first spend at least one year in public schools.
The measure would remove a one-year waiting period students have to spend in public school before qualifying for a voucher and qualify wealthier families for the program in certain cases.
Pence policy director Marilee Springer told members of the House education committee Tuesday that the governor supports a sweeping package of education changes that would end a one-year waiting period to obtain the scholarships.
The chairman of the Indiana Senate Education Committee says any proposals to expand the state's private school voucher system will have to be first approved by the Indiana House.
Gov. Mike Pence and top Republican legislators plan to barrel ahead this year with the "freight train" of education changes sought by Indiana's former governor, including proposals to expand school vouchers and use private money to send children to preschool.
The proposal sponsored by Republican state Sen. Carlin Yoder of Middlebury would eliminate the requirement that siblings of current voucher students first attend a public school for a year before becoming eligible for the program.
Indiana lawmakers will look at expanding what is already the nation's largest school voucher program when the General Assembly gets to work Monday despite concerns that the program is hurting public schools in big cities.
During Republican Tony Bennett’s tenure as superintendent of public instruction, Indiana became the poster child for school choice. But with Bennett’s surprising election loss to Democrat Glenda Ritz this month, the future of charter schools and private-school vouchers is murkier.
Attorneys responded to pointed questions and knotty hypothetical scenarios thrown at them by the five justices on the Indiana Supreme Court during a legal battle Wednesday morning over Indiana’s school-voucher program.
Incoming state school Superintendent Glenda Ritz says she intends to remove herself as a plaintiff in a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the state's popular school voucher program.