Legislators Address School Funding Need
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Jordan Fouts-
State Rep. Rebecca Kubacki and Sen. Carlin Yoder attended the mid-session legislative update, hosted by the Warsaw-Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.
The two answered questions mainly on education, such as Common Core Standards and the funding of increased security at schools. They noted needs like those, as well as infrastructure maintenance, must be considered as the House, Senate and Governor’s office try to reconcile their three versions of the state budget.
“You can see how prudent Indiana has been with its money – the biggest complaint is that we’ve cut too much from education, and now we’re trying to restore that,” said Kubacki, who in a release last month praised the House version of the budget for increasing the education operating fund by 3.3 percent, or $344 million.
“Kids have been shorted for so long and now we’re restoring that funding to where it should have been,” she later said.
Yoder agreed, saying he generally supports lowering taxes but cuts to education in the past four years have been drastic. He cited an Elkhart school forced to cut transportation, leaving young kids to walk two miles to school.
And while there is currently no standalone bill to increase funding for school security in the House, he said there is funding in the general budget.
Providing law enforcement officers to protect the 7,000 students of the Warsaw School Corp. would cost about $500,000, Superintendent Craig Hintz told the panel. Without adequate funding, he remarked, schools are forced to address those needs at the expense of staff and administrative reductions.
Specific decisions on how to address security are best left up to the school officials themselves, both legislators noted.
“In the end, I think it’s up to people like you to decide what to do to keep kids safe, and it’s up to us to give you the tools,” Yoder said to Hintz.
Both legislators also deferred to school officials on the implementation of Common Core Standards. Hintz and Tippecanoe Valley School Superintendent Brett Boggs both expressed support for the standards during the panel talk.
“The principals and superintendents have been invested in Common Core and we have to put some trust in them,” Kubacki said in response to a question on whether the standards will be used to “indoctrinate students into socialism.”
Yoder said he supports Common Core but is concerned that it could become a driving force behind federal funding, as well as a way for the federal government to “sink its claws” into local school corporations.
He said the root of the problem is that higher education is too biased, giving the example of his own professors comparing former President George W. Bush to Hitler.
“It’s very liberal. They’re indoctrinating our teachers,” he said. “I would love to do more about that.”[[In-content Ad]]
State Rep. Rebecca Kubacki and Sen. Carlin Yoder attended the mid-session legislative update, hosted by the Warsaw-Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.
The two answered questions mainly on education, such as Common Core Standards and the funding of increased security at schools. They noted needs like those, as well as infrastructure maintenance, must be considered as the House, Senate and Governor’s office try to reconcile their three versions of the state budget.
“You can see how prudent Indiana has been with its money – the biggest complaint is that we’ve cut too much from education, and now we’re trying to restore that,” said Kubacki, who in a release last month praised the House version of the budget for increasing the education operating fund by 3.3 percent, or $344 million.
“Kids have been shorted for so long and now we’re restoring that funding to where it should have been,” she later said.
Yoder agreed, saying he generally supports lowering taxes but cuts to education in the past four years have been drastic. He cited an Elkhart school forced to cut transportation, leaving young kids to walk two miles to school.
And while there is currently no standalone bill to increase funding for school security in the House, he said there is funding in the general budget.
Providing law enforcement officers to protect the 7,000 students of the Warsaw School Corp. would cost about $500,000, Superintendent Craig Hintz told the panel. Without adequate funding, he remarked, schools are forced to address those needs at the expense of staff and administrative reductions.
Specific decisions on how to address security are best left up to the school officials themselves, both legislators noted.
“In the end, I think it’s up to people like you to decide what to do to keep kids safe, and it’s up to us to give you the tools,” Yoder said to Hintz.
Both legislators also deferred to school officials on the implementation of Common Core Standards. Hintz and Tippecanoe Valley School Superintendent Brett Boggs both expressed support for the standards during the panel talk.
“The principals and superintendents have been invested in Common Core and we have to put some trust in them,” Kubacki said in response to a question on whether the standards will be used to “indoctrinate students into socialism.”
Yoder said he supports Common Core but is concerned that it could become a driving force behind federal funding, as well as a way for the federal government to “sink its claws” into local school corporations.
He said the root of the problem is that higher education is too biased, giving the example of his own professors comparing former President George W. Bush to Hitler.
“It’s very liberal. They’re indoctrinating our teachers,” he said. “I would love to do more about that.”[[In-content Ad]]
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