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MCCSC teachers 'Pack the House' to support public education

By Liz DeSantis

Posted April 14, 2023

(Liz DeSantis)

Hundreds of teachers from around the state packed the Statehouse Thursday to make their voices heard as legislators debate the session’s education agenda.

Almost 400 of Monroe County Community School Corporation’s teachers were among the crowd chanting, “Save our schools,” and carrying signs saying, “Reading is not a crime.”

Other teachers carried books they said could be threatened with removal from libraries and classroom discussion under SB-380, with titles including children’s book, “Hair Love.”

And most wore red, representing the theme for the day, “Red for ed.”

Indiana State Teacher Association Board Member Paul Farmer said he and MCCSC Superintendent Jeff Hauswald worked to make sure area teachers were represented at Thursday’s rally.

“We talked about it, and I said, ‘I'll double it,’ and we more than doubled it. We've almost tripled the number that we needed to shut the school down,” Farmer said.

Hauswald said more than half of the district’s 820 teachers asked for a substitute to attend the event, leading to MCCSC transitioning to e-learning Thursday. In a letter sent to parents last week, Hauswald said in-person classes could not be “safely” carried out.

“We shouldn't be here,” Farmer said. “We should be back with our kids in school, but they're forcing us to do it.”

Teachers wrote “postcards” to their representatives asking them to vote “No” or “Yes” on certain bills.

Arlington Heights third grade teacher Kelly Olsen is urging her representative to vote “No” on SB-486. Known as the “Discussion Bill,” it which would take teacher union representatives out of conversations with school administrators regarding class sizes and curricula.

“They want to take a lot of our rights away as educators, and I think it's important that we still are able to do what we love to do without having to worry about prosecution or not being able to have a voice,” Olsen said.

Read more: Indiana State Teachers Association members protest education bills, demand higher pay

Olsen also said that she is concerned that there are “several bills” that “are not only harmful to staff, but very harmful to the kids,” including public education funding cuts in favor of increased charter school funding.

Hauswald attended the rally with many of MCCSC’s teachers. He said MCCSC administration is supportive of the teachers’ “advocacy” for increased public education funding and raising concern for “Indiana’s new government-funded private schools.”

Even though Hauswald said these funding cuts could deliver decreased pay raises under inflation for teachers, many said they were not there for themselves.

“You have a group of people who literally have gotten into the profession because they care about the next generation, so we're not going to be silenced,” Hoosier Hills Career Center agriculture teacher Katie Frew said. “We're going to do our work, and we're going to keep showing up for kids.”

Read more: Senate Republicans unveil state budget proposal, without any school voucher expansion

Monroe County has passed three consecutive referendums to increase funding for schools in the county, but Hauswald said last week that the financial responsibility should not just be “on the backs of our own taxpayers.”

“Their work is some of the most important work of any profession,” he said. “And yet, when the revenue is there, and the funds exist, it seems overly simplistic that our legislators can fund the priorities that they have.”

MCCSC teachers were easily identifiable at the Statehouse, with many wearing a design by a Monroe County Education Association member and printed by Bloomington’s BadKneesTs.

Read Next

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