Schools throughout the state of Indiana like the rest of the country are in dire straights. In my area, decisions that will damage public education for years are being made right now. Monroe County School officials are in the process of making drastic changes that will dismantle core elements of public education. Governor Mitch Daniels is at the root of the crisis happening in Indiana now. He pushed through tax reforms in 2008 that changed the funding source for Indiana schools from property taxes to sales and income tax. The state announced in December it would be $300 million short in meeting its funding obligations for schools in 2010. Corporations statewide are faced with cutting nearly 5% out of their general fund accounts which pay for teachers' salaries. Two more years of similar cuts to public education are anticipated due to what I believe is a concerted effort by Daniels to squeeze education, we're faced with the elimination of librarians, art, P.E. and music education. With Daniels scheduled to be in Bloomington during the time our community faces this education crisis the governor helped create, a school board member planned this silent protest to tell Mitch it's time to tap into the "Rainy Day Fund" because it's raining.
Bloomington, Indiana Rally to encourage Governor Mitch Daniels to release rainy day funds to fund education.
Was Mitch Daniels sympathetic to the plight of teachers in his state at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon Daniels was attending while the umbrella protest was going on outside? He said this about funding education to pay for teachers' salaries: “Why is it fair to raise taxes on lower-income people to pay for people who are better compensated?” Little guy that he is, Mitch is alway concerned about the little guy, that's why he's forcing cities to lay off police officers and firefighters, as well as raising business fees, because the 1% property tax cap he enacted in 2008 have reduced local tax revenues. Now he's trying to amend the state constitution to make the 1% tax of the gross assessed property value permanent. http://ballotpedia.org/... Daniels with help from State Superintendent of Education Tony Bennett plans to dismantle public education to make people want change so they can offer an alternative that busts unions, doesn't require federal mandates in the same measure, and doesn't require nearly the same regulation (i.e. private education or charter school). The fear here is if the Republicans win back the Indiana House in the fall election Mitch Daniels will do away with collective bargaining for teachers in the next General Assemby. We've begun to organize locally demanding that the community be more included in the the discussion of the devastating cuts. At last night's school board meeting in a packed high school auditorium over 100 citizens spoke directly to the board about the cuts they are about to make. At a little past 11 p.m.(the meeting had started at 7) 150 people were still in the audience when Eric Knox made these remarks.
I started a Facebook group a week ago that now has over 1300 members and a wealth of information about public education issues all across the country. http://www.facebook.com/... We're hoping to organize a statewide effort to promote candidates this fall who support fully funding public education and hope to curtail the conservative movement to destroy our public schools. We need to make some noise in Indiana. And we need to make sure the rest of the country knows about George W. Bush's "My Man Mitch." I still blame Daniels for the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina because he drastically cut funding to the Army Corp of Engineers in 2001 when he was Bush's head of OMB. He is attempting to privatize every facet of Indiana government often with disastrous results. Unfortunately we have three more years to deal with this man because the democrats decided not to run a progressive candidate against him last fall. Now with a two term limit for Indiana governors Mitch won't have anything to cut after 2012. It's sad to know he is being touted as a serious presidential candidate for the republicans because they have such a shallow pool of candidate.