Statehouse Express: Season 6, Episode 1

Tune into John Elcesser's first podcast of the 2025 legislative session! 

Transcript

Statehouse Express: Season 6, Episode 1

January 16, 2025

Well we’re back! Welcome to the Statehouse Express 2025! We do hope you find this a useful tool in keeping up with what’s happening at the Statehouse. 

So yes we are back for the 2025 legislative session with a new administration in the Governor’s Mansion. Governor Mike Braun was sworn in as Indiana’s 52nd Governor on Monday, January 13th at 11am. The theme for his inauguration speech was The Crossroads of Freedom and Opportunity. That certainly reflects his campaign pledge to expand school choice to fully universal. We are certainly hoping that his leadership will help champion our goal of passing Universal Choice, specifically getting Universal Vouchers across the finish line. 

Governor Braun is definitely hitting the ground running. He has restructured his cabinet into 8 secretariats or verticals which includes education. Dr. Jenner will now have responsibility for all education PreK through college. In addition, on Wednesday, he signed nineteen executive orders, giving a glimpse of his philosophy on how state government should operate. On Thursday he will share his vision for the state budget. It is our understanding that it will include funding for universal vouchers. That’s a first step, the Governor’s budget never ends up being the final budget passed so we still have a lot of work to do to get choice across the finish line. 

Speaking of getting it across the finish line, INPEA has been working hard with our friends at IQE to make sure legislators are informed and our stakeholders are educated and engaged in advocating for Universal Choice. We’ve done a lot leading up to the session. Now the hard work begins, keeping the pressure on our legislators! Watch for our legislative alerts and please engage! Our legislative action center makes that easy for you.

The deadline for bills to be filed has passed. As of yesterday, INPEA is tracking 54 bills and that could still grow. On Wednesday both the House and Senate Education Committees met for the first time. We have two new House Education committee members, Rep. Hunter Smith and Rep. Andrew Ireland. The Senate Education committee has three new members, Sen. Greg Goode, Sen. Gary Byrne, and Sen. Daryl Schmitt.

On Wednesday, the House Ed committee heard two bills.  HB 1002 is a dereg/cleanup bill trying to clean up current Title 20 code. HB 1201 deals with attendance and discipline and really has little direct implications for non-pubs. And we hope it stays that way. Neither bill was voted on.

The Senate Ed Committee heard 5 bills and again none were voted on. SB 36 deals with counselor ratios and responsibilities. The intent is to reduce non-counseling responsibilities for guidance counselors. The bill does not apply to schools with a 350:1 or better student- counselor ratio which includes all of our schools. SB 255 attempts to provide flexibility for licensing STEM content area teachers. In addition it further clarifies religious instruction release time. SB 146 attempts to increase public school teachers’ salaries to a minimum of $45,000. SB 373 has a number of issues but the only a few applicable to our schools. It proposes changing the structure of summer school funding from a percentage of budget to a per student calculation. It also allows the department to delete non-functioning SGOs, those SGOs with no activity over a three year period.

Next week these bills will be voted on.  And there are lots more to come. We highlight some of the other bills of interest next week. 

As we close just a reminder that INPEA’s Day at the Statehouse is on Monday, January 27th . beginning at 11:30am Hope to see you there! But before then, we’ll see you back here next week for our next edition of the statehouse express!