Porter says 2015 ‘education session’ budget is ‘nothing better and a whole lot worse’

INDIANAPOLIS – State Rep. Gregory W. Porter (D-Indianapolis), ranking Democrat on the Indiana House Ways & Means Committee, today issued the following statement on the biennial state budget approved today by the Indiana General Assembly:

“In years to come, people will laugh when they recall that the governor and his Republican supermajorities described 2015 as the ‘education session’ of the Indiana General Assembly.

“But there isn’t anything funny about what the Republicans are about to unleash on our state over the next two years. Despite their rhetoric, they have amped up the process of gutting our state’s public school system.

“They will focus on their claim that they have provided more than $460 million in new funding for education, without even mentioning that 137 schools will lose funding in the first year of the budget and 116 in the second year. And, once again, the more than $300 million in state support for schools that was taken out by the previous administration remains missing…forever, I would suspect.

“How is this possible? By continuing the unabated growth in charter schools and vouchers at the expense of public schools that don’t get to pick and choose who they can educate. Since the Republicans refused to accept the House Democratic proposal to provide transparency in how much of your tax dollars go to which type of school system, they can continue the myth that they are helping all. In fact, they are helping a select few.

“Again, the dirty little secret here is that this evisceration harms urban and rural schools. I would also remind folks that the House Democratic budget proposal made sure that every school district was protected…and it restored the $300 million that was taken away.

“Just remember that this budget has no cap on the number of additional vouchers that can be created. It provides a $500 per student grant for charters, even those that show only middling progress. It also provides substantially more funding for virtual charters—a program that once was touted as a money-saving enterprise. Not anymore, apparently.

“Perhaps it is fitting that this bloated document contains the machinery that completes the gutting of our state’s common construction wage. Not only does it slap the faces of construction workers across this state, but it paves the way for numerous teachers to be pink-slipped because schools cannot afford them.

“Providing a measly tax credit to help teachers buy school supplies for their students—something they wouldn’t have to do if the state helped support schools correctly—doesn’t seem like much of a consolation prize in the face of losing a job.

“When one considers the tortured road this budget has taken this session, there should be no surprise that further examinations will help reveal more unpleasant surprises, like $84 million for a regional cities program that no one can explain in any detail, while no new funding is found for food banks or tobacco cessation, and there’s no funding at all for local roads and streets.

“This is what passes for fiscal responsibility in an era of single-party control of our state government. From what has been seen this session, the people of Indiana are going to be paying now and later and later and later….”