A Texas man who took hostages in a northwestern Indiana realty office and held police at bay for several hours suffered three gunshot wounds before dying, likely from two different weapons, a coroner said Saturday. Roy L.INDIANAPOLIS – Thousands of Hoosier children would be eligible for state-paid vouchers to private schools under a divisive bill heard Tuesday in the House Education Committee.
Republican lawmakers on the panel made significant changes to the legislation Tuesday – including lowering the income thresholds and holding private schools to some accountability standards if they accept state dollars.
A vote on House Bill 1003 is expected today.
"My passion for this is both personal and professional," Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said. "Parents should have the right to choose the opportunity that meets the needs of their children."
He told the committee he is a product of private education, having attended Catholic school for 12 years. He sent his own kids to public school.
Bennett also said the bill is "not a condemnation of our public school system. I think it's a complement."
Dena Rae Hancock, an Indianapolis mother of seven, testified against the bill. She told the committee that despite public perception Indiana public schools have steadily improved over the past two decades in eight out of 10 categories.
"Vouchers are a luxury that we and our children simply cannot afford," she said, also noting her constitutional concerns regarding the separation of church and state.
Many private schools are faith-based. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that state vouchers for parochial schools did not violate the federal constitution.
Dozens of Hoosiers testified for and against the bill over four hours Tuesday. Democrats asked pointed questions about the program.
Nationwide, there are 26 voucher programs across 16 states and Washington D.C. About 190,000 students are using vouchers or scholarships to go to private schools.
House Bill 1003, as amended Tuesday, would give Indiana's poorest students – those qualifying for the federal free and reduced lunch program – a voucher in the amount of 90 percent of that school district's per-pupil funding.
A family of four is eligible for free and reduced lunch if it makes less than $40,878.
A student whose household makes up to 200 percent of the amount qualifying for the free and reduced lunch program – about $80,000 for a family of four – could receive a 50 percent voucher. Lawmakers eliminated a voucher for households making more money than that in a Tuesday amendment.
Using a statewide average, the voucher would be about $5,000 for the poorest students and $2,700 for those making the higher income.
The voucher amount, however, would vary by district depending on per pupil funding for that corporation.
And the voucher would be capped at $4,500 for elementary students through grade eight.
Private schools that accept the publicly-funded vouchers would have to give its students the ISTEP+ test and be placed in accountability categories like public schools.
There are 291 accredited non-public schools that already take the ISTEP+ test. An additional 575 nonaccredited, non-public schools do not.
An amendment to the bill says only private schools in the top three categories – A, B or C – would be eligible to accept vouchers. If a school slips into the lower categories it, will be suspended from taking new voucher students until it improves.
The program would not be available to the 100,000 Hoosiers students now in private schools in Indiana. Only students in public schools for the previous two semesters would be eligible. This is the only way to ensure the program doesn't cost the state additional money.
But local districts losing the students will lose funding for those students.
Because the full per-pupil amount won't transfer, the bill actually creates a small savings for the state. That money would be redistributed through the state's school funding formula and specifically target districts with lower per-pupil funding.
Private schools are not required to accept all students who apply. Instead, the bill says the schools cannot use different admission standards for the voucher students compared with other students that attend the school.
