As buses rolled into the Anderson High School parking lot Tuesday morning, a group of teachers gathered around the flagpole near the building’s main entrance.
Huddled against a damp, chilly wind, they listened as Randy Harrison, president of the Anderson Federation of Teachers Local 519, provided updates on legislation being considered in the Indiana General Assembly that would require school board candidates to be nominated in primaries. Many educators, he said, are alarmed that Senate Bill 287 — co-authored by State Sen. Mike Gaskill, R-Pendleton — would make school board elections needlessly partisan.
Other legislation, Harrison said, could prove harmful to public educators by changing or removing funding mechanisms for certain segments of programming.
“There is… a push to defund public schools through various policies that are moving through, as well as policies that are moving through the General Assembly to promote charter schools and more public tax dollars going to religious schools in the form of vouchers,” Harrison said.
Following Harrison’s remarks, about 25 teachers staged a short “walk-in,” some of them linking arms, most of them dressed in blue in a display of support for public education. Other similar demonstrations were taking place across the state.
The coordinated display of support, teachers said, was meant both as a call to action for their colleagues and a reminder to others that “we’re still here, and we want to be here,” according to Todd Callen, a freshman English teacher at AHS who organized Tuesday’s walk-in.
“We’re not here to make a profit,” Callen said. “We don’t reject people because they’re not academically gifted. We don’t reject anybody like that – we can’t and we shouldn’t, because…we need them all to be citizens, so this is the melting pot. If we take that away, it’s going to be chaos.”
Senate Bill 287 is currently being studied by the House Committee on Election and Apportionment. Full passage in that chamber faces uncertain prospects. State Rep. Kyle Pierce, R-Anderson, said that although he supports the bill in its current form, he understands the misgivings it’s generating among educators.
“I think getting involved and having your voice be heard is never a bad thing, regardless of what your position is,” Pierce said.
ACS Superintendent Joe Cronk said issues being discussed at the Statehouse, along with increasingly heated rhetoric coming from Washington concerning public education in general, are creating a challenging environment for teachers to function in.
“The attack on education is what we’re here to rally against, because if you attack education, you attack children, you attack our future,” Cronk said. “We’re here in support of the teachers, who are in support of the students, and rallying to raise awareness that harming the Department of Education will harm all of us.”
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin.