Statehouse Express: Season 6, Episode 10

As we enter the final weeks of the 2025 legislative session, catch up on what's happened at the Statehouse in our latest legislative update. 

Transcript

Statehouse Express: Season 6, Episode 10

Hi I’m John Elcesser, Executive Director at INPEA, and Welcome to the Statehouse Express! 

We are getting down to the last week or two of the 2025 Legislative Session and things are getting hectic down on Washington Street. All committees have ended their work for the session. Monday is the last day for second reading amendments and then Tuesday is the third reading deadline. Any bills not making it out of both chambers by the third reading deadline are “technically” dead. I say “technically” because any language that passed out of at least one house can be inserted into another bill in conference committee (as long as it is germane to the bill it is being inserted into). Germaneness can be a point of great debate, especially at this time in the session.

The big news from last week was that the Senate Appropriations Committee released its version of the budget and there were some significant changes from the House’s version. First and foremost, they removed the universal eligibility for the voucher program. This was somewhat anticipated. We expected the Senate might remove it even if it was simply to have a bargaining chip. Time will tell. The budget always goes to a conference committee to discuss and resolve their differences. It is our hope that removing the financial eligibility will be reinserted with support from the House. The Senate also removed any increased funding for CSAs and ESAs. We’re sure that this will also be a topic of discussion in conference committee. 

As somewhat of a surprise, the Senate also proposed moving both CSAs and ESAs from the Treasurer’s Office to the Department of Education. The Senate’s budget also included an increase in Special ed and ELL funding. Things will start moving pretty quickly, although we won’t have a final budget for a couple of weeks. So there is plenty of time to engage, so please do!

A few other bills I’ll mention, HEA 1102 was signed by the Governor. It allows school corporations to partner with religious entities to provide preschool education. HB 1515 was amended in Senate Appropriations to remove the part that allowed non-public schools to have their own police force. 

I really didn’t understand their reasoning, except that a few Senators believe that are too many different types of police forces? (I phrase that as a question because I really don’t know what their concern was ) Currently public and charter schools can establish a police force so why not a nonpub ? 

Still included in the bill as it goes to third reading are: Choice Eligibility Appeals Process, Access to STEM Teacher recruitment grants (which aren’t currently funded in the budget) and giving our leaders the ability to participate in the State Principals’ Institute.

HB 1634 requires public schools to automatically place middle school students in an advanced math courses if the student meets certain criteria. We are not sure if this could have a direct impact on our middle schools.

We’ll provide a more detailed overview of all the legislation that we are tracking next week as it becomes more clear which bills are moving forward and what they exactly include after amendments.

Folks, we are definitely in the home stretch! We need ALL of our stakeholders to engage! We are currently focused on reaching out to the Senate but we will switch to the House very soon. Please help us by staying engaged and responding to our alerts. The finish line is in sight. Let’s get across it! 

One final note, if you aren’t aware, you can now purchase sponsorships for INPEA’s 50th Anniversary Gala. Don’t forget on September 18th, we hope to see you at the Indiana Roof Ballroom for an evening of celebration.

(With that said) We’ll see you back here next week for the next episode of the Statehouse express!