INPEA Statehouse Express

INPEA Express: Statehouse Edition Season 7, Episode 1

• INPEA • Season 7 • Episode 1

Share episode

Tune into INPEA's first podcast of the 2026 legislative session to see what James and Chris are following at the Indiana Statehouse. 

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the INPEA Express Podcast. I'm your host, James McNeini, and blessed to serve as the Executive Director of the Indiana Nonpublic Education Association. I'm joined today by our Associate Executive Director, Chris Brunson, and together we tackle the legislative advocacy work of our association. We're a few weeks into our 2026 session, and in this podcast, we'll provide a brief update of some of the bills that affect nonpublic schools directly, and then some that affect us indirectly. So before we start diving into bills, Chris, why don't you tell us what we need to know about this 2026 legislative session?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thanks, James. So I'll say it's always a short session in the uh odd years when the state is not tackling a budget, uh, but it is particularly short this year, with the session starting uh technically in December to tackle some other issues. We were condensed uh to just a few weeks to tackle uh the education issues. So it's moving very quickly in this shortened non-budget session.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, so our session has started. So maybe I'll begin by just talking a little bit about some of the work that we did prior to the session, because the nice thing is uh, you know, we we really got to make sure that we hit the ground running and have those relationships established before we actually uh break into those committee meetings. So we were we were able in the fall to meet uh together, both of us, right, with a lot of different stakeholders across the both the Senate and the House side, uh meeting with different lawmakers. Um we were able to discuss INPEA priorities and what some of those were. And with probably the top of that list just being, you know, typically in session, you see a lot of bills that are very regulatory. And so our goal uh for nonpublic schools is really to stay out of those regulatory bills. You know, we want to make sure that to welcome opportunities, uh, the increase school choice, increase resources to non-public schools, uh, increase opportunities for professional development for our staff, for opportunities to engage in uh, you know, best practices around school safety. All those things are great. But when it comes to regulation, we think that's best left to the public schools uh that the lawmakers govern. So uh luckily, and I think I think we can say that's been a success as we look at a lot of the regulatory bills, we are not included in those. So, speaking of those bills, let's go ahead and dive in and start looking at some of the bills that directly affect non-public schools. So, Chris, why don't you start with um House Bill 1266? It's a long one, so what can you tell us about it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it is a long one, James. Uh, I'll focus on a couple of key points in the bill that do affect nonpublic schools. Um, first is a really important issue that the Department of Ed and we were both uh advocating for, and that's to move the opening date for accepting school choice scholarship applications from July 1st to May 1st. That date of July 1st was honestly kind of an accident, I think, in the legislation last year that expanded uh to universal access for choice scholarships. Uh, because it was in the budget bill that takes effect July 1st, the the state kind of had their hands tied with accepting scholarship applications without documenting eligibility under uh prior guidelines. So this is a very simple tweak to language that would allow the Department of Ed to begin accepting those applications May 1st so that they can continue turning them around within 10 days as is required. Another provision gives nonpublic schools access to the teacher residency grant pilot program, which is a great opportunity. It's just one more way that schools and now non-public schools as well can help to train uh teachers for service to students in our classroom. Limiting emergency permits to three years is a new provision. There's some concern that emergency permits were renewed indefinitely for teachers who need to really uh hunker down and pursue a licensure. So this would allow the initial one-year permit and two renewals for a total of three years on an emergency permit. The last thing I'll hit on in House Bill 1266 removes a provision in the CSA program that was added last year to allow the program to fund 50% of transportation costs associated with a student getting from their school to their employer-based uh learning opportunity. And this would remove that matching, uh, that matching fund requirement. So the CSA could fund 100% of needed transportation costs.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that sounds great. And the fix on the voucher application window, I think that's going to be huge for our schools. That's probably the number one thing that we have heard uh from our schools reaching out is just clarification on that and a little bit of frustration, right? If you can't start processing those applications until uh July 1. The good news is the department shares our concern, right? They want to start processing those earlier. So this bill, uh, we hope it won't get a lot of pushback, but but it is definitely one that we're keeping an eye on and would love to see that date move to May 1st. So thanks for that, Chris. I'll jump into Senate Bill 199. Uh, this is also has a few things in it, uh, but a couple things specifically affect non-public schools. Um, the first thing is it does move the threshold for a school to per have to participate in the literacy cadre. Uh, you know, currently that's at 70% in any one year. And I think we've seen a lot of frustration, especially in our small schools, that that, you know, kind of a one-off cohort can really throw you below that threshold, and then you're you're right out of it, and then you kind of feel like you're doing this dance of do I have to do it? Am I in it? Am I out? So uh what this does is it moves that um that number to 75%. However, however, and this is big, it it does it over a three-year average. So we think that's just for our schools. That was one of our legislative priorities as we heard that this needle might be ratcheted up and moved up a little bit, is we said, let's go with the three-year average, and we were glad that people listened to that. Uh, the second part of this bill, which is probably one that people read about uh in the newspaper, or I guess nobody reads a newspaper anymore. You read the app, but but maybe you read it in your app, maybe you saw it on the news, but a lot about a social media ban uh for children. This would be a social media ban for students or kids aged 13 and under, and then age 14 to 17, uh students could have a social media account, but it would need explicit parent permission. There's a lot to this, but but at the end of the day, uh what I would say we are supportive and what we like about this bill are one, it places 0% of that burden on schools. Uh the burden is all placed on uh the social media companies and uh to have to figure out how to verify the age, how to make this happen. You know, I know they do some of that now, but let's face it, a kid can just lie about their birthday and move ahead and get the account. So we're all aware of that. So this would would would put the burden on them to make sure it's a more comprehensive uh way of checking that, a more valid way of checking that. Um and then I, you know, the other reason I think we're supportive of this is is hearing from school leaders all over the place, and certainly something that I dealt with. Uh a lot of discipline issues are centered around social media. Just there was actually a uh a great testimony that we heard from an assistant principal from Washington Township who stood up who just told a story. And I thought, you know what, that story takes place in every single school uh throughout our state, public, non-public, it doesn't matter. So in general, this is something that, you know, again, we're supportive of and just want to keep an eye on to make sure, uh, even though it's not school type specific, uh, so therefore it affect all kids in Indiana.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thanks, James. Um I'll I'll jump in on a couple more bills, one that's moving and one that that won't this year, but uh present some exciting opportunities. So first House Bill 1176 uh would remove the income cap on the uh SGO eligibility. So uh our schools would would be able to utilize those funds as they see fit. Um we we've got good evidence that schools are already prioritizing the use of those funds for students that need it the most. Schools are raising those funds from within their own stakeholder community and should have autonomy to determine need based on everything they know about a family rather than the arbitrary income cap. So that's been removed for the voucher program, and this would just align the SGO program to that. We are hopeful yet to get an amendment added to that bill since it does address some expansion to the SGO program. Um, we're hoping that we can add eligibility for three-year-olds to that program. We added four-year-olds a couple years ago with limited pushback. It's proven harder to get buy-in for starting the educational journey at age three for those kids through incentivized uh state funds. So we're hopeful. Um, we have some legislators energized around that idea, um, and we're hopeful that that schools will have the flexibility to start awarding for preschool three uh for for the SGO funds. Um House Bill 1149 thinks much more broadly about three-year-olds and in fact uh could create opportunities for birth through age five. That's a bill that will not move this year because it requires a lot of funding. Um, but we're really excited that conversations are happening. Um, there's some bipartisan energy around a lot of ideas that could help uh mitigate some of the challenges that last year's cuts to CCDF have caused and the greater needs for quality childcare and early childhood education that have existed in our state for years. So this would create a separate SGO program for preschool and daycare. It would benefit standalone preschools who currently are not eligible to participate, even for four-year-olds, in the existing SGO. It would benefit staff daycare programs at schools that maybe are uh helping to fulfill or fill teacher positions by offering childcare on site. Um, again, it will not move forward this session because it will require significant funding, but we're excited that revenues are looking up for the state and hopeful that uh revenues will support these kind of big uh big ideas next year.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, thanks, Chris. And I think that's super important for everybody to know is that's one of INPEA's top priorities. Uh we were all disappointed to see some preschool cuts that happened in the last budget session. Uh, and so we're trying to get consensus and work with our lawmakers to figure out uh creative ideas to bring some of that back. Hopefully, this new SGO program would be something that that uh that down the road might might bring a fix to that. So we think um, you know, that's something we're we're interested to see how that unveils uh in the in the future. Uh just a few other bills that we're tracking that don't directly mention or affect non-public schools, but they will likely have an indirect effect, indirect effect if they're passed into law for public schools. Now, these bills, um, while they only apply to public schools on paper, if they're passed, uh they can help shape the wider education landscape of things that happen and the norms here in Indiana. So we want to keep a close eye on these because we know they're gonna have a trickle-down effect uh to a lot of our schools, again, even though there are non-public schools, are not named uh in each of the bills. So three things I want to focus on there. One is uh a complete cell phone ban that's uh being talked about, and we they're calling it a bell-to-bell ban, right? So the idea that once school starts to the time school ends, cell phones need to be uh put away. Uh again, this would only be for public schools. I would think if a non-public school would have any type of other policy, or really this would apply to three of these things I'm gonna talk about. But if you're gonna do something contrary, you probably need to have some justification to be able to defend that. That's something we want our schools uh thinking about. So, in addition to that cell phone ban, they're also looking at school device requirements or restrictions at home. So this would be like if you have maybe Chromebooks or any type of school laptop devices that you use in your school, but your students can take those home. What they're saying is parents should have the ability to uh restrict and have some uh control over content and apps that are used when those when those devices go home and are used in their home. Again, that's something nice for public schools to figure some of those things out. Uh and then and then non-public schools can kind of see how that plays and whether they want to do something similar there. Uh and then the third thing, which which this one made a lot of news as well, would be a banned ingredients or an ultra-processed foods ban. Um, this would would, again, specific to public schools, specific to which they're all using the national school lunch program, uh, but certainly would have a trickle-down effect on our schools as as now we would look at, you know, do we want to also ban things like food dyes and ultra-processed foods and things like that? So something to be aware of, something to be uh watching. And of course, for us, we're we're kind of watching all these iterations and all these amendments to make sure we don't get added to these bills. Even though these you may think these are great ideas, uh, we would prefer to have that our non-public schools maintain the autonomy to have the option whether they want to uh opt into some of these regulatory things. All right. Well, that seems like a lot, Chris. Uh I don't know that our podcast move as quickly as this session is moving, but boy, it seems like we're moving really fast with this session, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's crazy fast. It's the shortest session I've experienced, and and they're not trying to accomplish any less in an abbreviated session, but that's all right. We'll we'll sleep in March, right?

SPEAKER_01:

We will. And I would just say to anybody listening out there, if you have questions, if you have uh feedback or anything like that that you'd like to us to include, those stories are often very helpful. Uh, feel free to continue to reach out to us. Uh, I think I can speak for Chris in saying that it's an honor to advocate for all of you, all of our schools out there, and be assured that we will continue to serve as the voice for non public education in Indiana. Until next time,