Some short bills that didn’t seem necessarily worth a full blog post of their own:
SB 29 (Koch) – Requires schools to offer an Indiana studies course. I’m a little torn. I’m not a particular fan of the General Assembly dictating curriculum, but I really think we should know more about our state, its history, and its culture. My bicentennial project gave me some notion of how ignorant I am about our history.
SB 30 (Koch) – Requires the Department of Education to provide reports to school corporations, letting them know which schools are receiving voucher students from the school corporation’s district. This strikes me as reasonable. I’m a little surprised it’s not already happening.
SB 43 (Tomes) – Generally, employers are prohibited from having a rule that precludes employee’s from having a firearm in the trunk of their car (usually at the employer’s parking lot). There is a list of exceptions (e.g. colleges, day care centers, public utilities) where the employer can enforce such a rule. This legislation removes penal institutions from that list.
SB 45 (Zakas) – Shortens General Assembly’s “long” session by 8 days and lengthens the “short” session by 7 days. I don’t have strong opinions on this one. Within some limits, it seems like the amount of legislation will expand to accommodate the available time, and it seems like progress on anything vaguely controversial will be made only under deadline pressure.
SB 68 (Breaux) – Repeals the unconstitutional language in the Indiana Code about same sex marriages being void. These types of legislation can be a little tough to pass, I think. On the one hand, you want unconstitutional language out of the code. On the other hand, where something has been declared unconstitutional, there might be a lot of legislators who are going to be bitter about the declaration of unconstitutionality.
SB 81 (Boots) – Permits cold beer sales at grocery stores and drug stores. I’m in favor!
SB 86 (Leising) – In which Sen. Leising continues her misguided crusade to make cursive mandatory in schools.
SB 87 (Leising) – Requires schools to use letter grades on report cards.
SB 29 (Koch) I recall having Indiana history in elementary school
My daughter is learning Indiana history as a 4th grader.
Yeah, I believe we had indiana history in the 4th grade, also
It’s been part of the 4th grade curriculum for many years. The guy hasn’t bothered to check with the Supt. of Public Education, which tells you something about the level of communication.
And you might be amazed at the lack of accountability for voucher schools when so much money is being poured into them, often down the drain. For that matter, the schools are watched like a patient on the operating table, but when kids are educated outside them, it’s Katie-bar-the-door. In view of the fact that the schools are responsible for the education of all kids, that says someone is going to be miffed one day when they have been cheated by a voucher or home school experience and the schools know nothing about it.
At the same time we’ve thrown the doors open on voucher spending without accountability, we can’t expand pre-K because we have to see how the initial trial goes.
Hmm.
“At the same time we’ve thrown the doors open on voucher spending without accountability”
Silly you.
Don’t you know white people are getting that money and that makes it completely different?
Isn’t the bill for a High School class? While it is nice that the 4th grade teaches Indiana history, a followup course in grades 10 to 12 could be useful.
It should probably be taught in high school to begin with because 4th grade kids don’t have much of a sense of history or are ready to grasp of some of the complexities involved. After all, history is not just a bunch of sequenced facts. Not to say that high schoolers are terribly sophisticated. I just wonder whether the legislator actually had a conversation with the education people. They used to do that all of the time before starting the legislative process.
After all, when you have ideology, who needs data unless the money is going someplace where you don’t want it to go.
A few years ago, Rick Perry demanded accountability data from the Texas universities to determine which group was “paying its way”. To his chagrin, the tech departments were in the hole and the humanities were making money. So much for that accountability information.