According to Superintendent Jeff Swensson, the Indiana House of Representatives adjourned its 2012 session prior to voting on the education reform bill proposed by Indiana Senator Mike Delph.  According to the Indiana Constitution, in even-numbered years, the Indiana General Assembly must convene by March 14.  Swensson said despite the bill failing to reach a vote, he has been assured by Delph that the proposal will be re-introduced in the longer 2013 session.

Back in January, when Delph proposed the legislation, it included a number of other education reforms including a cursive writing mandate and class basketball structure change. Back in January, however, Swensson said he believed it was “very possible” to have the high performing school district status in place for the 2012-2013 school year.  One difference between this year’s bill and what is expected next year is that the bill will solely be about the “high performing school district” status.

Although Swensson said he is confident the measure will be passed next year, government teacher Joe Steulpe said, based on the productivity of the state legislature over the last two sessions, there may be cause for concern that it will be voted on next session.

“(Given) the past two sessions of the (Indiana) General Assembly, I’m not sure I would be overly confident on anything of substance being passed,” Stuelpe said. “It would be nice to think something like (the ‘high performing school district’ status) would give school districts a little more latitude to reward performance.  It’s something that would merit serious consideration, but ‘serious’ and ‘(Indiana) General Assembly’ are tough to put in the same sentence the past couple of years.”

In response to previous comments about having the ability to, as a district, sign a series of waivers to “opt out” of certain state requirements, Swensson said the district will forgo doing so for the 2012-2013 school year.  Instead he said he is confident Delph’s bill, along with the support of State Representative Jerry Torr, will pass in the upcoming session so that changes can be made for the 2013-2014 school year.  At that time, only half of current CHS students would still be in the district by then.