INDIANAPOLIS — The first piece of Gov. Mitch Daniels' education reform agenda is now law.
Contracts between teachers' unions and their school corporations would be limited to just wages and benefits under a measure Daniels signed into law Wednesday afternoon.
Senate Enrolled Act 575 would bar teachers from having input on education policies such as class size, as well as hiring, firing and layoff policies.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett has championed the measure, along with Daniels. But the Indiana State Teachers Association has vigorously opposed it, and it was a chief target of an early-session rally at which 1,000 teachers protested Daniels' agenda.
Bennett called the measure being signed into law a "game-changing moment."
"Today, our students won the right to attend schools focused purely on meeting their needs and securing their academic success," he said.
Daniels has also pushed for the expansion of charter schools and a new private school voucher program, and both proposals are on track to win legislative approval before the April 29 end of the session.
The House on Wednesday night also approved a measure that would tie teacher evaluations to the performance of their students, through locally-developed measurements. It would bar teachers whose students perform the worst from receiving pay raises.
That measure is coupled with a $15 million fund that the Senate Appropriations Committee included in its budget plan that is supposed to go to merit pay for teachers whose students perform the best.
Two other pieces of the Daniels education agenda have also been worked into the two-year, $28 billion budget that is set for a vote in the Senate on Thursday.
High school students could graduate a year early, and then take $4,000 around two-thirds of the amount their school would have received in per-pupil funding had they stayed enrolled to use as a college scholarship.
A separate bill that includes that program has advanced this year, but Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, included that scholarship's move into the budget among other changes his committee made Monday.
Another addition to the budget bill would give the Indiana Board of Education a road map to intervene in schools that score poorly on the ISTEP exam and are placed on "academic probation" for five straight years.
A decade-old law requires the state to step into those schools, and language that was added to the budget would allow intervention teams to do so.
Redistricting
The House and Senate both approved the same redistricting proposal Wednesday along party lines.
A couple more procedural votes are necessary, but Wednesday's votes mean the new maps are essentially locked in and won't change again.
That means Dubois, Spencer and Perry counties are almost certain to be shifted into Indiana's 8th District U.S. House seat, now represented by Republican Larry Bucshon.
And 9th District U.S. Rep. Todd Young, another freshman Republican, will see his district stretch from the suburbs north of Louisville to those south of Indianapolis.
Internet sales tax
The Senate rejected Wednesday a measure that would have charged sales tax on the purchases Hoosiers make through online retail giant Amazon.
Sen. John Broden, D-South Bend, offered an amendment to the state's two-year, $28 billion budget that would have required that sales tax be charged on purchases through online companies that distribute through Indiana.
Broden said he is tired of waiting for Congress to impose a sales tax on Internet purchases. "I think we've been patient enough," he said. "A 7 percent price advantage, per dollar, is a big advantage."
But Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, said the problem is that the language of Broden's amendment would exempt companies such as eBay, on which Indiana has no way of imposing a sales tax.
"The problem with the amendment is that this is only a partial solution," Kenley said. "I think it clouds the issue."
Kenley's argument won out, as the Senate rejected Broden's amendment on a 16-33 vote.