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Request a DemoSix candidates are seeking the Republican nomination for Indiana governor in the May 7 primary. State Affairs is providing looks at their stances on several issues. Jennifer McCormick is unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Donald Rainwater is the Libertarian candidate.
Republican gubernatorial candidates have outlined their plans for education, a topic that has received less attention than others during debates even though education funding accounts for more than half of the state’s budget when including higher education.
Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and former Attorney General Curtis Hill want to shrink the Indiana Department of Education. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Mike Braun has said more money needs to go to the classroom, and former Secretaries of Commerce Brad Chambers and Eric Doden eye better teacher pay.
A sixth candidate, Jamie Reitenour, believes Indiana’s education system should return to “core” academic subjects, as do many of the other candidates. Several have emphasized parents’ role in their children’s education. (Last year, state lawmakers expanded Indiana’s Choice Scholarship program, making it nearly universal.)
Central to the candidates’ plans is the assumption that Indiana’s students could be doing better. Last year, nearly one in five third graders failed IREAD-3, the state’s reading assessment for that grade level. An upcoming state law could see thousands of third graders held back if they aren’t reading at grade level.
Here are the candidates’ views on education:
Their plans to address Indiana students' learning loss
Mike Braun: Focus on parents, invest in the classroom
“Parents need to be in the driver’s seat,” Braun said. “If we can’t get that component correct, we’ve got to look at the underlying issues. One of them would be, we need to get more money into the classroom, take less out of the administrative side of it — in other words, focus where [we’re] going to get the most impact.”
Brad Chambers: Improve teachers' salaries, ensure students can read proficiently
“We have too much money going into administration,” Chambers said. “We have too much money going into buildings and not enough money going into teacher salaries. … We also have an absenteeism problem in our schools, and so we have to fix it because in 18 years that’s gonna affect our economic growth.”
Chambers’ campaign has shared his “Learn More, Earn More” education plan, “focused on making sure kids can read as they move into fourth grade.”
Suzanne Crouch: Parent choice, condense education-related state agencies
“I will make sure that parents have choices when it comes to their [children’s] education and that they will have control over what is being taught to our children,” Crouch said.
She wants to streamline various state agencies that deal with education into one overarching agency. “I would pull out early childhood education, take K-12, higher education, pull workforce training out of [the Department of Workforce Development] and then take a little economic development, where now we can create one education system where everyone is on the same software system, everyone is on the same page, working to ensure our children get the education and the training to be prepared for that next step in life,” Crouch said.
Eric Doden: Competition, invest in teachers, early childhood education
“I'm a firm believer in competition, and having a voucher program is very important,” Doden said. “You know, every parent should make a decision on what’s best for their child.”
The Doden campaign has proposed a teacher investment program. “We have a teacher crisis throughout the state of Indiana, especially in our small towns or rural communities,” Doden said. His program would give teachers a nearly $5,000 pay raise by exempting them from state income taxes and giving experienced educators a refundable state income tax credit to offset property taxes, he said.
“We’ve also done a great job of paying down debt,” Doden said. “We’ve taken $3 billion and paid down a pension liability. That allows us the opportunity to have fully funded pre-K, early childhood education because we have this money coming free in our budget. That means no new taxes, and we can fully fund early childhood education.”
Curtis Hill: End federal 'entanglements,' shrink Department of Education
“The Holcomb/Crouch administration’s decision to shut down education has crippled a generation of children. Our education system, my gosh, it’s horrible. I envision an education system in Indiana that’s free of federal entanglements,” Hill said. “We have over 250 employees, staff members in the Indiana Department of Education and yet third graders still have trouble reading. Well, under my administration, we’re going to start off by ripping the guts out of the education department. We’re going to cut that by half.”
He has also pledged to remove “radical gender ideology” and “critical race theory” from classrooms.
Jamie Reitenour: Return to 'core' subjects, expose children to career opportunities
Reitenour wants all children in kindergarten through fifth grade “going back to all of the core academic subjects.” She said, “In sixth grade, we’re going to have the private sector come in and mentor sixth grade classes and teach them about how AI and technology has impacted their profession because we need to start this conversation. We know we want apprenticeships senior year — every single student graduating having completed an apprenticeship.”
She also said, “Teachers’ opinions on political and social topics, critical race theory, and sexual orientation and gender identity issues have no place in the classroom.”
Their plans for workforce development
Last year, lawmakers passed House Enrolled Act 1002, which Republicans said would “reinvent” high school. The law aims to encourage work-based learning opportunities for high school upperclassmen.
In March, the State Board of Education kicked off a monthslong rulemaking change that’s expected to alter Indiana’s high school diploma requirements. The change is expected to create two new diploma options, replacing Indiana’s current slate. With the new diplomas, the state plans to give students more flexibility, allowing them to tailor their coursework to their postgraduation goals — whether college enrollment, enlistment or employment.
In addition, state officials continue efforts to improve Indiana’s college-going rate and its higher-education attainment rate — both of which sit at about 53%.
Here’s how the candidates would prepare students for the workforce:
Braun: Promote trade skills
“In a place like where I’m from, back many years ago, career and technical education, life skills — that you used to get three to four decades ago. That has almost been eliminated from the classroom,” Braun said. “You could take welding. You could take metal shop, wood shop, engine mechanics, and now you probably ought to learn how to code as a class because it’s such an important part of our economy. When you walk away from your elementary and secondary education, [you should] be equipped minimally. Whether you are going into the workforce or going to enroll or enlist, we have to get back to some of those basics. And some of that will be taking on our own higher education to get them to reorient themselves.”
Chambers: Not every kid has to go to college
“Not every kid is meant for college,” Chambers said. “ Trades are very important, whether it’s carpentry or electrical or plumbing or HVAC. Or my favorite is a civics pathway, a civics trade for firefighters and for police officers and National Guardsmen. I remember when I was growing up, I looked up to those in uniform. And so let’s educate our kids in high school starting in seventh grade what a trade program would look like. How can you build a life in Indiana through a trade program? And one of those options is college.”
Crouch: Emphasize jobs of the future
“Our education system should be preparing our children for the jobs of the future, and those are advanced manufacturing and bioscience, cybersecurity defense, health care, orthopedics and life sciences,” Crouch said. “And so we need to be preparing children that can enter into those professions. But we also need to be preparing children that can support the infrastructure that has to be in place for these professions. And it’s why I want to reform, as governor, our education system and our workforce training system because we have five agencies that deal with workforce training and education. Let’s get them down to one.”
Doden: Encourage partnerships, inform parents of trade jobs
“I think this is where some creativity and partnerships have to come in,” Doden said. “We actually have an idea that would give seniors more time to do internships and partnerships. We’ve also been encouraging businesses to go into the high schools and make them aware of some of the creative things we’re doing right around them. … But I think [these are] the kind of partnerships that we need. And then we’ve tried to also [inform] parents. One time I was in a room with 300 parents, and they all said, ‘Hey, we need more kids in the trades.’ And I asked, ‘How many of you have encouraged your kids to go into a trade?’ And nobody raised their hands. So I think that it’s also a partnership with parents, helping them understand all the opportunities as well.”
Hill: Support vocational programs
“There are so many opportunities out there for kids, for youngsters to grow into vocation, and we need to train them,” Hill said. “We need to identify their talents at an earlier age and make sure that we can direct them into those paths. This idea that everyone goes to college is — it’s really, really sad because what happens is we have too many kids going to college, getting a worthless degree, [like] gender studies, coming up with $200,000 in debt and trying to figure out how they’re going to make it [in the] future. These kids need to have programs that are lined up for their talents, and I would support vocational programs, also encourage military programs for children.”
Reitenour: Mandatory apprenticeships
“Seniors their senior year are really not doing a whole lot,” Reitenour said. “So what we’ve said is that every senior that graduates in the state of Indiana should graduate having completed an apprenticeship.”
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Indiana appeals court chief judge on AI, mental health, and the state’s dwindling number of lawyers
Many Hoosiers may be familiar with their local courts or hear about the opinions of the Indiana Supreme Court, but a middle tier in the state’s judiciary system shapes justice through some 2,000 rulings a year.
The 15 judges of the Indiana Court of Appeals dole out opinions on everything from murder and fraud to civil and child welfare cases. Every Hoosier has the right to appeal a conviction or ruling, and the Court of Appeals, the second-highest court in the state, takes up each case sent its way.
Chief Judge Robert R. Altice Jr. has analyzed thousands of cases since being appointed by Gov. Mike Pence in 2015. Prior to that, he spent 15 years as an elected judge in Marion County.
Altice sat down with State Affairs for a discussion on the ins and outs of his court, how changes in technology and mental health care have impacted his work and what he sees as a major problem facing the nation’s judicial system.
This conversation has been edited for clarity, brevity and length.
Q. What sort of cases does the Court of Appeals hear?
A. We hear really everything except death penalty cases. If there’s a death penalty case, it goes straight to the [state] Supreme Court. Otherwise, we get it.
I’ve had to publish an opinion on a traffic court case. About 65% of our cases are criminal. Every, everything under the sun: murders, rapes, robberies, child molestation.
Then there are civil cases. We do medical malpractice suits, traffic accidents, you name it. Complex business litigation? Our court was involved.
Q. How does the appeals process work? There’s not a new trial, right?
A. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you got a murder case and the defendant gets convicted and gets 65 years, which is the max for a murder conviction. Everybody in the state of Indiana has got an automatic right to appeal. Not everybody takes that right, but most criminal defendants do.
Somebody will write his brief for him. That attorney will find three issues that they think will result in a new trial if we rule in their favor. That’s really what the appellate process is: Are the errors committed at the trial court level significant enough to warrant a new trial?
And then the attorney general in the criminal cases will write a brief in opposition, then the appellant or the defendant can file a reply brief as well.
We sit and read transcripts and their briefs and do our own research and come to a decision as to whether or not there was error at the trial court level that warrants a new trial.
Q. How many of the 2,000 cases your court receives a year, how many are taken up by the Indiana Supreme Court?
A. It is rare. You start with the proposition that trial courts throughout the state are doing about 2+ million cases a year. That’s everything. We do 2,000 opinions a year. I think the Supreme Court writes about 60 opinions a year. That’s what their taking of ours.
But we’re considered an error-correcting court, whereas that’s really not their role. Their role is more jurisprudential. It’s “should we look at changing in this regard or changing precedent.”
It’s really an inverse pyramid, with the trial courts, I always say, doing the heavy lifting.
Our turnaround time is very quick. It’s about three months. Some states require oral arguments in every single case, but we don’t.
If you ask for an oral argument, we will sometimes grant that. We do a lot of oral arguments, but most of our oral arguments are traveling oral arguments. We travel all over the state and do live arguments. And we do those in front of high schools, small colleges, bigger schools.
We answer questions or ask questions like we normally would do, and then once we’re finished, then we have a question and answer session with the students.
Q. One thing we heard about at the State of the Judiciary is there’s an attorney shortage in the state, particularly in rural areas. How has that affected your work?
A. I think we’re seeing more pro se litigants, people representing themselves, and that can be difficult because we hold them to the same standard that we would hold a lawyer to. It can be really difficult for them. So in that regard, it has hurt.
We’ll go to traveling oral arguments in some rural county, and the bar association will host a lunch for us. We’ll go and there’ll be six lawyers in the room and I’ll say to somebody, “So how many people are in the bar?” And they’ll say, “Well, you’re looking at it.”
That access to justice is a really difficult thing that I think the state of Indiana is dealing with now. The Supreme Court has just set up a task force to look into how we can improve that. I believe law schools are looking at incentivizing young kids to go practice in rural areas.
It’s a real issue. I think a lot of it stems from the low bar passage rate of the last 10+ years. It’ll be interesting to see what the task force thinks.
Q. How has technology impacted the court?
A. Technology has been huge. All our work is done online now. The briefs are filed online.
The technology that we have to keep an eye on, and we’re already looking at, is artificial intelligence. What impact is that going to have on the courts, especially our courts?
You can punch a button and write an opinion. It’s probably not going to be very good, but as technology improves, it’s going to be. We’re kind of leery of that.
But at the same time, from a research standpoint, it’s been a very valuable tool. We’ve been using AI in that regard for researching for some time now, with Westlaw and Lexus as they’ve come out with those kinds of tools.
Q. There have been changes in how the world views mental health. How has that impacted the court?
A. I see it primarily in the sentencing arena. Before every defendant is sentenced by a trial court, a pre-sentence investigation is prepared on them. And so that’s where you see a lot of that because it discusses their entire background, and the number of people with mental health issues coming through has really increased greatly.
I think the pandemic had a lot to do with that as well. But again, the mental health issues are very much creeping into the system, and one of the things that we’re constantly working on trying to be aware of and trying to, to the extent we can with alternatives to incarceration, assist people.
Q. Are there any other challenges facing today’s judiciary?
A. I guess not necessarily my court, but courts in general. It appears to me that Congress is broken. They’re not passing laws.
So, what are we doing? We have to rely on the other two branches of government to kind of take up the slack, and that’s why you’re seeing tons of executive orders.
That’s not traditionally their job, and then you’re seeing the courts being called upon to determine whether or not those regulations are enforceable.
I see that as a long-term problem that we’ve got to get corrected.
Contact Rory Appleton on X at @roryehappleton or email him at [email protected].
How McCormick, Braun view abortion, taxes and other key issues
A Democrat-turned-Republican and Republican-turned-Democrat will soon face off in the race to become Indiana’s next governor.
Sen. Mike Braun, who voted as a Democrat prior to 2012, captured the Republican nomination in Tuesday’s primary. Jennifer McCormick, formerly a Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction, will represent the Democrats.
Voters will decide the state’s next chief executive in November.
A State Affairs analysis of the candidates’ campaign platforms and public statements found key differences — and a few similarities — in their planned approaches to a variety of issues impacting Hoosier voters.
Here is how they match up.
Abortion
Braun: As a senator, Braun has long supported abortion restrictions.
In 2020, he called for the Supreme Court to re-examine Roe v. Wade.
In 2023, he proposed federal legislation that would have required parental notification before any unemancipated minor could seek an abortion. He said at the time: “Hoosiers put their trust in me to stand up for the unborn, and that’s what I’ve been proud to do every day in the Senate.”
He has since signaled support for the state’s abortion ban. His platform reads: “State lawmakers must work to ensure the gains we have made to protect life are secured and strengthened.”
McCormick: In a Tuesday interview with State Affairs, McCormick said her candidacy represented a referendum on reproductive rights.
“I’m going to fight to restore those rights under any authority I can, working in a bipartisan fashion, using our committees, board and our agencies. I also know, too, what everybody’s fear is: that they’re [Republicans] not going to restore those rights and will take [restrictions] further.”
From her platform: “Indiana’s Republican-led extreme abortion ban has taken away the right of women to make deeply personal decisions regarding their own health care.”
Marijuana
Braun: At a March 26 Republican primary debate, Braun suggested an openness to legalizing medicinal marijuana.
“It’s gonna hit all of us. I’m gonna listen to law enforcement — they have to put up with the brunt of it,” he said. “Medical marijuana is where I think the case is best made that maybe something needs to change. But I’ll take my cue from law enforcement there as well. … I hear a lot of input where [medical marijuana is] helpful, and I think that you need to listen and see what makes sense.”
McCormick: The Democrat’s platform also addresses medical marijuana legalization, while speculating on possible recreational use.
“We will fight for the legalization of medical marijuana as a source of state revenue established on a well-regulated marketplace and monitored by a Cannabis Task Force in order to study the issues, opportunities and potential obstructions associated with recreational marijuana legalization.”
McCormick said she would also support expunging low-level marijuana-related convictions.
Taxes
Braun: At a March 19 National Federation of Independent Business forum, Braun said the state’s property tax system “went out of whack because it couldn’t respond to inflation like we’ve never seen before.”
“The way you finance any lower taxes would be to bank on the government being run more efficiently,” he said.
His platform also calls for government spending cuts to finance lower taxes: “Reducing the size of government is the key to cutting taxes, and Mike Braun will work through every state agency to find ways to save money while delivering high-quality services to taxpayers.”
McCormick: McCormick also spoke about taxes at the March 19 forum.
“I agree with a revamp of our taxing system,” she said. “But also it’s about not just how we’re getting our revenue, it’s about our expenditures. Yes, we need to fix our gas tax. Yes, we need to look at the income tax. But here’s the thing: There are hidden taxes we’re not having a conversation about.”
Her platform also references the possibility of combining state agencies as a way to save money.
Education
Braun: In his platform, Braun supports broadening school choice and parental rights.
“As a former school board member, Mike Braun knows parents are the primary stakeholders in their children’s education and every family, regardless of income or zip code, should be able to enroll in a school of their choice and pursue a curriculum that prepares them for a career, college or the military,” the platform reads.
Braun also pledged to ensure critical race theory and discussions about gender are banned in public schools.
McCormick: Education is one of McCormick’s primary issues, according to her platform.
She calls for the elimination of statewide testing, increased early childhood reading and child care options and a minimum base salary of $60,000 for all K-12 teachers.
McCormick also addresses the state’s school choice movement.
“We will call for a pause in the expansion of school privatization efforts while requiring fiscal and academic accountability and transparency for all of Indiana schools that receive public tax dollars,” her platform reads.
U.S.-Mexico border
Braun: Braun’s television ads have touched on border security, and his platform calls for increased focus on the area.
“Joe Biden and the left have created a humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border,” the platform reads. “As governor, Mike will continue to support and enact the America First policies that were working. Otherwise, every town will become a border town.”
McCormick: McCormick’s border-related plans are more focused on facilitating legal immigration.
“We will work with local, state and federal officials in supporting an immigrant system that creates a safe, timely, orderly and humane pathway for those seeking legal immigration while keeping our communities and those responsible for border security safe,” her platform reads.
Contact Rory Appleton on X at @roryehappleton or email him at [email protected].
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