Education

Repealing School Vouchers and Paying Teachers Like the Professionals They Are

Every Hoosier child deserves a high-quality education, no matter the ZIP code they’re born into. But for more than a decade, Indiana has funneled billions of public dollars into private, religious, and charter schools while starving the public school system that serves most students. Working families are told to accept overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers, and underfunded districts while wealthy areas build new facilities, expand programs, and out-recruit everyone else.

That is not equal opportunity.

That is a system designed to pick winners and losers before a child can even spell their own name.

Repeal the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program (Vouchers)

The School Choice Voucher program is not “school freedom.”
It is a public subsidy for private education — paid for by every Hoosier taxpayer.

Indiana’s Constitution is clear:

Article 1, Section 6:
“No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution.”

Yet today, state funds are taken directly from public schools and handed to private organizations, many of them religious, with little transparency, no accountability, and zero requirement to serve every student.

Families are promised “choice,” but the schools receiving vouchers are not required to choose them.
They can deny students based on disability, income, academic need, or simply because they don’t want to accept them.
That is not a public good; it is a taxpayer-funded gatekeeping system.

I will fight to repeal the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program and the entire voucher apparatus around it. Those funds must return to the public schools that serve all Hoosier children, not just a select few.

Invest in Public Schools and Pay Teachers Like Professionals

Indiana teachers are some of the hardest-working and lowest-paid educated professionals in the Midwest. They shoulder trauma, poverty, behavioral needs, special education demands, testing mandates, and staffing shortages and we reward them with burnout and stagnant wages.

It is unacceptable.

We must:

- Increase state funding for public schools statewide

- Raise teacher pay to reflect their expertise, training, and value

- Guarantee stable budgets so schools can recruit and retain staff

- Invest in aides, counselors, and support professionals

- Fund special education without making teachers beg or cut corners

If we want students to thrive, we must stop treating teachers as expendable labor and start treating them as the educated professionals they are.

Education Should Not Depend on Your ZIP Code

A child in Kokomo deserves the same opportunities as a child in Carmel.
The quality of a student’s education should not depend on how many wealthy donors live in their county.

We will end a system where:

- Public schools are drained to subsidize private tuition

- Property wealth determines which children get AP courses, STEM programs, and mental health services

- Rural and working-class communities are treated as afterthoughts

Strong public schools built Indiana and they are still the backbone of our communities today.
If we want a better future, we must invest in the schools that serve everyone, not just the fortunate few.

A Better Indiana Starts in the Classroom

Every child deserves hope.
Every teacher deserves respect.
Every community deserves schools that lift us up, not divide us.

Repealing vouchers, restoring public funding, and investing in educators isn’t radical.
It’s what Hoosiers already know deep down:
When we put people first — our kids, our teachers, our neighbors — we build an Indiana that works for all of us.