North Judson-San Pierre school officials are voicing their opposition to efforts to expand voucher programs, but stopped short of asking the school board to vote on a formal resolution. Superintendent Dr. Annette Zupin recently told board members that the proposed legislation would direct public school dollars to private and charter schools that don’t have to meet the same accountability standards.
“The original theory of the charter schools and the voucher system was really to advocate for those minority students in failing urban public schools, but I think that’s lost,” Zupin said. “Now, they’ve increased the income level, so now anybody can benefit. I just think that the whole intention has been lost.”
North Judson-San Pierre Classroom Teachers Association President Eric Gappa said that any time money is taken away, students end up losing academic or extracurricular programs. “I hate taking opportunities away from our kids,” he said. “Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other things that they can do with that money. It’s just that we want to make sure that our students get the benefit of our money.”
School Board President Derrick Stalbaum added that the proposed legislation wouldn’t simply redirect money to local private schools but could end up redistributing the funding across the state. “I’ve been against it from the start, but at the beginning, at least there was some merit to it,” Stalbaum said. “They were trying to give students a choice to get out of a failing school. Now, we’re at a point where they are simply giving the people who are already going to those schools because they can afford it, they’re giving them a break, and that’s really what it’s turned into.”
Rather than asking board members to pass a resolution that’s mainly symbolic, Zupin simply made a public statement voicing the school corporation’s opposition to the proposed legislation.
