By Paige Clark
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – A Republican-backed bill would allow Hoosiers attending virtual charter schools to participate in sports in their local districts.

House Bill 1047 – authored by Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour – passed the Education Committee with a 7-2 vote Tuesday.

The bill would have originally applied to all charter schools not affiliated with the Indiana High School Athletic Association. After an amendment, the bill only applies to students attending virtual charter schools, which are generally web-based with limited in-person interaction.

The bill also restricts students to playing for schools in their residential districts.

“There was some people that expressed some concern and would like to see (HB 1047) narrowed, which I think this amendment did,” Lucas said. “It took it down to just define virtual charter schools only.

“As I see it, there could be one child, one student, that helps bring the team forward so much that they become a sell-out,” said Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, R-Corydon. “People come to the basketball game, to the football game because the team is winning and there is a lot of revenue that comes in.”

Caryl Auslander, representing Indiana Connections Academy, told the committee about Alex Creech, an avid softball player from Bloomington.

Auslander said Creech chose the Indiana Connections Academy but wanted to participate at her resident school, Edgewood. Creech was deemed eligible by the IHSAA and proved she was a full-time student attending a non-IHSAA school, but the resident district superintendent denied her request.

“If Ms. Creech was deemed eligible by the IHSAA, and fulfilled all the requirements placed upon her by existing IHSAA rules, we respectfully request that she should be able to try out for her resident school teams,” Auslander said. “We are not requesting that she be placed on the team, but simply have the opportunity as any other student to have the chance to try out.”

John O’Neil, a lobbyist for the Indiana State Teachers Association, does not “want to deny anyone’s ability to participate in athletics” but still opposed the bill.

“Philosophically, we feel that when a parent and student makes that choice to go to school, that choice has been made knowing the consequences and services offered by that school, O’Neil said. “We don’t want to start seeing this picking and choosing where a student enrolls in one school and has the luxury of taking services from another institution “Public school students certainly don’t have that same luxury.”

Rep. Kreg Battles, D-Vincennes, said the amendment makes the bill “much better” but still thinks it sends a “horrible message.”

“The concept is there are plenty of opportunities for kids to participate in athletics,” Battles said, “Just because they made the choice of a virtual charter…we’re not taking them from athletics.”

Battles said virtual charter students could try club sports and the Amateur Athletic Union as alternate options for sports.

Lobbyist Mark Palmer said he had “personal issues” that stemmed from being the son and grandson of high school coaches. Parents “are not paying money that goes into the general fund, which is used to pay the coaches,” Palmer said.

“These parents are paying the coach’s salary,” Lucas argued. “Don’t (parents) pay taxes?”

“I’m sure there’s going to be some interesting discussion on it (in the House). There usually is with education bills. That’s the beauty of the process,” Lucas said. “We let both sides give their view of it, and then we’ll see how it shakes out.”

Paige Clark is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – The shootings in Indiana’s own Elkhart gave Americans and Hoosiers a look at the National Rifle Association’s solution to the problem of gun violence in action.

A disturbed young man who had an apparent fascination with serial killers went in to a grocery store and killed a store employee and a customer. While the killer held his gun on the store manager, police quickly and bravely shot him dead.

The NRA and its flacks would say that outcome demonstrates that their solution works.

Good guys with guns came and shot a bad guy with a gun. The two people who died before the good guys could get there presumably are acceptable losses in the service of keeping the flow of guns in this country free and undiminished.

The family and friends of the victims might disagree.

And the dead, of course, no longer can speak for themselves.

Every time I – or anyone else – writes or talks about guns and puts the words “sensible,” “gun” and “laws” within 10 paragraphs of each other, the flacks for the gun lobby and their true-believing followers start yelling like 2-year-olds who have been deprived of sleep. They claim that anyone who is concerned about the tragic levels of gun violence in our country and who doesn’t believe exactly what the NRA and other gun groups tell them to believe is irrational, unreasonable and unthinking.

One of the loudest is Indiana Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, who recently authored a bill that would allow students, faculty and community members to bring firearms to school and keep them locked up in their cars. (It’s interesting to note that, at a time, when most parents want to see guns kept as far away from school as possible, Lucas is going the other direction and trying to bring them closer).

Every time I write about guns, Lucas responds with a howl that I’m bullying the poor, beleaguered NRA, which only has a multi-million dollar budget and a small army of lobbyists and message consultants with which to defend the organization’s interests.

In his last agitated response, Lucas said that I hadn’t proposed any solutions to the problem of gun violence.

While he wasn’t entirely accurate – in the past, I’ve given a qualified endorsement to the solution the NRA first endorsed (background checks) and then reneged on – Lucas had a glimmer of an insight. I deliberately haven’t proposed any solutions. In fact, I’ve acknowledged that gun laws might not solve the problem – or might create problems worse than those we currently encounter.

Lucas and the gun lovers, though, never think to ask why I took this tack. That perhaps is not surprising; they’re not big on asking questions that would force them to challenge their assumptions.

The reason is that I wanted the NRA true believers such as Lucas to demonstrate just how determined and unreasonable they will be. I wanted them to make my case for me.

And they have obliged.

Every time someone suggests that guns should be part of a national conversation about the epidemic of gun violence, they shriek like gut-shot hyenas.

The NRA and its fellow travelers propose as solutions to the problem that include placing armed guards in schools and other public places, regulating violent media and drafting new stop-and-search policies.

All I’m saying is that if we’re going to put the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution on the table, then the Second Amendment and guns should be part of the discussion, too.

The tragic events in Elkhart gave us two more reasons to discuss ways that we can make our communities, our states and our country safer. It is time for people of good faith to gather and search for solutions. Even if we cannot find answers, we owe it to ourselves and those we care about to try.

The NRA and its foot soldiers in Congress and our state legislature will do everything they can to stop us from having that discussion if it includes guns.

And the dead no longer can speak for themselves.

So it is up to the rest of us to do our duty and force the conversation.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.