A sea of red descended upon the Indiana Statehouse Monday as hundreds of teachers, parents and students from across the state rallied to demand increased funding for public schools — and to protest pending policy proposals that could shift millions of local dollars to charters.

The rally — one of many hosted in recent years by the Indiana State Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union — came just hours ahead of a possible final vote on a massive property tax plan. The latest provisions baked into the legislation could reduce public schools’ tax dollars .

ISTA President Keith Gambill said that blow comes in addition to education funding gaps in the .

“The overall funding increase of 2% per year — of $870 million — does not even meet inflation,” Gambill said. “Our students deserve bold investment, not the bare minimum.”

He said teachers will be pressing lawmakers in the coming days and weeks “to ensure that public dollars are staying with public schools.”

ISTA organizers demand action

The legislative session must end by April 29 but could be finished as early as April 24. All bills — including the state budget — must be finalized by that time.

“Our schools deserve to be fully funded — and fully public — so all kids receive a quality education,” Gambill emphasized.

Teacher attendance at the rally forced at least three Hoosier school districts to move to an e-learning day, including Indianapolis Public Schools and nearby Pike Township, as well as Monroe County Community Schools in Bloomington.

The shift to e-learning appeared to prompt a morning by Indianapolis Republican Rep. Andrew Ireland.

Proposed language filed to , an unrelated education bill, sought to jeopardize funding for public school districts that convert scheduled in-person instructional days to virtual because of “planned or coordinated absence of teachers or other personnel for the purpose of participating in a protest, demonstration, or political advocacy event.”

Districts would risk losing state tuition support for each day of a violation, according to Ireland’s amendment.

Gambill read the amendment aloud during the rally, drawing shouting and boos from the crowd.

“We have got to talk to our legislators today, tomorrow and every day between now and the end of the session. We must be vigilant,” he said. “We have to speak from the heart, and remind them that behind every policy is a classroom with a teacher and students.”

Ireland introduced the amendment Monday afternoon to make a statement, but withdrew it without discussion or a vote.

Rallygoers demand action

Chants echoed throughout the Statehouse halls for more than two hours Monday morning.

“Schools need funding!”

“Pay our teachers!”

“Defend public education!”

Rallygoers, many dressed in red t-shirts, had homemade signs in tow, too. Banners, poster boards, paper placards — and even painted messages on the backs of LaCroix boxes — were raised by attendees amid chanting, cheering and frustrated yells.

Everyone’s goal was the same: demand “fair” and “adequate” funding for public schools.

Gambill said recent changes to both bills were improvements from their original versions. But he maintained that increases to base tuition support in the Senate GOP’s state budget draft “are not enough,” and held that amendments added to the property tax measure would divert “critical” dollars from traditional publics to charters and could allow districts to “side step” collective bargaining rights for teachers.

Monica Shellhamer, a vice president with the Indianapolis Education Association, said during her rally remarks that teachers continue to be left out of conversations around school funding.

“Indianapolis public schools has been a target of the legislature for many years and this year is no different,” Shellhamer said. “Bill after bill continued to be submitted to shut down or defund Indianapolis public schools.”

Jenny Noble-Kuchera, president of the Monroe County Education Association, further pointed to pending education cuts at the federal level.

“The way it is currently, public education as we know it will begin to disappear, and our children are the victims,” she said Monday. “We already have severe mismanagement at the federal level of Title I grants for our lower-income students, of critical programs supporting students with disabilities, and elimination of programs for our schools.”

“This is bad enough, and now Indiana politicians can’t put their youngest constituents first, and support basics, like learning to read and write, and foundational math,” she continued. “It’s not OK.”

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As Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and the school board met inside the downtown building, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and classroom assistants — arriving on buses from across the district — waved placards and chanted, “no justice, no peace.”

“I installed air filters to make sure students and staff would be able to breathe clean air in their classrooms while they were there working and studying,” SEIU 99 President Conrado Guerrero said from the flatbed of a truck. “We’ve gone from heroes to zeroes.” 

The two sides have been bargaining since 2020, when the pandemic interrupted negotiations. The 30,000-member SEIU 99 says the district is offering no raise for the 2020-21 school year, a 5% raise for 2021-22 and a 4% increase for 2022-23. Amounting to about $1,000 additional per year for most workers, that’s insufficient, said Max Arias, the union’s executive director. 

“These were the essential workers” in the district, he said. A strike authorization vote would take place in January.

Arias wants minimum wages for members increased from $18.50 per hour to $24. The union’s demands also include more eight-hour days and paid training for bus drivers and those in other positions. “We’re at an impasse,” he said. 

In a statement, the district said, “Los Angeles Unified continues to engage in respectful negotiations with our labor partners. We are committed to compensating our employees fairly in this current economic environment, while also preserving our ability to provide services to our students in a sustainable manner that promotes lasting student achievement.”

Talk of a strike is the latest conflict the district has faced with one of its labor unions. United Teachers Los Angeles opposed Carvalho’s original plan to spread four learning “acceleration days” for students throughout the school year. The district rescheduled them for winter and spring break, even though students are now less likely to participate because they’re on vacation. of the district’s more than 420,000 students have signed up for the first two days, Dec. 19-20, according to the district.

SEIU 99 wanted the district to stick to the original schedule because it would have provided members additional work. 

The teachers union isn’t close to a strike vote yet, but members are increasing pressure on the district. Earlier this month, they at multiple locations.

The union went on a in January 2019, with many of the it is making now, such as smaller class sizes, less standardized testing and more nurses, librarians and counselors. The union wants a 20% raise and argues that the district has over $3 billion in budget reserves to cover it.

But on Tuesday, teachers union members were on hand to support SEIU 99 members. 

“We’ve been negotiating for seven months. They’ve been negotiating for three years,” said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz. “It’s about solidarity.”

“This Supreme Court does not represent Gen Z or the future we imagine for our country,” , the youth-led organization behind the protest, wrote in a press release signed by several other youth-powered groups including and the . 

“Young people are appalled and horrified by the leaked Supreme Court decision to strip all people who can become pregnant of their basic right to choose.”

Hundreds of youth activists rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday evening denouncing the leaked majority opinion set to overturn the landmark 1973 decision, which guarantees federal constitutional protection of abortion rights. More protests are planned in cities across the country in the coming weeks, organizers said.

Eve Levenson, who emceed the Thursday event and is a senior at George Washington University, said the rally was meant to send a message to elected officials.

“It was really about making it clear to those in power … how much Generation Z cares about this issue,” she told ����Ӱ��.

Generation Z includes individuals roughly born between 1997 to 2012, or those currently ages 10 to 25. A majority of abortion patients nationwide are , and 37% are 24 or younger.

Organizers estimate that there may have been nearly 1,000 young protesters outside the Supreme Court, Levenson said, some who traveled from as far as New York state. Another 40,000 viewers watched the stream on Twitter and 80,000 watched on TikTok. Many youth who could not make the trek to the nation’s capital are now planning their own local demonstrations, she said.

The rally was “100% Gen Z led,” Levenson explained, including many high school-age organizers. On the evening of May 2, when the leaked draft majority opinion published by revealed that the Supreme Court appears poised to reverse Roe, her group chat of youth organizers exploded, she said. Someone suggested the idea of a rally in front of the Supreme Court and “it kind of just came together really quickly from there,” said the college senior.

“We all felt so galvanized,” added Levenson. “[Young people] are for bodily autonomy, we are for access to abortion, we are for reproductive health care and people are really pissed off to see those things taken away.”

Speaker Soraya Bata, a student at Georgetown University, pointed out that over a dozen states have trigger laws set to immediately ban abortions should Roe fall. Her home state of Florida in April passed a law banning the medical procedures just 15 weeks into pregnancy, replacing a previous rule that allowed abortions within the first 24 weeks. States including Oklahoma and Texas have recently passed similar restrictions.

“Some people won’t even know that they are pregnant at that stage,” said the young leader. “These laws mean that the only people who will have access to abortions are wealthy Americans who can afford to travel out of state.”

Nearly half, 49%, of those who had abortions in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, were . Another 26% made less than twice the level, meaning 3 in 4 people seeking abortions had little, if any, disposable income.

Addressing the crowd Thursday, Sofia Ongele, a youth activist with , took aim at the underlying logic put forward in the leaked Supreme Court draft.

“Justice Alito’s core argument is that abortion is ‘not deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions,’” she said. “Our nation’s history is marked by genocide, slavery [and] classism. … We owe it to our ancestors to fight for a better world than they had.”

Contraception, the young speaker explained, saved her life. In 2018, she received an emergency blood transfusion after her periods caused extreme anemia. Since then, she has used hormonal birth control to regulate her cycle.

“To stay alive, I had to have complete control over my body,” said Ongele. “Should anyone infringe on those rights, my health and safety would immediately be threatened.”

Though many of the organizations behind the rally self-identify as nonpartisan, several speakers implied there would be political ramifications for officials who oppose policy measures to protect reproductive rights, along with other issues such as addressing climate change, LBGTQ rights and health equity. The young protesters were by Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who ​​is running for re-election in a Georgia race that could determine whether Democrats maintain control of the Senate.

“Our politicians work for us,” said Melissa Altschiller, an organizer with March for Our Lives. “If they continue to make decisions about our bodies, we will continue to make decisions about their jobs.”

Roughly two-thirds of 18- to 24-year old voters in the 2020 presidential election voted for Joe Biden, NBC revealed — 11 percentage points more than any other age group. Between Generation Z and Millennials, who on many social issues, are eligible to vote in the 2022 election cycle. 

“I think we’re going to see young people continuing to organize around this going forward,” said Levenson.