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Zody Calls For End To Partisan Attacks On Ritz

Brandon Smith
/
http://www.ipbs.org/

Indiana Democratic Party Chairman John Zody says Republicans need to halt their partisan attacks on State Superintendent Glenda Ritz.

There are multiple bills this session that shift power away from Glenda Ritz’s office to the GOP-controlled State Board of Education.  That includes a proposal to allow the State Board to elect its own chair, a position currently filled automatically by the Superintendent.  State Democratic Party Chair John Zody says the measures are an attempt to silence the one-point-three million Hoosiers who voted Ritz into office in 2012.

“From day one, this has been about politics, not about education and not about Hoosiers.  It’s arrogant overreach by Republican leaders here at the Statehouse.”

But Senate President Pro Tem David Long says he and Speaker Brian Bosma have tried to mediate between the State Board and Ritz with no success.  He points to continued dysfunction…and the fact that Indiana’s model of an appointed board with an elected superintendent exists almost nowhere else in the country…as evidence of the need for such bills. 

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.
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