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TSC Second Local District Closed For 'Red For Ed' - Did LSC Closure Encourage Teachers?

Richard Lee
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/70109407@N00/

Nearly a third of the Tippecanoe School Corporation’s teachers have now asked for personal days next Tuesday, causing Superintendent Scott Hanback to announce the corporation will shut down that day.

The teachers will be going to the Statehouse for Organization Day – a time when lawmakers plan for the official start of the legislative calendar in January.

They’ll join colleagues from around the state as part of a protest called “Red For Ed,” where teachers will don red attire to express their displeasure with nation-worse pay increases over the last 15 years and worries that a new statewide standardized test will further penalize them.

Hanback posted a letter on the TSC website Thursday saying he supports teachers who’ll rally at the statehouse that day for better pay and lowered stakes connected to standardized test scores.

He says he’d seen periodic spikes in teachers asking for time off, but the requests went up, in his words, “exponentially” after Lafayette School Corporation announced earlier this week that its students wouldn’t have classes on November 19.

“I thought, after LSC closed, that our silver lining would be reaping the benefits of more available, local substitute teachers," Hanback says. "And we probably saw a little bit of that, but again, at the end of the day, there was wasn’t enough to keep up with the demand.”

TSC students will make up the school day on February 17 – a day the corporation had already built into its calendar as a potential make-up day if class had to be canceled for any reason before January 31.