Will Indiana State School Funding Keep Pace With Inflation?

If newly elected Governor Pence believes it is ok to cut public education further by offering a meager 1% increase in school funding, a 1.1% decrease when one takes into account the 2012 average rate of inflation, then Hoosier school children's opportunities for fine arts learning and imaginative and creative growth will certainly be at risk across the State of Indiana.
Send Governor Pence a message that we cannot afford future cuts to education especially since the $300,000,000 shortfall from 2011 has not been made up.

Here is the link for Governor Pence.
Here are a few talking points you can copy and paste into your message:

• Please reconsider your education budget. Many of the State of Indiana's public school fine arts programs were marginalized or cut due to the $300,000,000 shortfall from 2011. Their are so many reasons to keep the arts strong in Indiana schools. I urge you to reconsider your budget proposals.
• Fine arts education and the creative thinking skills learned in the art room and the music room is related directly to economic development. According to a 2010 IBM survey of over 1500 CEO's of major corporations from across the world, creativity is the number one factor in the success of their companies. The art and music programs are the centers of creativity development in our schools.
•  Education funding must include consideration for the preservation of existing fine arts programs. 
•  The creativity of our children is a national resource we cannot afford to waste.
• Children need fine arts educational experiences that empower the imagination and enhance the capacity for creativity and invention.
• Creative thinking skills fostered in music and art transfer directly to STEM professions. STEM learning in our schools should not be a "fill in the blank" experience. The arts epitomize hands on learning in our schools and are critical for developing problem posers and problem solvers.
•  Neural networks within the brain’s operating systems are stimulated, strengthened and expanded when children are engaged in high quality art and music education experience. Visual arts learning experiences strengthen children’s attentional memory and music educational experience trains the brain’s capacity for working memory. 
• There are three basic skills children need if they want to thrive in the knowledge economy: the ability to communicate effectively; the ability to collaborate, and the ability to do critical thinking and creative problem-solving. One cannot make the claim that quality, world class educational experiences are being provided for Hoosier school children if subjects and programs specifically designed to foster creative problem solving are removed from the curricula.
• Fine Arts education experiences are critical for a well rounded education.   Human beings are hard wired to think and dream in visual images. Ideas and intellectual property dependent upon visual thinkers will become assets in the new economy of the 21st Century. The refinement of the imagination as developed through the visual arts will provide future designers, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, innovators, professionals and others with the creative edge they will need to compete in an increasingly competitive and uncertain future.
• Students thrive in schools where art and music are present in the curriculum. When educational experience is monotonous and based on tedious pencil and paper seat work, learning often times goes’ into one ear, and out the other. This fact is extremely important for policymakers to consider.  Results from the latest High School Survey of Student Engagement, conducted by researchers from Indiana University with over 350,000 high school students participating from across the U.S. reveals 67% of students did not feel engaged during their school years. Upon further examination of the survey, students reveal subject areas like art, music and drama provide them with significant opportunities for personal engagement with their learning. Disengaged individuals frequently drop out of school resulting in higher crime rates, lack of unemployment opportunities and a myriad of other wicked socio economic problems. Public schools are the backbone of our communities. The health of our public school system affects us all.
• We  know that children thrive in schools that provide regular quality fine arts experiences.

A boy alters the design of his cardboard glider.