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We have reached the final days of the 2026 legislative session - and we anticipate that Sine Die will happen at the end of this week. Here are some updates on a few key bills.
After powerful testimony from parents, educators, and students, legislators have amended SB 199 Various Education Matters to include language that specifies a parental-consent and parental-control framework for social media. It is designed to put parents, not platforms, in charge of whether and how their children use social-media accounts. INPEA supports this important step in protecting Hoosier children. You can read more about this bill in the most recent issue of The Criterion, the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, which is linked below. We have also linked Secretary of Education Dr. Katie Jenner's op-ed in the Indianapolis Business Journal calling for more restrictions on access to social media for Hoosier children.
HB 1266 Department of Education and Education Matters has been amended by Senate Appropriations to remove non-public schools’ access to the Teacher Residency Pilot Grant. The bill still moves the date when IDOE can process choice scholarships without income documentation from July 1, 2026 to May 1, 2026.
Senate Appropriations also amended HB 1176 Education Matters to remove the language that would have eliminated household income limits for the Tax Credit Scholarship (SGO) program.
Both HB 1266 and HB 1176 had already passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee, which like the Senate Appropriations Committee, is charged with evaluating fiscal impact. Assuming both bills pass a full vote in the Senate, the House will have the opportunity to accept the Senate’s version or dissent, which would allow the differences to be debated one last time in a Conference Committee with representation from both chambers.
You can hear more about these bills in the latest episode of our INPEA Express podcast linked below.
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