Indiana Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe McGuinness is stepping down after more than five years leading the agency.

The Indiana Department of Education launches a database to track schools’ spending of pandemic relief funding. The state health department shuts down vaccine and testing sites during the winter storm. And statewide COVID-19 cases are down.

Indiana schools received a total of $2.8 billion in federal dollars through three rounds of stimulus. All of the aid is known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, and it must be spent by late 2024.

The Indiana Department of Education is reporting a slight uptick in student enrollment this school year, largely because of an increase of early elementary students.

Indiana schools received nearly $3 billion in pandemic relief. They are required to post plans for how they will use at least some of that money. This database links to those plans.

Indiana schools are getting nearly $3 billion in federal coronavirus relief to help safely operate and make up for the instruction students missed out on. But public information on how local districts are spending it is inconsistent and often hard to find.

Indiana's education officials are seeking public comment on how to best measure the way schools prepare students for life after high school, as part of the State Board of Education's process to develop a new school performance dashboard.

Indiana will spend $2 million to help fully license special education teachers by offering scholarships for required training and streamlining required coursework.

Most Hoosier third graders are on track with their reading skills according to newly released testing data. But results for Indiana's third grade literacy assessment also show some groups of students are still being left behind as the pandemic continues.

As schools scrambled to deliver special education services in an online format during the early months of the pandemic, students with disabilities faced unique challenges. But many special education students lost more than classroom time and educational services; they also lost social opportunities.