Indiana lawmakers are about halfway through this year's legislative session, after key deadlines came and went earlier this week.

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.

Some Indiana school districts no longer need to do contact tracing. The state’s COVID-19 cases have continued to slow as it reaches 1.6 million confirmed cases. And the state surpassed 20,000 dead, reporting its most recent 1,000 in just two weeks.

A WFYI investigation found that schools often pressure parents into signing nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, as a condition of a special education settlement. Advocates say NDAs prevent parents from talking to other parents of children with disabilities about their experience. And it leaves parents in fear that a school district may take legal action against them for a perceived violation of the clause.

Statewide restrictions would be placed on transgender girls' participation in school sports under a bill approved by a House committee on Monday.

Indiana school districts would be required to share future referendum funding with charter schools under a bill approved by a House committee Thursday.

House Bill 1134 increases parents' authority over school content and would limit how teachers talk about things like race, religion and politics in their classrooms.

Two of Marion County’s 11 school districts have switched to remote learning for at least part of this week due to staff illnesses.

House lawmakers heard roughly five hours of testimony on their chamber's version of a school curriculum bill Monday.

Republican Sen. Scott Baldwin said he should have chosen better words when he said during a committee hearing that a bill he filed would require teachers to be impartial in all of their teaching, including during lessons about Nazism, Marxism and fascism.