It is critical that we all become aware of the activities of the Indiana legislature with respect to school financing and related issues. The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette published an article that describes the anti-school sentiment that exists in Indianapolis.
Posted on Sun, Mar. 27, 2005
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Running on emptyAnti-school sentiment stalls education progress by Karen Francisco
There might be no equation more important in the state’s budget battle than the one that will determine how much money will go to public schools. And as popular as the idea of simplifying that equation seems to be, it will please very few if there’s not enough money to make it work.
Calls to replace the current formula with one in which “the money follows the child” are growing stronger. They drown out a deeper, darker fight taking place at the Statehouse – one that strikes at the philosophical foundation of Indiana’s constitutional requirement to provide “a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.”
The implication in calling for a revised funding formula is that there are plenty of education dollars to go around, but they aren’t being distributed fairly. It’s a brilliant strategy if your goal is to divide urban, suburban and rural school districts or to saddle them with more and costly requirements. If you want to steer tax dollars to private and parochial schools exempt from those same requirements, “the money follows the child” is the ticket.
If you believe, however, that Indiana’s public schools are a key factor in its economic future and that improvements will continue only with additional investment, you’ll realize that a simple funding formula is this session’s red herring.
The philosophical fight has come about because Republicans won control of the House and because the new administration appears to place little stock in public education. Gov. Mitch Daniels used his State of the State address to characterize Indiana schools as overfunded and lagging other states. His education agenda is aimed at rewriting the funding formula, increasing funding for charter schools, appointing his own superintendent of public instruction and moving the ISTEP+ exam to spring. Only one measure – moving up the kindergarten enrollment date – would have any direct effect on classroom achievement.
A complex task
The task of balancing property wealth, socioeconomic variables, fluctuating enrollments and other factors presents a challenge that far exceeds grade-school math abilities. Even Sen. Luke Kenley, a critic of the current formula, expresses reservations. “We’re very pleased we’re all marching down the path of trying to do funding that follows the child,” he said earlier this year. “But it’s good news, bad news.”
Actually, it’s a case of bad news and more bad news. What some lawmakers sought was a formula that stops granting additional dollars to schools with declining enrollment and shifts those dollars to growing districts. The dollars earmarked for schools in the House budget bill, however, allow a handful of districts to limp along and leaves most of them struggling.
“It almost works the reverse of what they were hoping for,” said Brian Smith, superintendent of Southwest Allen County Schools, one of those growing districts. “We were shocked to learn that our class sizes are going to grow as a result of this.”
Southwest Allen, because of its projected growth, expects to lose $150 per student in 2006 and $100 per student in 2007. That’s frustrating for the Allen County district because it succeeded in passing a voter referendum specifically aimed at reducing class sizes.
But its problems are minor compared with those of some small-town and rural districts. Adams Central Community Schools, in Monroe, is facing a 3 percent reduction in the first year of the proposed budget; almost 4 percent in the second year. Smith-Green Community Schools, in Churubusco, would see cuts exceeding 2 percent each year.
“It’s a very, very difficult time,” said David Martin, Smith-Green superintendent. “We’re looking at a significant drop in revenue, and what is amazing to me is that the discussions at the state level are about adding requirements.”
Martin is worried about Senate Bill 200, which would make the Core 40 curriculum the minimum requirement for a high school diploma. It would require Smith-Green to hire more staff, even as the proposed budget demands that vacancies left by retirements this year will go unfilled. It will be harder for small districts to offer more advanced science and math courses than it will be for larger districts.
Lowell Rose, a retired superintendent and consultant to the Indiana Urban Schools Association, said the proposed budget will “disperse misery for all, albeit disproportionately.”
House Ways and Means Chairman Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale, defended the budget proposal, noting that it’s the lack of money, not the formula itself, that school officials are unhappy with. He pointed out that all three districts in Wells County, his home county, lose money in his proposed budget.
Urban vs. suburban
Before the legislative session began, Sen. Vi Simpson, a Democrat from Ellettsville, predicted that the funding battle between urban and suburban schools would be the “debate that tears this session apart.”
That could still happen. But school officials have quickly realized that squabbling over their own share of state dollars is counterproductive when there is not enough money to go around in the first place. It’s a fairly recent development, even if it seems that schools always have been begging for more.
Some history:
Indiana’s school finance program dates to 1949, with adoption of a “foundation program,” in which the state guarantees all school districts a target amount of per-pupil support for education, assuming that the district will raise a portion through local property taxes.
Until 1973, school districts were required to raise a minimum amount in local taxes in exchange for state support to meet the foundation level. Districts could levy higher taxes to support as strong a school system as the community wanted and could afford. In 1973, modifications were made to control property taxes and, later, to reduce inequities in funding between districts. One major change was to add a “minimum guarantee” so that school districts would not face a decline in revenue during a fiscal crisis. As the state’s fiscal crisis began in 2001, the number of school districts receiving the minimum guarantee began to grow to the point where eight out 10 corporations now receive the minimum guarantee.
Because growing districts in wealthier areas make up most of those not receiving the minimum guarantee, some lawmakers began faulting the formula for withholding money from growing, suburban districts at the expense of declining urban and rural districts. But it’s a lack of money overall, not the formula, that is the root of the problem.
“It’s all about politics and very little about schools,” said Simpson, who predicted the urban-suburban battle. “(The formula) is not that difficult to explain. When they say that only six people in the state understand it, that’s baloney – that’s malarkey.”
She said that the state shouldn’t penalize corporations like Fort Wayne Community Schools, with a relatively stable enrollment, or small districts like her own in southern Indiana, to support growing suburban districts, but should instead re-examine its priorities to put more money toward all schools.
“There are appropriations in this budget that could be diverted to K-12 – it’s just a matter of priorities,” Simpson said. “My hope is that we can get the word out and get this turned around. We’re going outside of Indianapolis to spread the word – the governor has been missing in action in supporting public schools.”
Discouraging prospects
As Simpson and other Democratic legislators hold town meetings across the state to discuss K-12 funding, education officials are bracing for the worst and trying to hold off the additional demands that Republican lawmakers seem intent on approving. Lowell Rose admitted that the crisis hasn’t registered with voters. “When the public wakes up to everything that has happened (regarding education) in the session, it’s going to be too late to do anything about it,” he said.
“The other thing going on is that this administration has demonstrated that it is not pro-public school,” Rose said. “I think the members of the House and Senate are far more supportive of public education than the governor.”
Rose praised Senate leaders, including Sen. Robert Meeks, R-LaGrange, who he said is working to find another $100 million for schools. Revenue estimates due in April will determine if it can happen. Espich predicted that the legislature will approve additional sin taxes and find another $50 million to $100 million for schools, but he warned that even the extra dollars won’t bring K-12 education up to the funding level of the current biennium.
A likely scenario is that Indiana’s public schools will receive in the next two-year budget the same or less amount of money as in the previous biennium. They also will be required to add to their high school course offerings and serve more students in accommodating an earlier kindergarten enrollment cut-off date and a higher minimum age for drop-outs. A badly timed switch from fall to spring ISTEP+ will consume a considerable share of dollars that could go toward instruction.
In a worst-case scenario, Republican House leaders will push through HB 1009, a voucher bill that will further erode financial support for public education.
If the session continues on its present course, Indiana can expect to find itself continuing to talk about its funding formula. But instead of Statehouse arguments over suburban vs. urban, the discussion will be in the courts, where many other states have found themselves trying to defend inadequate and inequitable support for public education.
Lawmakers would be well-served to review of the state’s constitutional requirements with regard to schools if they want to save Hoosiers the cost and heartache of a legal challenge.
More important, they should protect the wise investment they have placed in schools over the last two decades.
Tomorrow we will share the impact of proposals on our district. Late this afternoon we received the following:
PLEASE BE ALERTED THAT HB 1009, THE VOUCHER BILL, WAS AMENDED INTO SB 281, PUBLIC SCHOOL TRANSFER PROGRAM THIS MORNING BY THE HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEE. The amendment was offered by Representative Behning. Now is the time to personally contact your representative in the House and ask them to oppose SB 281 as amended by the House Education Committee. You can e-mail your legislators at:http://www.in.gov/cgi-bin/legislative/contact/contact.plpl A telephone message would also help. Testimony was not completed on the bill and amendments, so further testimony and the vote have been delayed until Wednesday morning at 8:30 AM. No one received a copy of the amended 1009, so it is hard to tell what changed. John Ellis did have one of the opportunities to speak, and opposed the amendment incorporating HB 1009. He discussed:· When funding for public schools is at such a low level it is not a good time to direct dollars that could be dedicated to the public school funding formula away from those schools. The dollars would go to private schools even if the private school and the student funded never demonstrated attainment under NCLB. The fiscal impact for the three-year period on the tax credit defined is substantial--$11.4 million in 2007, $17.1 million in 2008, and $63 million for 2009. In addressing the assumption that schools will recoup dollar for dollar since the student leaves when the money leaves, Ellis used the example of tuition support at $3880 per student--a district with six 4-section elementary schools losing 100 students to vouchers would average a loss of 1/2 student per class--hardly allowing a penny of savings because the 100 students were gone. The Chair's response was there would be a new fiscal to fit the revisions in the bill.· The funding source was changed from direct school revenue to the state's general fund. The state's general fund provides revenue for public schools, Medicaid, correction, and any other item within the state's budget.Members of the House Education Committee: R. Behning - Chair T. Harris S. Heim R. Hoffman J. Thompson G. Porter D. Cheney J. Micon P. Pflum V. Smith
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