Governor Pence’s rhetoric and his budget are showing a major disconnect. He is calling this the “Education Session” but is recommending the lowest education funding increase in a generation for non-recession budgets.
In his television interview on “The Lawmakers” on Friday Jan. 16th, Governor Pence once again endorsed new funding of $200 million for “traditional public schools” in his proposed budget.
While he spun it to sound great, $200 million is a significant decrease from the previous 2013 budget, a two year budget cycle which has left public schools in dire financial straits and in many cases unable to give teachers any raise. Public school students have suffered from program cuts and rising class sizes while the Governor brags about a $2 billion surplus.
His new budget proposal would give tuition support for public schools the smallest increase since before the 1999 school accountability reforms were passed, except for the two budgets during the Great Recession.
In Indiana’s competitive marketplace of schools set up in 2011 by the voucher program, parents can choose among community public schools, charter schools and private schools. Once again in his budget, Governor Pence has shown favoritism to private schools over public schools.
A Lower Increase for Public Schools Than Two Years Ago
One of the major reasons why math is required in the education of all citizens is so that politicians can’t pull the wool over the eyes of citizens. Let’s do the basic arithmetic.
In the last budget in the 2013 session, which was not a good budget for public school funding, it took $132 million to lift the tuition support budget in the first year by 2%. Then in the second year of the budget, another $132 million was required just to maintain that effort. To lift the second year of the budget by another 1% required $66 million more. To calculate the total investment of new dollars in the 2013 budget for public schools, those three numbers must be added together: $132 million + $132 million + $66 million = $330 million.
Compare that with Governor Pence’s plan to give “traditional public schools” $200 million dollars in the new budget. Even if he is somehow rounding off the numbers, he is proposing at least $100 million dollars less for public schools than they are getting now in the current poorly funded school budget.
Do Hoosier voters and taxpayers really want to keep degrading public school funding following the lead of Governor Pence?
Funding the Governor’s Preferred Alternatives
The Governor’s budget as presented to the General Assembly on January 8th called for a 2% increase the first year and a 1% in the second year. If you do the math for each year, that would require a total increase of $336 million. ($134 million + $134 million + $68 million)
Normally, politicians spin their budgets to show their support in the biggest way possible. In this case, that would mean announcing a raise in funding by $336 million, but neither Governor Pence nor his budget director has used that figure in public discussions. Instead, they have consistently said $200 million more will go to “traditional public schools.” One must ask: Why aren’t they claiming a $300 million dollar increase?
Apparently, without saying it directly, the Governor is taking out some $100 million from the “2%/1%” plan for his preferred alternatives, voucher and charter schools, even though voucher and charter school students represent only about 6% of the K-12 enrollment in Indiana.
His staff has already said that removing the cap on voucher payments will cost $4 million per year, or $8 million for the biennium. Then his staff has said that extra funding for charter schools would cost $41 million over two years. Adding $41 million to the $8 million for vouchers makes a total of $49 million which the Governor’s office admits to, reducing the $336 million required for the “2%/1%” plan to $287 million for “traditional public schools.”
The Governor’s estimates, however, for voucher expansion and charter school grants are extremely questionable. There is no reason voucher schools can’t raise their tuitions now that the Governor has said the state should pay whatever the private school asks for with no cap. The $4 million per year cost estimate would average only a $133 rise for each of the current 30,000 voucher students, an unlikely low estimate. Regarding charter school funding, the Governor’s estimate seems wildly inaccurate, since paying an extra $1500 per year for each of the 35,678 school students would cost $53.5 million per year or $107 million for the biennium. This would account for the $100 million that is not going to “traditional public schools.”
The Recent History of Funding Public Education
Given all this, the Governor is not really proposing a “2%/1%” increase for public schools, as they received in the 2013 budget. In the year he calls the “education session”, he is proposing the lowest funding for “traditional public schools” in years if the low budgets of the Great Recession are taken out of the mix.
Here is the budget history for Indiana for education since the bipartisan school accountability reforms were passed in 1999. These are not numbers or percentages that I calculated. I copied them right off the school funding formula summary page for each budget made available to the public each session:
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TUITION SUPPORT FUNDING INCREASES IN INDIANA BUDGETS SINCE 1999
(Source: Legislative Service Agency School Funding Formula Documents)
1999 BUDGET:
FY 2000...............................................................................+4.7%
FY 2001...............................................................................+4.7%
2001 BUDGET:
FY 2002...............................................................................+3.5%
FY 2003...............................................................................+3.5%
2003 BUDGET:
FY 2004...............................................................................+3.3%
FY 2005............................($5.87 Billion)...........................+2.9%
2005 BUDGET:
FY 2006............................($5.94 Billion)...........................+2.6%
FY 2007............................($6.02 Billion)...........................+2.4%
2007 BUDGET:
FY 2008............................($6.27 Billion)...........................+4.1%
FY 2009............................($6.48 Billion *)........................+3.6%
2009 BUDGET: (June 2009 during the Great Recession)
FY 2010............................($6.55 Billion **)......................+1.1%
FY 2011............................($6.57 Billion **)......................+0.3%
2011 BUDGET: (April 2011 during the Great Recession)
FY 2012............................($6.28 Billion)...........................-4.5%
FY 2013............................($6.34 Billion ***)...................+1.0%
2013 BUDGET:
FY 2014............................($6.62 Billion)..........................+2.0%
FY 2015............................($6.69 Billion)..........................+1.0%
Footnotes:
*included Federal stimulus/stabilization funding of $.61 Billion
**reduced by $.30 Billion in Dec. 2009 due to revenue shortfall and by $.327 Billion during 2010-11
***adding the full day kindergarten line item to the formula during the 2013 General Assembly raised the actual FY2013 base expenditures to $6.49B.
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It is readily seen with a quick glance at this history that the “2%/1%” plan in the 2013 budget was the lowest since 1999 except for the two budgets of the Great Recession. Now Governor Pence proposes to reduce the “2%/1%” of the 2013 budget by about $100 million dollars in order to fund voucher and charter schools, leaving only about $200 million for “traditional public schools.”
Contact Legislators about Public School Funding
Let members of the House and Senate know that the Governor’s “2%/1% minus $100 million” plan is not good enough.
In his State of the State Address on January 13th, Governor Pence said: “I stand before you as your governor to proudly report that the state of our State has never been stronger.” If Indiana is that strong and has a strong surplus, we can surely do better for our students than to fund our public schools at the lowest level in our recent history.
The historic average of this funding table (deleting the two budgets of the Great Recession) years is a 3.19% annual increase in school funding. That number represents our past legacy of support for our public school students. Contact your legislators throughout this session to urge them to make funding for our public school students a priority once again.
Thanks for your efforts in support of public education!
Best wishes,
Vic Smith vic790@aol.com
“Vic’s Statehouse Notes” and ICPE received one of three Excellence in Media Awards presented by Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, an organization of over 85,000 women educators in seventeen countries. The award was presented on July 30, 2014 during the Delta Kappa Gamma International Convention held in Indianapolis. Thank you Delta Kappa Gamma!
ICPE has worked since 2011 to promote public education in the Statehouse and oppose the privatization of schools. We need your membership to help support the ICPE lobbying efforts. Joel Hand will again be our ICPE lobbyist in the Statehouse. Many have renewed their memberships already, and we thank you! If you have not done so since July 1, the start of our new membership year, we urge you to renew now.
We must raise additional funds for the 2015 session, which begins on January 6th. We need additional members and additional donations. We need your help and the help of your colleagues who support public education! Please pass the word!
Go to www.icpe2011.com for membership and renewal information and for full information on ICPE efforts on behalf of public education. Thanks!
Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools. Thanks for asking! Here is a brief bio:
I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969. I served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association staff member, and adjunct university professor. I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009. I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998. In 2013 I was honored to receive a Distinguished Alumni Award from the IU School of Education, and in 2014 I was honored to be named to the Teacher Education Hall of Fame by the Association for Teacher Education – Indiana.
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