$469 million dollars!
Speaker Bosma said on last Friday's edition of The Lawmakers (April 24th) that the budget for tuition support for Indiana K-12 schools would go up by $469 million dollars in the new biennial budget, despite a slight downturn in the revenue forecast.
It is good news that the lower revenue forecast is not dissuading legislative leaders from their plans to raise K-12 spending by 2.3% each year.
Then the Speaker went on to say that $469 million dollars is the largest school funding increase in state history.
Apparently, no one has told him about 1997. In the 1997 budget, state funding for K-12 tuition support went up by $482 million, more than the 2015 budget’s planned increase, but there is more to the story. In those days, the legislature also directed local property taxes to be levied for use by K-12 schools. Adding in the property tax, the 1997 school formula added $616 million new dollars for K-12 schools! Total funding went up 4.8% each year, double the percentage increase planned for this budget.
If another $14 million would be added to this year’s school funding, the claim that state funding has never been higher might hold. Certainly, another $14 million would help districts serving students of poverty. The low revenue suburban districts that have not been treated fairly in past budgets are getting needed relief in this year's school formula. Complexity dollars, however, for districts with concentrations of poverty have been reduced in the House and Senate budgets. They are the potential losers this year.
The final version of the budget is expected to be unveiled this afternoon.
School Funding in 1997 and Now
The school funding formula in 1997 and all budgets up through 2007 included both state dollars and local property tax dollars for K-12 schools. When the property tax crisis hit, the school general fund was shifted over to be funded exclusively by state dollars.
The state funding for schools in 1997 went up by 6.0% each year and the local property tax levy for schools went up by 2.8% each year. The combination of these two sources in the 1997 budget produced the increase of 4.8% each year.
Thoughts of 1997 hearken back to the days when public education was a high priority and the appropriation for K-12 public schools was not shared with private school vouchers. This year, when Speaker Bosma says school funding will get $469 million, his figure includes at least $15.7 million that the IDOE documented as the net fiscal cost of private school vouchers in 2013-14 along with the new cost of Governor Pence's plan to remove the $4800 cap on vouchers in the new budget, which carries a price tag of at least $3.8 million each year according to LSA.
All costs for vouchers come out of the K-12 tuition support budget because the Governor and the Republican leadership have refused to put all private school voucher costs in a separate line item for clarity and transparency purposes. It is hard to precisely track the cost of private school vouchers under our current budgeting procedures, and the Governor in his support for voucher expansion seems to like it that way.
The final school funding budget in the 2015 budget will be unveiled late this afternoon. The public will see it after a review by the Republican caucus. Both the House and the Senate will then pass it tomorrow on the final day of the session, and the cheering and the wailing will begin. All indications point to the fact that this school budget will have winners and losers.
Thanks for your advocacy for public education and for your efforts to make funding for public education a high priority in the General Assembly!
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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