Vic’s Statehouse Notes #296 – April 21, 2017

Dear Friends,

There is no joy in Mudville over the funding for public schools in the final budget.

The budget was posted for review in the wee hours this morning and will be voted on tonight.

If you want to see the budget and the school funding formula for yourself, it is posted on the General Assembly website on the House Republican page.

Here are my sad conclusions after a quick read. No doubt given more time there could be more concerns.

If you want to share your opinions with legislators, please feel free, although there is no doubt that the budget will pass tonight, perhaps after midnight.

1) Tax credits for private school scholarships run by Scholarship Granting Organizations hit a bonanza!

• Current funding in 2016-17 was $9.5 million.

• Funding for next year 2017-18 has been raised to $12.5 million, up 31%.

• Funding for every year starting in 2018-19 will be $14 million, a 12% raise about $12.5 million.

• This adds up to a $7.5 million increase in the two-year budget. This is a large increase to promote private school tuition when most public school categorical funding has been absolutely frozen. Summer School funding, for example, has been stuck on $18.3 million for years. The private school proponents showed their influence once again.

Let’s hope someone starts checking the SGO audits. These are largely unsupervised groups, and they are now getting more public money than Alternative Education ($6M) and the Senator Ford Technology Fund ($3M) combined. Under the law, the SGO can keep 10% for overhead and salaries. Do the math. They must be well paid.

2) The Senate budget’s excellent effort to put a line item in the budget for Choice Scholarships has disappeared from the final budget.

Money for private school vouchers will again be taken from the same Tuition Support budget line item used for all K-12 schools. Transparency in line items has been requested for years and is still not part of the budget.

There is a helpful statement of cost projections for Choice Scholarships on the last page of the School Funding formula. It projects $156 million (a 7.2% increase) for the first year and $167 million (a 6.9% increase) for the second year in funding Choice Scholarships based on an estimate that voucher enrollment would increase 5.8% the first year and would increase 5.5% in the second year.

3) The final budget funded K-12 schools with $345 million new dollars in the two-year budget, a total of $13 million less than the Senate budget. The hope that a $200 million gain in the April revenue forecast would give K-12 an extra boost turned out to be a mirage.

• The House budget (Feb.) raised K-12 funding by $77 M in the 1st year and by $273 M over two years. (Percentage increases: 1.1% in the 1st year and 1.7% in the 2nd year)

• The Senate budget (March) raised K-12 by $117 M in the 1st year and by $358 M over two years. (Percentage increases: 1.7% in the 1st year and 1.7% in the 2nd year)

• The final budget (April 21) raised K-12 by $113 M in the 1st year and by $345 M over two years. (Percentage increases: 1.6% in the 1st year and 1.7% in the 2nd year)

It is extremely disappointing that the Senate budget increase of $358 million was not maintained in the final budget, especially given the new revenue forecast.

There was no time for a full analysis of how school districts fared in the final funding formula, but the Senate budget is an indicator of the stress to school districts that will come with this budget since the final budget is close to the Senate budget. The Senate budget gave 144 districts either a negative percentage increase or less than a 1% increase, which is well below inflation.

These low increases mean hard times ahead for the resources available to many K-12 students in approximately half of the school districts in Indiana.

It is sad that Indiana leaders could not do better for their K-12 students. While the 1.6% and 1.7% increases are better than the 1.0% in FY 2013 and FY 2015, they are well below recent increases given in FY 2014 (2.0%), in FY 2016 (2.3%) and in the current year FY 2017 (2.3%).

Keep talking with your legislators about how you feel they are doing for public schools.

Thank you for your strong support of public education in Indiana!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith

“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 ICPE lobbying efforts. As of July 1st, the start of our new membership year, it is time for all ICPE members to renew their membership.

Our lobbyist Joel Hand is again representing ICPE in the new budget session which began on January 3, 2017. We need your memberships and your support to continue his work. We welcome 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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