Three weeks before election day, Northeast Dubois schools superintendent Bill Hochgesang sat in the center a panel of school board members and delivered a cutting message.
He said the system for funding public education is broken. He said the testing system within public education is broken. He said the entire system of state accountability is broken.
“We are in our present situation because of the system that has been put in place for us,” he said.
As part of the Nov. 8 general election, voters in Hall, Columbia, Harbison and Marion townships will vote on a referendum that would raise property tax values to replace most of the funding the school corporation has lost over the past five years because of the district’s dropping student enrollment.
Hochgesang first presented the idea of a referendum to bolster the corporation’s general fund more than 10 months ago. Administrator Assistance, a Brookston-based school consulting company, performed a feasibility study nearly a year ago and suggested to Hochgesang that the corporation pursue a referendum to help with funding deficiencies.
Now, with the vote quickly approaching, Hochgesang is calling on voters to do more than just vote “yes” on the ballot.
“Whether it passes or fails, Northeast Dubois will continue to make the necessary cuts and find cost savings,” he said. “Our voters have an even greater responsibility when they go to the voting booth. To truly support Northeast Dubois, I am asking all of them to do their research on the candidates and vote for candidates that will support public education and our students.”
Possible repercussions of a failed referendum vote include the elimination of school programs, increase in class sizes and even consolidation with a neighboring school corporation.
The question will read like this: “For the seven (7) calendar years immediately following the holding of the referendum, shall the Northeast Dubois County School Corporation impose a property tax rate that does not exceed eighteen cents (0.18) on each one hundred dollars ($100) of assessed valuation and that is in addition to all other property taxes imposed by the school corporation for the purpose of funding course options required for graduation, class sizes, extracurricular activities, and compensation for employees who provide educational programs?”
Hochgesang explained that if the referendum passes, the corporation will see an increase in its general fund by roughly $500,000. Northeast Dubois schools have lost about $600,000 in total state funding since 2011. That loss is directly tied to a decrease in enrollment in the corporation’s schools.
Sherri Dunning lives in the Haysville area and has two children in the school system: Evan, a sophomore at Northeast Dubois High School, and Sabrina, a seventh-grader at Dubois Middle School.
“I support the referendum because I believe in our school system,” she said. “I believe that the school system has tried to fix their financial problems by cutting back and saving what they could. It’s just come to a point where we’ve got to make a decision.”
She also understands why some residents don’t want the referendum to pass.
“Some people are on the fence because they don’t want to pay more property tax, and that’s fair enough,” she said. “Nobody wants to pay more, but if we vote ‘yes’ and the property tax goes up, we’re still going to have the lowest property tax rate in the county.”
This number is based on a comparison of tax data among the county’s four school corporations — Greater Jasper, Southwest Dubois, Southeast Dubois and Northeast Dubois.
Hochgesang emphasized that the referendum passing will not mean the school system can remain as it is; no matter what, he cautioned, the corporation will need to make cuts based on enrollment numbers. Those decisions aren’t easy to project.
“It’s kind of a moving target,” he said. “We do a little research on county birth records and that kind of stuff to see what’s going to come in at kindergarten. But it’s really impossible to know what enrollment is going to be, so we make an estimated guess.”
Northeast Dubois High School principal Tina Fawks agreed with Hochgesang that a fractured system has thrust the corporation into a predicament. The school receives $5,088 in funding per student.
“For a rural school like ours in particular, the way funding works now is very difficult,” Fawks said. “Even though we have a smaller enrollment, and in theory you don’t need as much money to cover all your needs, that per-pupil funding is very difficult. I would love to see a rural school grant or something like that to supplement for small schools.”
Reflecting on Tuesday night’s speech to the school board, Hochgesang on Wednesday morning thought for a while about where he would start the process of overhauling the problems he listed the night before. He settled on this: There isn’t one simple place to start because all of the areas need an immediate remedy.
He knows what he’d like to fix the most.
“If there was one thing I could fix, it would be that there is no place for competition in education except for our playing fields,” Hochgesang said. “All schools have the same purpose in mind, and that’s to provide a good, quality education for our students.”
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