STRAUGHN — A main topic of discussion at the Dec. 9 South Henry School Corporation (SHSC) board meeting was the future of the district’s finances.
Specifically, the board was concerned with the effects of Senate Enrolled Act 1 (SEA 1) and the approval of the 2026 budget.
Board member Randy Paul asked Amy Milner, SHSC Director of Finance and Business, for more information on “the future for the budget for 2026.”
He asked, “Were you concerned about what would actually come through with the couple variables that were in play? Any update on what’s happening?”
Milner responded, “None.”
Paul continued, “What’s the date on when we’ll know what the impact is?”
“None,” Milner again said. “We do not know. No one knows. We do not know if our budget’s been approved. We do not know who our field rep is. We do not know what the projection is.”
Milner said with the new tax caps from SEA 1, the projections are not looking as bad as they thought they would. She claimed, “We’ve seen worse.”
However, how these caps are going to affect the corporation is still unclear.
Milner said, “We will see once we get the budget.”
Milner also said the budgets currently have to be certified by Jan. 15.
“I’m hoping that stays true,” she told the school board.
She said with staffing changes at the Department of Local Government Finance (DLGF), there seems to be delays in budget approval. She said the budget is usually approved by Dec. 15.
“Usually I hear back from our field director with any questions,” Milner said. “I’ve not heard anything, and I still don’t know who our field rep is and nobody does in our area. No one has heard from the field rep.”
She ended by saying, “I’m hoping we will have our budget approved within two weeks.”
Teacher salary concerns
During the Dec. 9 meeting, board members also expressed a concern with teacher salaries. The board discussed year-to-year pay increases and how SHSC stacks up compared to other schools in the area.
As the board discussed during their August budget workshop, the pay schedule was one area they wanted to start making comparable and competitive with districts in Henry County and along its edge.
The district has already made changes to be more competitive with starting salaries, and now they want to become competitive in the year-to-year raises to bring in teachers with more experience.
Paul expressed the board’s desire to be involved in researching statistics sooner than the 2027 budget workshop in August.
“We want to know things a little bit deeper this year ahead of the budget,” he said.
Board President Casey Carmichael said, “At this point, I think we’re in the process of finding out what the next thing is. Where is the area that we can improve our equitability as a corporation?”
“We can’t really get a good picture of that without that data to see can we meet the 10-year mark or are we good year-to-year bumps,” Carmichael continued. “Where do we stack up with the other corporations?”
Carmichael told Milner the board would like to “just be able to get into that process with you a little bit earlier so it doesn’t end up causing you more work when we come down to a budget workshop.”
Milner said that the board may not be able to “raise starting teacher pay to get people straight out of college” and be able to bump up the raises for experienced teachers.
“We couldn’t do that this year,” she said.
Board member Jonathan Wilmore voiced his concerns.
“If you keep replacing experienced teachers with brand new teachers, then the quality of education at South Henry goes down,” he said. “So we want to be able to hire and be competitive with teachers who have experience so that the quality of education doesn’t drop so much.”
Milner told the board when the data on teacher pay is released from the state of Indiana, she would let them know. She also expressed that the only thing that is released from the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) is the starting salary.
Superintendent Sarah Lynch said she would have to communicate with superintendents in the area to get the salary schedule information that the board is requesting.
Milner pointed out that if the board is ever interested in finding this information on their own, it is posted, just like SHSC’s, on each school district’s website.
The board ended this discussion by thanking Milner for her diligence in this concern.
SHSC board will be revisiting financial concerns for teachers’ salaries and the 2026 budget at their next meeting at 7 p.m. Jan. 12 in the Titan Room, 6972 S. Ind 103.