The legislative study committee led by state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, needs to bust some ghosts with Indiana's school funding formula.
The principle to be followed in distributing school funding must be that the dollars accompany the students. Taxpayers are paying for education, not bureaucracy.
The existing formula pays a school corporation a declining amount for three years after a student leaves the school district. This helps schools facing declining enrollment, but it comes at the expense of districts that provide the actual instruction.
Charbonneau's committee is addressing this "de-ghoster" provision in the school funding formula among many other issues. It's not an easy question.
When enrollment drops, it means expenses must be cut. But that's more difficult than it might seem.
"If you lose a hundred students in a school district it would be well and good if they were all in the same class so you could make cuts right away, but generally that's not going to be the case," Charbonneau said. "At the same time, it's difficult when you're picking up that many students."
Three school districts facing enrollment increases -- Hamilton Southeastern, Franklin Township and Middlebury Community Schools -- have filed suit in Hamilton County to challenge the state's funding formula.
It's unconstitutional, they say. The state is providing those schools about $5,000 per student in basic tuition support, while schools like those in Gary get more than $8,000 per student.
That's very relevant now that the state is providing full support for basic instruction, with the local property tax now going toward the school infrastructure.
In 2009, the Indiana General Assembly shortened the transition time in the "de-ghoster" aspect of the funding formula to three years, instead of five.
But paying a district for students it no longer has merely postpones tough decisions in those districts. More important, it doesn't provide the funding needed to provide the staff to teach those students in their new district.
Indiana's school funding formula, hauled into this legislative study committee for an overhaul, should fund students, not ghosts. Make the funding follow the student, not linger where it's supporting the bureaucracy but not the students.