ANDERSON — Indiana’s move toward a school-funding program in which dollars follow students has come as the dollars have diminished.
But the state’s system for funding schools now more closely mirrors neighboring states such as Michigan and Illinois, where voters have up-or-down votes on school funding.
For years, those states and about 40 others have assured public schools a baseline amount of money and left it up to voters to decide through referendums whether they will pay more in local property taxes to finance either general fund school spending or school-building proposals.
So far in Indiana, getting those measures approved at the ballot box has been a tough sell.
The Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University has been tracking how those referendums have fared in Indiana since the school funding formula changed in 2008. Since then, just 40.7 percent of school-funding issues in Indiana have passed. That’s well below states such as Illinois, where voters approved school-building referendums 64 percent of the time since 1998. In Minnesota last year, 62 percent of the school funding ballot questions for general fund and building projects were approved.
In Indiana’s Madison County, the voters overwhelmingly rejected referendums that would have increased general fund revenue for the two most cash-strapped local systems: Anderson Community Schools and Elwood Community Schools. Ballot questions for each school system failed with more than 70 percent of voters saying no.
The consequences for both school systems could be dire. ACS Superintendent Felix Chow has said that failing to raise a local tax levy 55 cents per $100 of assessed valuation could lead to a state takeover of the local school system’s finances without a change in the funding structure. Anderson schools face a $5 million budget deficit by the end of the year.
Elwood schools have a deficit of $2.5 million after cutting elementary art, music and physical education programs, and Superintendent Glen Nelson said that after the referendum failed, more non-academic cuts were likely. He said the system was in danger of a state financial takeover.
“The biggest thing facing education is the state of the economy, and we don’t have the money to fund it as we’d like,” said state Rep. Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale.
Espich is in line to chair the House Ways and Means Committee in the next session of the Indiana General Assembly and said he believes the principle that funding will follow students is here to stay.
In general, Indiana spent $9,036 on each student in 2008, taking into account local, state and federal money. However, under the state’s education formula, schools received about $6,297 per student for tuition support for the 2007-08 year.
In the past, he said, state school funding tilted toward those in positions of power at the Statehouse who were most able to influence which groups or interests would win a greater share of funding.
Urban schools might be favored one budget year, rural schools the next; money would tilt toward special education students one session, gifted students the next, he said.
“One of the things we’re going to do is fund kids versus school corporations,” Espich said. “That can be a big issue in a community, and it can be good or bad depending on what’s going on.
“Eighty percent of school districts are losing kids and 20 percent are gaining kids,” Espich said. “Both have problems, if you will.” But he called more funding for growing school districts “the right thing to do, to fund the kids that exist.”
Rep. Gregory Porter, D-Indianapolis, chaired the House Interim Study Committee on Education and said he’s not sold on the way Indiana funds K-12 education. He said the formula in which money follows students to the public schools of their choice fails to equalize education and doesn’t take into account disadvantaged students who need more help.
“I think the dollars should follow that student’s needs,” Porter said. He said some accommodation also needs to be made for urban school districts that have lost students but still have fixed costs. “We need to look at the achievement gap and the opportunity gap.”
“I think public education as we know it is going to change with what’s happening at the international level and what’s happening at the local level,” he said. “We need to look at it holistically.”
He said lawmakers won’t be able to talk about specific education funding proposals until revenue levels are known in December. He said part of that discussion needs to be the effect of property tax caps on school funding.
Porter chaired the study committee when Democrats controlled the House, and that changed with the November election. Republicans are in control, and he said he’s not sure how that will be reflected in the study committee’s recommendations that will be unveiled before the start of the session.
“The devil is in the details,” Porter said, “and I haven’t seen the details.”