INDIANAPOLIS — Darrel Bobe, the superintendent of Southwestern Indiana's North Knox School Corp., reached into his bag and pulled out two framed photos of 12-year-old boys.
One, he told the state Senate Appropriations Committee last week, lives in his district. The other — his son — attends South Knox schools. They live a 10-minute drive from each other and they play on the same sports teams.
But the difference in how each district would be affected by changes to the proposed version of the formula that divides state education funding among schools, he said, is dramatic.
Bobe isn't talking about overall education spending. State lawmakers appear to have agreed to spend $6.2 billion in 2012 and 2013 on K-12 schools, the same amount Indiana is spending this year.
What's different this year is that Republican lawmakers want to eliminate a series of mechanisms that slow the transition of state funds from school districts with shrinking enrollments to those with growing ones.
North Knox, where enrollment is declining, gets about $7,100 in state dollars each year per student. South Knox, where the student population is growing, gets about $5,500. The funding formula now being considered by state lawmakers would move those numbers closer together.
That move makes sense on paper, Bobe said. But he said it does not take into account the fact that teachers in his district tend to be older, and therefore earn higher salaries. Or that the district already cut costs to the bone last year.
If the funding formula passes in its current form, he said, he would have to lay off teachers. Class sizes, meanwhile, could grow as high as 35 or 40 students.
"We're talking about real kids — a real situation. You're not starting off from scratch, and there are just some issues that I can't address," Bobe said.
Backers of the change in the funding formula do want to keep in place a "complexity index" that gives more money to schools with a high number of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch — students from low-income families who traditionally are considered tougher to educate.
But those same lawmakers want to eliminate other mechanisms that for years have typically favored urban and rural schools over suburban ones.
"We have pushed for years to even out the disparities between schools that get too much per-pupil funding and the schools that get too low of an amount," said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jeff Espich, a Republican from Uniondale who drafted the budget that the Senate Appropriations Committee is now considering.
"The money needs to follow the student by reflecting enrollment and not fund an institution."
It is perhaps the greatest point of contention between Democrats and Republicans on the budget so far.
"It just isn't possible to reduce that much just because you have a few students leaving each classroom," said Sen. Lindel Hume, a Democrat from Princeton.
Other proposals still alive
The funding formula might not be the only education-related policy change to end up in the budget.
Gov. Mitch Daniels and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, both Republicans, are pushing a set of reforms this year that include growing the number of charter schools in the state from the current 60 and offering private school vouchers.
They are also seeking to tie teacher pay to student performance and to limit teachers unions' collective bargaining rights to wages and benefits.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Luke Kenley, a Noblesville Republican, has said that since the House Democrats' monthlong boycott has complicated the legislative process, those education reforms could end up in the budget.
Bennett said that would make sense.
"I think all of these things do have budget implications," he said, adding that the measures they are pushing add up to a "comprehensive legislative agenda that is very much interrelated and interdependent."
Those budget implications were a topic of debate in last week's Appropriations Committee hearing.
Democrats said keeping overall education funding flat, but spreading that money to more sources, ultimately leads to small cuts everywhere.
Democratic Rep. Bill Crawford of Indianapolis, his party's top-ranking member on the budget-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said the result is that lawmakers "slice the pie thinner."
Sen. Earline Rogers, a Democrat from Gary, said 26 percent of Gary students now attend charter schools. She said the shift of public dollars away from long-standing school corporations to those charter schools is "at that point where it's impacting the traditional schools."
Bennett acknowledged their point but said the truth is, "It's not your money."
"I think it's the charge of the state to fund education for children wherever they go," he said.
Daniels said that as a "Plan B," folding education reforms into the budget gets him "just the result I'm interested in."
"There will probably have to be some other things in there, too. That's not the best way to operate, but it beats doing nothing," he said.