House Republicans' budget will propose increases for spending on education

The two-year spending plan is worth about $29 billion and does not include Gov. Mike Pence’s proposal to lower the state’s individual income tax rate. It would, though, repeal the state’s inheritance tax, which is currently being phased out over a nine-year period.

It also includes extra annual funding and one-time injections into state and local road budgets — an item that municipal leaders and business groups have lobbied lawmakers to make a top priority.

The biggest-ticket item, though, is K-12 education funding, which accounts for more than half the money the budget would spend. The House Republican budget includes about $63 million more per year for schools than Pence proposed a month ago.

It also includes $2.5 million per year for grants to put new science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers in schools located in underserved areas.

“We are very confident that our state’s future depends in great part to strong public schools,” said Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma of Indianapolis.

“In addition to our traditional support for a lot of options for family, we are very confident that strong public schools is a key to our state’s future — and you’ll see that with the dollars and cents behind it.”

Not all school district’s would see their funding increased by the 2 percent and 1 percent amounts being proposed for the state budget. Actual funding received by individual school districts is determined by a number of factors including student population, the district’s socio-economic demographics and others. Here are funding amounts proposed for area school districts in the House Republicans’ budget:

• The Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp., which received $142 million for the current year, would get $2.1 million more in the budget’s first year, and $3.6 million over the current amount in the second year.
• The Warrick County School Corp., meanwhile, would get a 2.6 percent bump in the first year, from $57.5 million to $59 million, and then another 1.3 percent increase in the budget’s second year, to $59.8 million.
• Gibson County schools would all see slightly smaller annual funding increases, while Posey County schools’ funding would flat-line in the spending plan’s first year and then drop slightly in its second year.

The primary architect of the proposed spending plan, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, will roll out all its details in a briefing with reporters on Friday.

But Bosma offered a broad preview Thursday, and House Republicans briefly posted the document as well as school funding projections on their website Thursday evening.

Bosma said the budget will “strategically restore and invest in some of the cuts in the programs for the vulnerable. You’ll see a restoration of funding for some critical programs that we all know firsthand are helping Hoosiers in need.”