The Indiana House approved a fix to the school funding formula Tuesday that left unchanged would reduce state support for traditional schools that switched to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
House Bill 1003, which now goes to the Senate, ensures schools that weren't operating virtually in February 2020 — prior to the first Indiana COVID-19 case — will receive full tuition support based on their student count, even if they temporarily halted in-person instruction.
Under current law, schools providing online instruction at least 50% of the time — primarily virtual charter schools — only are entitled to 85% of Indiana's $5,703 basic per student tuition support to reflect the generally lower costs of operating a virtual school.
State Rep. Hal Slager, R-Schererville, said no one expected that provision might ever apply to traditional schools, but the coronavirus pandemic forced many Indiana schools to operate virtually for an extended period of time.
“These are circumstances that none of us intended. We need to take care of this because these in-person education institutions that we have and fund still have the same level of cost — they’re still operating, in many cases, full-time,” said Slager, the sponsor.
“We don’t want to hinder them or put them in a position where they are now scrambling to worry about funding, as well as just the logistics of conducting business.”
The nonpartisan Legislative Service Agency estimates schools will lose $164 million if the virtual education funding reduction is not corrected.
At the same time, making the fix will not increase state spending because total tuition support still will be $169 million less than the appropriation for the 2021 budget year, according to LSA.
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