By Nancy Franke
The Indiana General Assembly is halfway through the 2021 legislative session and now the House will consider Senate bills while the Senate considers House bills, including quite a few educational bills.
As a Seymour Community School board trustee and legislative liaison, I continue to also support responsible budget proposals which invest in our K-12 education and stimulates our local economy.
I am a firm believer in the importance of investing in our local community schools.
When businesses and their workers consider locating to our community, they always consider 1) economic stability of a community, 2) health care services, and 3) education opportunities in the local public school.
Ever since the legislative body took over the educational funding over a decade ago, they have continued to pass mandates that have taken a toll on our local public schools.
There are three particular bills floating through the General Assembly that will actually hurt Indiana’s state and local economy by damaging access to quality K-12 education. If passed, House Bill 1005, and Senate bills 412 and 413 will very likely harm Indiana’s ability to attract new jobs and economic investment because of emphasizing a lack of equity in education for 90 percent of our kids.
Indiana already has the most aggressive voucher system in the country. These three bills will redirect millions of dollars from our community schools and provide those public funds to School Choice private/parochial schools through an education savings account (ESA) which would give up to $7,000 without any restrictions.
Indiana lawmakers are now considering these bills, which would also want to spend more money on the school voucher program so upper class families can send their children to private school at taxpayer expense. Many of us would agree that the original intent of vouchers to provide for families in challenging circumstances for eligibility were fair — to be used for low income students who were failing in public schools. However, each budget session, the income restrictions have increased and other requirements have been eliminated.
The legislative bills on the table have taken those original good intentions to a new level. If most taxpayers understood how this all work, they would be justifiably upset.
With these new bills, voucher eligibility would expand to include increasing voucher amounts for middle class families from 50% to 90% of the state’s basic per-pupil funding. A family of four earning $145,000 annually — about double the state’s median family income — and a family of five earning $170,000. These families likely already have the means to pay for a private education.
School Choice is already a viable option for Indiana families. The state has spent more the $1 billion over the past 10 years on vouchers for children to attend private schools and currently funds more than 100 charter schools. In addition, family-friendly public school transfer laws already ensure that children are no longer limited by zip code.
Indiana already supports multiple alternatives to traditional public schools, including Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO) tax credits, charter schools, innovation schools, virtual schools, a tax deduction for private schools or home school education expenses and the Choice Scholarship Program. The latter was created in 2011 and provides state-funded vouchers to qualifying students to pay for tuition at participating non-public schools.
Since the cost of ESAs will be covered exclusively by the state’s school tuition support funding, fewer public dollars will be available to fund public schools and increase teacher salaries. The cost of HB 1005 would result in public schools receiving less than one-third of Gov. Eric Holcomb’s proposed increase in funding for public schools for Fiscal Year 2022 and no additional dollars in Fiscal Year 2023. Holcomb has proposed tuition support increases of 2% and 1%, respectively for 2022 and 2023.
As a legislative liaison to the Indiana State Board Association, I join the ISBA in urging lawmakers to invest in strong public schools, which they call the “engines of opportunity for the state’s economy and citizenry,” and build on the budget for public education passed in 2019 by continuing to address the teacher pay gap and funding a tuition support increase that keeps pace with inflation.
Public funds should fund public schools. If our lawmakers truly were looking out for our community’s best interest, they would build on the budget for public education passed in 2019, continue to address the teacher pay gap, and fund a tuition support increase that at the very least, keeps pace with inflation. We should expect our lawmakers to fulfill a state constitutional duty by creating budgets that fund our community schools appropriately.
Nancy Franke is a Seymour resident and vice president of the board of trustees of Seymour Community Schools. Send comments to [email protected]. Send comments to [email protected].