Education Bills A Large Part Of Legislative Session
March 26, 2021 at 10:49 p.m.
Education Bills A Large Part Of Legislative Session
By David [email protected]
The session, held via GoToMeeting, was sponsored by the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce. The first one was held Feb. 26, with a third planned for 11 a.m. April 23. The Indiana State Legislature convened Jan. 4 for 2021 and is scheduled to adjourn on April 29.
State Sen. Ryan Mishler said, “So, basically, what I’m working on now for the next five weeks is the budget. Every day, 12 hours a day. K-12 is 50% of that. Add higher ed and Medicaid, you’re at 80%. So, there’s 80% of our budget, so then the remaining is 20%.”
He said he knows the education piece “has a lot of people fired up. ... There’s a lot of misinformation. I talked to a school board member from Warsaw down there yesterday. I think there’s quite a bit of misinformation about the education piece.”
A school funding committee met at 4 p.m. Thursday, Mishler said, and finished at 10:30 p.m. “Obviously, that’s going to be a big issue.”
He said people have written him about being disappointed in House Bill 1005, but the Senate has not even heard HB 1005. He said that’s the education piece that people “seem to have all the heartburn over.”
In the question-and-answer portion of Friday’s session, the state legislators were asked where they stood on HB 1005 and “Can you explain the shift of the money away from the public schools?”
State Rep. Curt Nisly said, “The policy has been that the money should follow the child. And, so, we have different opportunities, educational choice, in Indiana.”
He said a parent can choose to send their child to a different school district different than the one they live in.
“So, that’s been the policy here, and so, if schools don’t want competition from charters, they should just make sure that they’re providing the educational opportunities for kids,” Nisly said.
He noted that Warsaw Community Schools has “done a lot to make sure that a charter school doesn’t start in our area here.” He said there are public schools in parts of the state that aren’t doing as good of a job as is being done here in Kosciusko County and there are places in other parts of the state where charter schools “are doing a better job” than public schools.
Nisly said HB 1005 is “simply allowing money to go to other places.”
On Education Scholarship Accounts, which the state legislature is considering this session, he said what the House passed was very specific to military families, foster kids and kids with special needs. Nisly said he was supportive of that in those situations. “It’s very, very limited on those ESAs,” he said.
Mishler said HB 1005 is now in the Indiana Senate.
“This is what we’re going to do. We’re not going to have a hearing in Education, because then it gets recommitted to Appropriations, so we had SB 412, 413. We’ve already discussed most of the issues in 1005, with the exception of the 300% for the voucher and the increase in the charter grants. Those were discussed last night at this education funding meeting,” he said.
“We are looking into what parts of 1005 do we want to put into the budget. We feel it’s a budget discussion.”
He said there are three main parts to 1005.
The first is the vouchers. Currently, for a student to get a voucher to go to a private school, “You have to be 150% of free lunch, which is a little less than $75,000 a year family household income, a family of four.” Mishler said the House wants to raise it from 150 to 300%, which would be $145,000 a year for a family of four.
The original proposal would have had a cost of $150 million. Mishler said, “Which, to say it would take money away from public school, well, if they didn’t fund it, it would lower everybody’s foundation. If they fund it, then everybody’s whole. Well, it was too expensive, I believe, so they left these pathways in place that you have to jump through other hoops, even if you qualify at $145,000, which took their fiscal down to $30 million.”
He said he voted against the original voucher bill years ago, but he feels the need to correct people when he feels they’re wrong about the voucher system.
His hometown of Bremen doesn’t lose any students to the voucher program, he said. “So, if we did away with the entire voucher program, Bremen would not get one more dollar. The fee would go back to the school that those kids go back to. So, to say that it’s taking away from public schools is a stretch.”
If he was in Fort Wayne, he said that would be an opposite situation.
“If I left Fort Wayne school and went to ... Luers, then that money would go from the Fort Wayne schools to Luers. So, the money you would lose money in a voucher program, currently, is if you lost a student to a voucher school. The same would hold true for charters. Your traditional public school would only lose the money if that student chose to go to a charter school,” he said.
The majority of student transfers go from one public school to another, like Wawasee to Warsaw or vice versa. Wawasee might lose that per-student money, but that money would transfer to Warsaw. “So when we’re talking about vouchers and charters, in our area, it’s usually losing a student to another traditional public school,” Mishler said.
The voucher program originally was intended for low-income students, so the question now is, is a family of four with an annual income of $145,000 a low-income family?
A second part of the 1005 is the ESAs. Mishler said there’s some “holes” in there.
“So there’s no income level on that at all,” he said, which is an area of concern. If the ESAs were approved, Mishler said there would be 3,000 kids who could “flip right away” to use them, according to the treasurer’s office. “And the first year alone would almost double the size of her office to run this program. So there are some concerns about the ESAs and the unknowns. Our caucus has some serious questions. We met with DOE, treasurer’s office. We’re trying to decide what direction we want to go on with the ESAs.”
The third piece to HB 1005 is the charter school grant, Mishler said.
“So, currently, we say money follows the child, and that holds true. But for, if you go to a charter school, you get an extra grant,” he said.
If he goes to a public school, he deals with what’s in the state funding formula. If he goes to a charter school, under current law, that charter school gets a $750 stipend for each student. The House wants to raise that to $1,000 in the first year and $1,250 in the second year.
“It seems to take away from the ‘money follows the child,’ but the proponents would say that the charters don’t get property tax money, it levels the playing field. The opponents would say it’s actually additional state funding so the state is funding those kids at a higher level than every other student,” Mishler said.
He said the Senate, in the past, has not pushed charter school grants and usually has watered those down a little. “But we’re still discussing on how far we want to go in the budget, and a lot of it depends on what we have to spend,” Mishler said.
“This is the biggest piece of the budget right here,” he said. “And until we get those three issues ironed out in the Senate, I can’t finish the budget. Once we have those things figured out, we’ll be able to get the budget done and that will be the week of Thursday, April 8.”
Latest News
E-Editions
The session, held via GoToMeeting, was sponsored by the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce. The first one was held Feb. 26, with a third planned for 11 a.m. April 23. The Indiana State Legislature convened Jan. 4 for 2021 and is scheduled to adjourn on April 29.
State Sen. Ryan Mishler said, “So, basically, what I’m working on now for the next five weeks is the budget. Every day, 12 hours a day. K-12 is 50% of that. Add higher ed and Medicaid, you’re at 80%. So, there’s 80% of our budget, so then the remaining is 20%.”
He said he knows the education piece “has a lot of people fired up. ... There’s a lot of misinformation. I talked to a school board member from Warsaw down there yesterday. I think there’s quite a bit of misinformation about the education piece.”
A school funding committee met at 4 p.m. Thursday, Mishler said, and finished at 10:30 p.m. “Obviously, that’s going to be a big issue.”
He said people have written him about being disappointed in House Bill 1005, but the Senate has not even heard HB 1005. He said that’s the education piece that people “seem to have all the heartburn over.”
In the question-and-answer portion of Friday’s session, the state legislators were asked where they stood on HB 1005 and “Can you explain the shift of the money away from the public schools?”
State Rep. Curt Nisly said, “The policy has been that the money should follow the child. And, so, we have different opportunities, educational choice, in Indiana.”
He said a parent can choose to send their child to a different school district different than the one they live in.
“So, that’s been the policy here, and so, if schools don’t want competition from charters, they should just make sure that they’re providing the educational opportunities for kids,” Nisly said.
He noted that Warsaw Community Schools has “done a lot to make sure that a charter school doesn’t start in our area here.” He said there are public schools in parts of the state that aren’t doing as good of a job as is being done here in Kosciusko County and there are places in other parts of the state where charter schools “are doing a better job” than public schools.
Nisly said HB 1005 is “simply allowing money to go to other places.”
On Education Scholarship Accounts, which the state legislature is considering this session, he said what the House passed was very specific to military families, foster kids and kids with special needs. Nisly said he was supportive of that in those situations. “It’s very, very limited on those ESAs,” he said.
Mishler said HB 1005 is now in the Indiana Senate.
“This is what we’re going to do. We’re not going to have a hearing in Education, because then it gets recommitted to Appropriations, so we had SB 412, 413. We’ve already discussed most of the issues in 1005, with the exception of the 300% for the voucher and the increase in the charter grants. Those were discussed last night at this education funding meeting,” he said.
“We are looking into what parts of 1005 do we want to put into the budget. We feel it’s a budget discussion.”
He said there are three main parts to 1005.
The first is the vouchers. Currently, for a student to get a voucher to go to a private school, “You have to be 150% of free lunch, which is a little less than $75,000 a year family household income, a family of four.” Mishler said the House wants to raise it from 150 to 300%, which would be $145,000 a year for a family of four.
The original proposal would have had a cost of $150 million. Mishler said, “Which, to say it would take money away from public school, well, if they didn’t fund it, it would lower everybody’s foundation. If they fund it, then everybody’s whole. Well, it was too expensive, I believe, so they left these pathways in place that you have to jump through other hoops, even if you qualify at $145,000, which took their fiscal down to $30 million.”
He said he voted against the original voucher bill years ago, but he feels the need to correct people when he feels they’re wrong about the voucher system.
His hometown of Bremen doesn’t lose any students to the voucher program, he said. “So, if we did away with the entire voucher program, Bremen would not get one more dollar. The fee would go back to the school that those kids go back to. So, to say that it’s taking away from public schools is a stretch.”
If he was in Fort Wayne, he said that would be an opposite situation.
“If I left Fort Wayne school and went to ... Luers, then that money would go from the Fort Wayne schools to Luers. So, the money you would lose money in a voucher program, currently, is if you lost a student to a voucher school. The same would hold true for charters. Your traditional public school would only lose the money if that student chose to go to a charter school,” he said.
The majority of student transfers go from one public school to another, like Wawasee to Warsaw or vice versa. Wawasee might lose that per-student money, but that money would transfer to Warsaw. “So when we’re talking about vouchers and charters, in our area, it’s usually losing a student to another traditional public school,” Mishler said.
The voucher program originally was intended for low-income students, so the question now is, is a family of four with an annual income of $145,000 a low-income family?
A second part of the 1005 is the ESAs. Mishler said there’s some “holes” in there.
“So there’s no income level on that at all,” he said, which is an area of concern. If the ESAs were approved, Mishler said there would be 3,000 kids who could “flip right away” to use them, according to the treasurer’s office. “And the first year alone would almost double the size of her office to run this program. So there are some concerns about the ESAs and the unknowns. Our caucus has some serious questions. We met with DOE, treasurer’s office. We’re trying to decide what direction we want to go on with the ESAs.”
The third piece to HB 1005 is the charter school grant, Mishler said.
“So, currently, we say money follows the child, and that holds true. But for, if you go to a charter school, you get an extra grant,” he said.
If he goes to a public school, he deals with what’s in the state funding formula. If he goes to a charter school, under current law, that charter school gets a $750 stipend for each student. The House wants to raise that to $1,000 in the first year and $1,250 in the second year.
“It seems to take away from the ‘money follows the child,’ but the proponents would say that the charters don’t get property tax money, it levels the playing field. The opponents would say it’s actually additional state funding so the state is funding those kids at a higher level than every other student,” Mishler said.
He said the Senate, in the past, has not pushed charter school grants and usually has watered those down a little. “But we’re still discussing on how far we want to go in the budget, and a lot of it depends on what we have to spend,” Mishler said.
“This is the biggest piece of the budget right here,” he said. “And until we get those three issues ironed out in the Senate, I can’t finish the budget. Once we have those things figured out, we’ll be able to get the budget done and that will be the week of Thursday, April 8.”
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092