Dr. Philip G. Downs, superintendent of Southwest Allen County Schools, made a presentation about school funding at the Performing Arts Center Thursday.
Downs’ presentation titled “Follow the Money: An Analysis of Why Public Education Funding Is Not Keeping Pace In Indiana,” came from his research of Indiana’s educational system.
One of the major issues Downs dealt with during his presentation was inflation.
He also gave an indication of where funding for Indiana schools is in regards to keeping up with the inflation rate.
According to Downs, the General Assembly took over education funding in 2009 when the economy tanked.
“State funding for education is significantly behind the rate of inflation since the General Assembly took it over,” said Downs. “Even next year’s budget is behind inflation and we haven’t even gotten that money yet.
“We heard from the legislature that it was a record budget. But when you look, it’s not,” Downs said in regard to the budget being behind inflation.
Downs said inflation from Jan. 2010 to Oct. 2018 is at 16.71%. The total kindergarten through 12th grade budget for the state was $7,440,490,404 in the 2009-2010 school year. It rose to $8,366,975975 during the 2018-2019 school year, which is a rate of change of 12.45%, which is lower than what inflation was.
The other topic Downs talked about was in regards to vouchers.
According to EdChoice, a nonpartisan, 501c3 nonprofit organization that serves as a clearinghouse of information related to school choice policies in the U.S., “School vouchers give parents the freedom to choose a private school for their children, using all or part of the public funding set aside for their children’s education. Under such a program, funds typically spent by a school district would be allocated to a participating family in the form of a voucher to pay partial or full tuition for their child’s private school, including both religious and non-religious options.”
The amount of voucher students a school district can attract can affect how much money school districts can bring in.
Downs said vouchers can pay for either 50% or 90% of the money set aside for individual student funding. While the money is not taken directly from the district, it is reducing the amount of money that goes to the district.
According to Downs, Kosciusko County school districts are in the red when it comes to attracting voucher students. He said the county schools were donors as far as voucher money was concerned.
Wa-Nee Community Schools is in the red by $295,828.68; Wawasee, $387,801.61; Warsaw, $379,315.87; Tippecanoe Valley, $262,307.41; Whitko, $106,311.55; and Triton, $125,893.22.
Downs said this has resulted in $154,654,818 taxpayer dollars for the 2017-2018 school year in Indiana being redirected for vouchers that could have been utilized for students attending public schools.
Part of the issue is taxes.
“This is a state that is not interested in raising taxes,” Downs said. “The reality is until everybody down there finds 100 voters who are willing to talk, this isn’t going to change because they’re going to assume nobody wants to raise taxes or reshuffle the budget until people talk about it.”
