So glad Indiana decided to shift school funding from property taxes more volatile sources of revenue just before my kids hit the public school systems. Here is a look at some of what our school district is looking to cut to cope with the sudden shortfall in funds:
A 3 percent salary reduction for administrators and support staff – essentially all nonteaching staff. The same employees will also have their health insurance benefits rolled back to 2008-09 levels.
• Eliminate of two assistant principal positions – one from each McCutcheon and Harrison High School – for next school year, and the elimination of the assistant principal position at Mayflower Mill Elementary School after the 2010-11 school year.
• Reduction of art, music and physical education instruction from those special teachers at the elementary schools by 50 percent. Classroom teachers will corresponding additions to their duties.
• Increase elementary class sizes.
• Reduce librarians to 20%.
• Eliminate world languages classes.
• Reduce the number of or frequency of elective courses offered at the high school level and eliminate Japanese altogether. This will result in larger class sizes.
• Reduce the number of summer school courses offered.
• Eliminate three to four remediation teaching positions throughout the district.
• Eliminate TSC’s adult education program.
• Discontinue funding for the early college program. Students will still be able to attend college classes but must pay for them themselves.
This is why we made our decision to get a smaller home when we move and pay for private school. We fortunate that we can make that decision, although we not fortunate enough that we can do it without consequences. There will be fewer vacations, if any, and the 10 year old cars will prolly need to last 15.
However, many don’t have that choice regardless what sacrifice they make. Since we’re so fond of outsourcing in Indiana, can someone explain why we don’t do vouchers for private schools?
Just some supporting info for vouchers: There were just over 1 million students in Indiana public schools last year: http://mustang.doe.state.in.us/TRENDS/trends1.cfm?var=enr
According to this Purdue paper, we spent 6 billion at the state level for K12 educaiton. http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/topics/essays/State_Budget.htm
So, that’s $6,000 per child at the state level. I couldn’t find the figure, but I’ve heard Indiana’s total (state + county) spending per child is $11,000.
I’m sending my girls to school for $4,500 a year, each. I have zero doubts of the quality I’ll be getting for the money.
So, why again don’t we outsource this? And when I say outsource, I’m not talking the state deciding what company to hire to run the schools. I’m talking about the state giving parents a voucher that can be used to pay up to $9,000 in tuition to a school of the parent’s choice. The parents can decide what schools are doing a good job.
I think one hitch is that some kids are a lot more expensive to teach than others. Will the public schools be allowed to kick out the kids who they deem too troublesome and/or expensive to educate? Will the private schools that accept vouchers?
Because, even though I know very little about education, I’m reasonably confident I could produce well educated students at a reasonable cost if I got to pick the students.
Jason, go to the IDOE website and you should find exactly how much the state budgets each year for education and broken down by category. And there should be exact information on revenues and expenditures by school corporation and state totals.
As for vouchers, these were tried in Milwaukee and student achievement remained stagnant while there was considerable white flight from urban Milwaukee schools. They tried it in Cleveland, and schools, private and public, who could have taken the vouchers did not take them, because they did not want the minority students in their schools. Student achievement did not improve. Florida has a limited plan, which has been turned into a tool to build private, selective schools in gated communities who take selected students while leaving mostly minority and low achieving students in the public schools.
And you will find that providers will not be beating down your doors out there in the boonies, they only make a profit in the large urban areas. Look at the pattern of the NCLB supplemental services providers over the past years.
My two sons went through the Tippecanoe County system, from Mayflower Mill where the eldest was introduced to music and art to McCutcheon. He went on to play in the marching band and play on the football team (at the same time) and swim team at McCutcheon, while taking his science and English and Advanced Placement courses, and exams and participating in state music contests and always doing very well. Then he graduated from Purdue with his degree in chemistry, minor in physics. Then a Masters from Ball State in chemistry, and now on his way to the PhD program at Wayne State University. He never could find a job in Indiana in chemistry.
The younger got into playing the guitar and is now quite great. He did well in his own way and then went on to IVYTECH there in Lafayette and now holds a fine job with a company in the Purdue Research Park.
Sadly, schools will need to cut the arts, music and athletics (or charge even higher fees). Is it coincidence that mitch had to cut 300 million from the school budget due to his budgets being overstated as to revenues given that the 300 million is the exact amount he wanted to eliminate from the budget to begin with?
Anyway, we have moved from a stable property tax base to a volatile system based on taxes and income. When Michigan and other states tried this, revenues plummeted, incomes fell as the economy soured, and schools and students suffered. mitch was told all of this and he ignored it because he bases his policies on ideology, not facts.
Glad my kids got out of the system before tony and mitch took over.
I didn’t see any reductions in the superintendent’s pay or benefits.
There was a 3% pay reduction for administrators. Thought the super was probably there.
Franklin Township (Marion Co.) just voted to lay-off 50 teachers, shut two elementary schools, and charge for transportation and athletics, after a referendum was defeated last November.
Doug, let’s add that you don’t just get to pick the students; you get to send any who don’t measure up, or have sass mouth, back to the public schools.
And Jason, of all the things wrong with vouchers–the spurious claims that haven’t panned out in the real world, the misleading comparisons of private vs public school “achievement”, the flawed reliance on test scores, the unwillingness of private academies to provide for the developmentally disabled, the Church/State issue, the deleterious effect on public education at large, and society’s least-wanted in particular, and the union-busting agenda of many of its advocates–the one I favor is this: how did my tax dollars become your entitlement when you had a child? As far as I’m concerned, what justifies my expense is the operation of an organized system of learning which provides every child an expertly-designed curriculum, overseen by officials who stand for election every two years, which both give the child a sound foundation of knowledge, and give society a reasonable guarantee that the next generation can maintain, or advance, science, medicine, the arts, the law, and maybe even make correct change, in accord with its wishes. In furtherance of those goals I can vote, attend school board and community meetings, visit schools, and discuss my concerns with administrators and teachers, whether I send a child to that school or not. How do I do that if I’m supporting fifty different private entities that don’t even have to let me on their property, let alone listen to me? Why should I pay so other people can dissolve the system for their own benefit?
We spend $9000/year–on average; it’s considerably more to educate the developmentally disabled or non-English speaker–per student to operate public education for all students, not to educate your children to your personal specifications. You spend about 17¢ per student, depending on where you are. So you and your wife might have a legitimate claim, at best, to around 68¢ of that $9000. Enjoy your vacation.
I can remember well when most folks were against funding private education because it would go to the ‘Papists’,who many contended were a ‘foreign church’. Im just pointing out that the morality of any situation changes according to how,and if, we can milk it for our own benefit..not that I’m cynical. But morality follows benefit,and I think that’s just human nature.
So if the schools cut world languages they are also cutting out the academic honors diploma.
So, Doughouse, you think there is either no problem with public education, since you have all of those freedoms you list, or the problem is that parents have too much choice today?
You totally missed the point of my post. I’m not asking for vouchers, for ME, I’m already sending my kids to private school. If the compromise needs to be that vouchers need to be scaled, something like $9,000 if you make under $40k, $4000 for $40k to $80k, and nothing above $80k, then fine. I won’t get a dime, and I can live with that. I do not think it is fair that I have removed my kids from the public school system, saving YOU money, but I don’t get any of that money back. However, taxes are not fair, and again, I can live with that.
My point was that while I happen to have choice, thousands of parents don’t have that choice. Instead, they must send their kids to the places that people like you have shaped for them with your public meetings. In the case of IPS at least, and it sounds like with many other schools, you, me, and the rest of the public, have failed.
To the point about schools rejecting kids to improve numbers, the simple solution seems to be to only give vouchers to places that do not screen children.
Doug wrote, “There was a 3% pay reduction for administrators. Thought the super was probably there.”
That is likely what any superintendent hopes you assume. Superintendents aren’t normally classed as administrators, I would think. Being top dog on the pyramid allows them to separate themselves from other district and building managment personnel because they are contract labor of a special sort.
I really doubt the superintendent is included in this pay reduction plan.
Crafty bastards.
Well, they have to learn at least one thing during all that time weaseling their way to a Ed.D. ;)
Know what I would like to do? Sit down and read the doctoral theses of all of Indiana’s school superintendents. Hundreds of papers touting themselves as original work furthering the aggregate body of educational leadership/management knowledge, yet look what we get from all of that education. Not much, all too often.
Jason, when did I–and why th’ hell would I–say anything remotely like “there’s no problem with public education”? It’s a collective human endeavor. It’s flawed. That’s not an argument for anarchy, or if it is then it shouldn’t stop at education. I don’t like our perpetual war-footing, or how we spend the tax monies raised that way on techno-jizz that has no real mission. I don’t like the I-69 extension, sugar subsidies, or NASA. I do not believe this gives me the right to divide the cost of those programs by 350,000,000 and claim the result as my share.
I didn’t accuse you of wanting vouchers for yourself; I merely point out that whether you’re a parent or childless, the money you pay in taxes for education goes to fund a system that educates all for the common good. It’s not a user fee. If your two–I mean, if that hypothetical voucher recipient’s two–children attended public schools he wouldn’t be billed $18,000. He’d pay his taxes, which are already progressive. Why should he get $18,000 back for not using the public schools? Or anything at all?
By the way, in addition to being a specious argument, vouchers are a product of false premise (I think willfully so, in so far as their national constituency is concerned): that the state “pays” “$9000” to “educate” the average student, because that’s state outlays per capita. But that money funds a system, with brick and mortar and buses and fuel costs and countless other things; a child does not get $9000 worth of information crammed in his head per year. When you send your children to that private academy the school district did not shorten its buildings by eight cubic feet or rip two seats out of the bus. Sixty-eight cents is probably fair.
As usual, the shortcomings of this argument are supposed to be trumped by a simple declaration of public schools–the example is always urban–“failing”, which we’re all supposed to accept as established fact. I don’t, and I know a heckuva lot more about an IPS education that you do. IPS parents have a choice of 21 charter schools–that’s one for every 1600 students–while IPS has a Montessori school, an International school, an academy for gifted children, and a fine arts magnet high school. I call that parental choice, all without allowing anyone who breeds successfully to defund the operation on whim.
All this, by the way, with 30% of students living in poverty and a crumbling, inefficient infrastructure due in no small part to decades of institutionalized racism and the shameful annexing of the county in the 60s for purposes of vote-counting, but not for equal educational opportunities for all its citizens. Vouchers would not only extend that legacy. They’d enhance it.
The Indiana Chamber – who pushed for these reforms – would like you to think we need to “reform education” today because an educated workforce will lead to a better economy tomorrow.
Yet, they look the other way when you point out that we are using today’s crappy economy to ‘fund’ or ‘invest’ in the leaders of tomorrow.
So, we are counting on a crappy economy today to make tomorrow’s economy better?
Jason – as the father of multiple IPS students – you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to judging IPS as a failure.
IPS already offers school choice – at a significantly lower costs than do charters or ‘scholarship programs’. These gimmicks are just a way to use public funding for private education.
If the legislature tied public oversight to these programs, you’d see how fast these programs would be rejected.
The tuition one pays at a private school is often not the true cost of providing that education. This is especially true in the case of parochial schools, which are often heavily subsidized or least have their facilities provided by the religious organizations that operate them. You need to look at spending per student not tuition per student.
The points about the cost of educating some specials needs students are on target. At some point, we as a society or those before us decided that providing services to all children regardless of IQ or physical ability was the right thing to do. One could also look at paying for special education the way I view the fire department. I’ve never had to call them, but I am glad they are there if I need them.
And it’s not just the special needs children (though I suppose that goes to how you define them). There are some kids who are perfectly functional mentally but require more effort because of behavioral issues which may stem from a sketchy home life. It’s all well and good (if I can erect a strawman for a second) to huff and puff about how the parents ought to provide a better home life for them, but if they can’t or won’t the kids still need to be educated – both as a matter of rudimentary fairness to kids who had no choice about their home life and because it’s in our collective self-interest if such children end up as somewhat productive adults.
Mr. doghouse riley makes great sense and provides great information.
It seems the problem is the intervention of the State of Indiana. We pay our property taxes and the money goes to the state. It comes back with some percentage skimmed off the top (handling fee!) then the locales are told how to spend the money. Here in Fishers, the new (4 yrs old) high school has been added to all while the threat of laying off teachers was going on, so we passed a local levy.
Now, how is it that money is there for endless building, but not for teachers? The funding directives laid out by the state.
Time to cut Indiana out of it. Let the money be collected within the county and be spent as local administrations see fit. Older districts do need to put more money into older buildings. Newer districts shouldn’t be forced to.
Mike, actually property taxes never leave the county. Mitch got school general funding 100% to sales and income which are collected by the state. That’s where the current funding problem starts. So you are partially correct. The state controls the money once it hits Indy. When general funds were 15% property taxes schools were at least partially shielded from situations we are currently in.
Construction is still funded via property taxes so the building you refer to is payed for differently than the general fund.
So “time to cut Indiana out of it”… I’m in favor of a larger portion being on property tax and reducing sales tax. Whatever happened to local control?
Mike, the state mandated the building of a second high school in Fishers? Could you explain that? I’m being serious, for once; I know building/maintenance costs are separate from classroom, but was Fishers forced to build a new school or lose the money, or something? It’s not like you folks really need much excuse to knock down anything growing and pave the result.
(In the meantime, could you guys bung the despicable [and oddly socialist] HSE lawsuit that’s trying to take money away from those districts with older buildings and give it to, well, the wealthiest county in the state, with its one-tenth the poverty-level students, half the learning disabled, and zero non-English speakers? I know, I know; the cost of pool chemicals keeps going up.)
Doghouse, no, the state didn’t mandate the building of the 2nd HS, nor the addition to it. It puts the money going to the district into two pots. It can build like crazy, and then not pay to staff what is built.
As to the suit, I don’t know anything more about it than the District’s main talking points, which are that us rich people (cough) pay more in taxes, therefore should be getting more back; and that our population is growing, and the money coming back should reflect same.
I heart Doghouse.
While some/many will critize local control (example: school board is a puppet of the superintendent, etc.) at least with local control voters decide who is on the local board–and in the past established funding levels (which became the property tax levy) as they determined local educational issues. Now, in line with “he who controls the money controls its useage” we find ourselves with the state mandating what funding a school will have, state mandatng many parts of what public school is required to do (such as provide for special needs students where it may require one person per student who may not play a role too much above babysitter or even have to be physically strong enough to control a student, testing, units of several subjects even including part of the curriculum, etc.). Now would ask that each poster seek to list at least 10 specific things they would do if in charge of local school that would account for at least 75% of needed financial cuts—no emotional listings and must continue to meet all state mandates. Remember must be in line with local community values and must provide for every student “according to their needs”. Start the fun:
Mike, I was just wondering if there was some common-knowledge reason Fishers built another Fishers HS; Carmel’s rather well-known in ed circles for refusing to build a new high school because that would dilute its chances to win another twenty-six girls state swimming titles in a row. (Which I think points out what we’ve accomplished in fifty years of using schools as a political football and proxy for social-issue fights that lose on the merits otherwise: even districts with plenty of money feel obliged to give the shareholders glitzy product roll-outs and free buffets instead of nuts-and-bolts.)
That lawsuit, at least as explained by HSE Superintendent Nathan Thurm–wait, that’s Martin Short’s sweaty lawyer character from the old SCTV–honest mistake–alleges that the state ought to fund each student in the public school system equally. I’m sure the lawsuit he found it necessary to file makes a more subtle case; I’m sure because under the simple argument Hamilton Southeastern Schools, which receive more tax money per student than the Indiana average, would owe the rest of the state an 8.57% rebate for 2007 alone.
Wow, I think this might be the 4th or 5th time Doghouse and I agree. I’ll take what I can get. :)
Doughouse said:
Well put.
At this rate, I think Doghouse is gonna have a lot of women after him. ;)