Three school districts are teaming up to challenge inequities they perceive in the school funding formula. Hamilton Southeastern, Franklin Township Schools, and Middlebury Schools say that it’s unfair to have their per-pupil funding cut while their districts are growing to cushion the blow to other school districts in the state with stagnant or shrinking school populations (but, presumably, fixed costs that remain more or less constant.)
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller (and Indiana Barrister’s Abdul) criticize the use of taxpayer dollars to bring (and defend) the suit.
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller blasted the move, saying in a statement that tax money shouldn’t have to be used either to file the suit or defend the state against the allegations.
“In times of fiscal frugality, it seems wasteful for a school board to spend taxpayers’ money to pay for lawyers to sue the state — requiring me to use taxpayers’ money to go to court, where more taxpayers’ money will be spent to ask a judge to rule on what is essentially a public policy question for the legislature,” Zoeller said.
(First, am I the only one who is a little tired of people ‘blasting’ various things in news articles?)
This notion that units of government shouldn’t be able to use tax money to challenge taxing and fiscal policies that harm them is a little ridiculous. The translation is that they should just shut up and take it. And for Zoeller to double down on the argument complaining of the use of tax dollars to defend the suit is even sillier. Want to avoid spending tax dollars in this fashion? Give them what they want.
The truth is – and I tell my clients this – once you get the lawyers involved, everyone is probably going to lose (except, generally, the lawyers.) There are more efficient methods of dispute resolution. But, if the parties aren’t willing to resolve the dispute – because they think they’re absolutely right or the other side won’t compromise enough or whatever – then there has to be a method of dispute resolution aside from us beating each other over the head with rocks and clubs. Our legal system, for all its warts, is better (usually) than violence.
On the substance, do I think the Hamilton Southeastern lawsuit has merit? From what I’ve seen, not in particular. A constitutionally permissible system of education that is “general and uniform” and “wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all” probably doesn’t require any kind of per-pupil funding formula. After all, students are not equally expensive to educate.
Zoeller is a publicity seeker for everything who doesn’t care about anyone other than his own possible political future.
As I understand the suit, the idea is to at least get the state to recognize the number of children currently being educated within the HSE district. The state playfully lags years behind the actual count. This affects growth counties (er, those that had until recently been growth counties), such as Hamilton, and other donut counties.
Again, I believe the state shouldn’t be a middleman, taking tax dollars in from one locale, and return some fraction of it back. I believe the taxes should be collected locally, and spent at the discretion of the district, relative to the needs of that district.
If all the suit does is raise awareness of the current dynamics, I’m 100% behind it. But, the interesting thing unspoken thus far, that you allude to, is the way of solving problems. Virtually all of the elected officials in Hamilton County are Republicans. Sure, school board members are voted in non-partisan elections, but most are tied to their parties. Why the board members aren’t hammering their House Reps or State Senators is a question begging to be asked.
If you are speaking of property taxes, the state does not collect, nor distribute property tax. Levied locally, paid locally, collected locally, allocated locally, spent locally.
Sales and income tax is another matter, but the keep it local idea is simplistic and misguided.
Mike– if you think people aren’t hammering their Representatives and Senators, then you should probably speak to Reps. Truitt and Kilinker or Sen Alting. The West Lafayette — admin, teachers, parents — have been all over them as well as Luke Kenley in the Senate to make things more fairly funded. We have 2 votes.. and the urban districts/ rural legislators are going to outdo us every time.
Paddy, don’t forget “rate controlled by the state” in your list in how property tax is used.
The point is that local governments can’t decide for themselves what works best in their community. If Fishers wants to charge $10,000 of tax on a $100,000 home, they should be free to do so if they feel that best serves the people in their community.
However, they’re told they have a limit on what they can tax, and the rest will be provided by the state. Now that they’re so dependent on the state, they’re a little upset at how the state does not give equally. At least that is how I understand it.
@Hoosier 1- I was specifically speaking of elected official-to-elected offical communication. I get the sense that the little people can throw truckloads of rocks to some giggles and ridicule, but if the elected school board officials- in Fishers they are the same party as the State Reps, State Senators, and Indiana Senate majority- hammer up the chain, it is bound to have a greater effect. Just my opinion. I think it’s great if the people are broadly getting to those you mentioned. But truly, I doubt Kenley would ever relax the grip of the state on school funding. He represents the suburbs, but I’ve never heard him talk about fairer school funding, or getting the state out of the game.
I get Kenley’s insipid mailings. In fact, I’m looking at the one he sent at the beginning of the session. Here were his five issues, in order:
1. Jobs & the economy
2. Property tax caps
3. Unemployment insurance
4. Ethics
5. Redistricting
His 9 questions legislative survey had two questions that directly impact K-12 education:
8. Given the revenue shortfalls being experienced by the state, would you support a temporary 3% reduction in K-12 school spending? Y/N
9. If you answered ‘no’ to number 8, would you support a tax increase to fund the shortfall? Y/N
Simple ‘more money/less money’ stuff. Nothing to do with the mechanism, and he represents a large part of the HSE district.
Jason, sorta true. There are statutory limits on the capital projects and transportation operating funds based on convoluted formulas that I don’t have handy, but the state contributes nothing to either. The 2 debt service funds and bus replacement are not limited. Well, there is the circuit breaker, but that is tough to quantify so far.
General Fund funded 99.9999999999% by state money. There is a bit of miscellaneous revenue from transfer students, fees, facility rental, interest on investments, but not enough “local” money to really matter. The only way schools can augment the general fund with property taxes is to pass a referendum, and the state can’t dictate anything about the spending of that money, just the process one has to navigate to levy it.
From the data I found on the DOE website, the Tippecanoe County School District does not appear to be a growing suburban district like HSE, yet the world of hurt they are in has been well documented by Doug.
The state funding formula is a political football that sometimes starts to head towards the growing schools’ goal and at other times to the declining urban schools. You never really know how it is going to shake out for an individual district until actual enrollment figures and complexity data is run through the Rube Goldberg calculator. We can scrap the funding formula because of a lawsuit, but like our state’s response to the property tax lawsuit, the results may be less than satisfactory.
Lance Rhodes, the Chief Financial Officer of the Indiana Department of Education, recently informed school superintendents that there has been a “complete reset” to the funds allocated to school general funds. The financial data he provided showed what he meant by a complete reset. We have returned to pre-2006 funding levels on a statewide level. This has occurred at a time when health insurance premiums for school employees and other expenses have skyrocketed. It should be noted that public school enrollment has been growing ever so slightly. So even if the funding was level, we’d have less per student from the school general fund.
Here’s my question: Is the problem how we are dividing up the general fund pie or how big the pie is to start with?