Public school state funding proposals called “devastating”

Two bills filed in the House of Representatives at the Indiana General Assembly this year that would deeply cut into the operations money that all public-school systems in the state use “would be completely devastating” if enacted into law.

That’s what North Adams Community Schools Superintendent Kim Hiatt said at the March meeting of the NA school board after a presentation by board member Tim Ehlerding, who said that if either bill becomes law, it could result in an estimated $500 million loss to public schools statewide per year.

Operations funds are used for all expenses not directly related to education, such as maintenance, repairs, buying buses, paying custodians and bus drivers, and other projects.

Ehlerding said the goal of the two pending bills is to cut operations budget funding by taxation to 40 cents per $100 of assessed property tax value in each school district over an eight-year period. The NA rate for operations is now almost 61 cents per $100. However, the House bills would provide a tax cap addition from the state to each school district to partly make up for the loss of operations money.

Using his chart, Ehlerding estimated that the North Adams operations budget would fall from a projected $4,772,798 this year to $4,094,247 in 2033, although he pointed out that inflation and other cost and price effects would be very likely in that 10-year period.

Another board member, Carla Bultemeier, said her opinion is that the legislature wants to reallocate the operations money to give to charter schools, which are in direct competition with public ones. Her view was endorsed by the other five board members. Only one member was absent: Michelle Stimpson.

Ehlerding handed out a onepage summary of estimations he produced, based on where

North Adams Community Schools is now and how much it might be hurt by the proposed funding change. He emphasized that his calculations used assumption of continued two percent increases in assessed property value in the district each year and a 12.5% reduction in the operations budget per year over an eightyear period, since 12.5 multiplied by eight equals 100%. He also said he was using figures supplied by the Northeast Indiana Public School Association.

The only actual numbers in Ehlerding’s chart are the district’s property tax rate of 60.93 cents per $100 of assessed property valuation; the 2023 total assessed valuation of taxable property in the NA district, which is $777,905,391; and the present NA operations fund budget of $4,739,778.

Ehlerding’s chart shows that adding the state’s estimated $33,020 tax cap payment by assuming passage of one of the two bills, the overall operations budget estimate for North Adams this year would be $4,772,798.

Ehlerding also urged everyone bothered by this proposed large-scale budget cut in operations money for schools to contact any members of the General Assembly to protest. He specified Rep. Matt Lehman of Berne, the number two Republican in the House, and Sen. Travis Holdman of Wells County, a leading member of that chamber’s tax committee.