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Pelath: Under new Daniels plan, MCAS will get $1.2M less

From Staff and Wire Reports

INDIANAPOLIS - State Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, says Michigan City Area Schools would lose more than $1.2 million under Gov. Mitch Daniels' proposal for funding schools.

Pelath, vice chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a prepared statement that Daniels' proposal for funding schools was "so misleading and incomplete that representatives would have to start crafting a new budget on their own in the days ahead." Democrats plan to start meeting today to write their own budget.

Pelath was appointed to a House-Senate panel that began working toward a state budget agreement in advance of a special session later this month, but that work ended in dispute. Daniels will call that special session because lawmakers didn't adopt a state budget by the time the Legislature adjourned at the end of April.

"The governor told the public he planned to give our schools a 2 percent increase. It's not true. He counted restricted, federal school dollars that have nothing to do with state support for education," Pelath said. "Such a move is at best confusing, and at worst completely misleading."

The Republican governor says his two-year budget would give schools an average funding increase of 2 percent in each of the next two years, and more than 70 percent of traditional public schools would see an increase from 2009 to 2011.

Daniels' budget relies heavily on federal stimulus money to provide those increases.

Democrats argue stimulus money shouldn't be considered school funding because it should be used only on one-time expenditures.

When stimulus money isn't factored in, 58 percent of Indiana's traditional public school districts would lose money from 2009 to 2011, according to an Associated Press analysis of school funding numbers provided by the Daniels administration.

Daniels and other Republicans say it makes sense for schools to receive less money if they are losing students because they don't need as many teachers and administrators.

In the administration's plan to distribute these funds, more than 160 school corporations, especially in urban and poor rural areas, take major hits, Pelath said. "In the three days since the governor touted his school funding proposal, school officials throughout Indiana went from being happy about a 2-percent boost to being utterly confused to being angry when they figured out the gimmicks," he said. "If schools are to suffer pain, they at least deserve to be told."

Pelath said the gravest concern is that the governor's plan will create a funding "cliff." The federal stimulus that is used to fund local schools will not be there in two years, so many schools will be in a deep hole for years.

If the economy does not noticeably improve, there will be a serious crisis in school funding two years down the road, and all the things that stand in the way of children getting a quality education - larger class sizes, teacher layoffs and program cuts - will come back in full force.

"Amid all of this, the administration still wants to use millions of state dollars for a bailout of the Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board," Pelath said. "We're just not going to be able to use the governor's proposal as a starting point. It has too many poison pills."

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6/11/2009 11:00:00 AM Email this article • Print this article
Our Opinion
The Issue:

Michigan City Area Schools could get $1.2 million less.

Our Opinion:

MCAS needs to be more creative and tough it out.
School budgets
Governor’s budget tough on City

Editorial

Creativity doesn't come easily to entrenched bureaucracies, particularly government. The state's economy is in recession and tax revenues are down, but some members of the Indiana Legislature can't understand that with less revenue you simply must spend less.

Gov. Mitch Daniels' budget would give schools an overall increase of 2 percent, but his formula would increase money to school corporations with growing enrollment - generally suburban schools - and less of an increase to those that are shrinking or not growing, mostly rural and urban schools. Michigan City could get $1.2 million less.

While all schools have increased costs because utilities and health care costs are up, the school corporations that have flat or declining enrollments have to find ways to economize. It makes sense that if the school enrollment isn't growing, operating costs should be throttled down.

Let's take a blue sky approach to Michigan City Area Schools.

Voters turned down a bond issue for a new career center last month, postponing at least for one year additional operating costs for what would have been a $39 million building. This gives school officials a chance to be more creative about how to provide career education.

And what about all the talent at the school administration building? Lay off a few administrators and have each remaining top educator teach a class at the high school one period a day, coach a sport or direct a band or chorus. They probably would find being with students and other teachers enriching for their careers.

These are just a couple of off-hand ideas, which may or may not be answers to the budget situation. But school officials surely can think of ways to save money on operations. That should be the school board's message to administration.

Schools need to tough it out.