Column: An open letter to Rep. Dave Hall about Indiana's educational priorities

Dear Rep. Hall,

I recently received your annual “Issue Survey;” thank you. This year, a survey cannot possibly express the concerns I have, so I have taken your invitation to write you.

My letter is to address legislative actions taken on education in Indiana over the past 20-plus years, how those changes have benefited some, hurt some and the changes I have witnessed in my community schools, your community schools.

As you know, in 2009 and since, steps have been taken by the Indiana General Assembly to completely reshape school funding. Lawmakers moved funding away from funding buildings/academics to funding students. This funding restructure has allowed for successive legislation to fund charter, for-profit private, parochial, virtual and public schools out of a child’s community in the form of vouchers/grants.

The restructure has also moved funding from smaller, poorer communities to larger, wealthier communities in an attempt to close the funding gap per child in the old funding model. At the same time, legislation has been passed lowering state standards for teaching.

The voucher program, which started as an alternative for impoverished inner-city children in failing public schools to receive a better education, has grown each biennial budget year. Alternative schools today are no longer alternatives to failing public schools (which our schools were never failing) for lower-income families, but are considered marketplace competition for all public schools.

This year, vouchers/grants were made available to families making up to $250,000 per year. Could we not have first considered expanding the 21st Century Scholar program for families making up to $60,000?

Authorizers of these alternatives to public schools make 3% of the tuition paid by the state. Ball State being the biggest recipient of tax dollars for authorizing 28 alternative schools (seven with F ratings and six with D ratings and only two with A ratings), took in $2.9 million in the 2021-22 school year. Of the $2.9 million, $900,000 was paid to seven administrators, seven!

In the 2023-24 school year, four alternative schools in Indiana will close due to not being reauthorized or lack of enrollment, while six new ones will open. In fact, 75% of alternative schools opened in Indiana since 2010 have closed. Some have closed their doors in the middle of a school year, displacing children and causing parents the undue stress of finding another school. Several failing alternative schools that did not receive re-authorization will reopen under a different name with a different authorizer. Is this model sustainable?

Currently, the state is suing two of these failed alternative schools for over inflating enrollment numbers and paying for services never provided. The amount the state is seeking is $154 million, $65 million for tuition over payment and $89 million paid to associates and family members of school administrators for services never performed.

The alternative school authorizer is not named in the suit. If alternative school authorizers are not responsible for auditing these schools, who is? If a state audit was only performed after these schools closed their doors, how many other alternative schools might be bilking tax dollars?

I have to wonder if this new formula has met legislators’ initial goal of streamlining and making more transparent our state school funding, or if it has only made it more complex, complicated, inequitable and very lucrative for a few. While the issues I have addressed may be headline news in the education section of the Indy Star, the affect the restructuring has had on small rural schools is not.

How do budget cuts each year limit the tools available to our teachers and administrators to provide a world class education that every child in the State of Indiana, which they are constitutionally privileged to?

Shortly after the initial restructuring in 2010, the changes I saw came first to our elementary children. Administrators forced to make budget cuts let licensed physical education/health teachers at our elementary schools go and replaced them with non-licensed staff that had no previous experience. This did not reflect the goals stated in the Indiana Healthy Weight Initiative published that same year, but those goals did not come with funding.

In the following years, I witnessed our licensed elementary art teachers being replaced, again, with non-licensed staff with no previous experience in the field they were charged to teach. Music classes at our elementary schools dropped to one day per week with a single music teacher traveling from school to school. So much for fostering creativity and attracting families to our community.

Then, in or around the 2014-15 school year, our licensed librarians at the elementary levels left one by one and were replaced, again, with non-licensed staff with no previous experience as a librarian. This move directly correlates with the onset drop of reading scores for our third grade students. In subsequent years, libraries at our elementary schools have closed completely, putting an additional burden on our teachers to select and provide age-appropriate learning materials in classroom libraries.

Forecasting and budgeting for dropping enrollment, administrators have consolidated, then consolidated again, and closed one of our schools. (We are fortunate that our superintendent at the time had the foresight to move our Career Resource Center to this building to prevent having to sell it to an alternative school for $1.)

Our teachers and administrators have had to campaign twice for a property tax referendum in order to attract and maintain teachers. This is not in their job description; it is the constitutional duty of the Indiana legislative body to ensure the equitable education for every child in Indiana. The last referendum campaign failed. The blame for failure is in large part due to the wording the state required of school board members to put on the ballot that read “home owners property taxes will increase by 30%.”

From the 2017-18 to the 2020-21 school year, our teaching staff has dropped from 123 to 104 as teachers seek higher pay in surrounding counties (marketplace competition) or leave the field all together. While the state average annual salary for teachers is $52,000, our district's starting salary has dropped to $29,000; our medium salary is $48,000, far less than the state average. Our substitute teachers, who are no longer required to have even an Associate’s degree, make $7.90 per hour, while neighboring counties pay $11.40 – $14.90 per hour.

This is not equity! This is not going to attract recently graduated teachers! This does not help maintain the highly qualified teachers we currently have! Adjunct teachers are brought in at low rates and their classroom experience is “virtual school.” The lack of hands-on teaching is proving too much for some of these teachers to complete even one full semester. Our students are the ones who suffer.

This year, we have cut our “We the People” program because, according to some, we cannot afford a qualified candidate. National Champions! Not just state champions, but national champions! This is utterly disheartening, discouraging and demoralizing. All the call for “civics education” in schools is just hyperbole.

The current school funding model is failing Hoosier children. Indiana lawmakers threw out an equitable school funding model and since then we have steadily been in a race to the bottom in our Indiana K-12 education. Our communities have been torn as we watch career teachers depart, as neighbors argue over whether to increase property tax to educate our children and as our children increasingly become disengaged watching the opportunities for a rich and full educational experience go out the door with the funding.

The top rated schools in the nation are in Massachusetts; their funding model looks very much like Indiana’s old model of funding buildings/academics!

We are at a crisis point, the experiment has failed. Just like the removal of hand writing, long division and phonics has proven harmful to K-12 education and is now being re-implemented, we need to take a long look at our current failing funding model. Please, at the very least, consider a bi-partisan summer study committee. Our kids are worth it!

Sincerely, JoAnne E. Himebaugh

JoAnne Himebaugh is a resident of Nashville, Indiana.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Columnist writes Indiana's funding model has robbed rural schools