Editor, Times-Union: The recent education letter from the former superintendents has a couple of points that need addressed. 1. – " ... cuts to public education of the past several years ..." Gov. Daniels cut $300 million in 2009 when our economy tanked and that is the only state cut to education in the past 20 years. The letter trivializes the 2-plus percent per year increase to education but that is $464 million more than last year. That is real taxpayers’ dollars. That is the largest increase ever for our state but I guess it is not enough. 2. – "Legislature forgave $81 million ... charter school facilities and the $81 million that paid for them." The letter leaves one to believe the legislature loaned the charters $81 million to buy buildings that became the charters’ private property. Absolutely not true. When charters started up they had to operate for several months before they could access any public monies. They borrowed that $81 million to operate their schools for those first few months. Since they are public schools and the state is responsible for educating its students, that debt was forgiven as a way to repay them for the upfront monies they spent. To my knowledge, up to this point the state has never paid for charter facilities. That may change in the future. We did allow them to take over some abandoned school buildings for $1, which in most cases were costing us major money to maintain and hold. 3 –"Why the huge increase for vouchers?" Even with the "huge increase" in vouchers, those students will cost the state significantly less than regular students. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.
