This past Friday, Jan. 15, Indiana's schools, via a letter from the Indiana State Board of Education to superintendents, school board members, principals, and Indiana educators, were sent the Citizens' Checklist.
Quoting from the cover letter, "the Checklist is to be utilized by local school communities as they move to make adjustments to respond to lower state tuition support funding as a result of the state's declining revenues."
I understand the state's declining revenues and the impact that has on the State's ability to fund public education.
However, prior to 2009 when the state took over the full funding of K-12 education, the state's portion of this funding was between 60-70 percent with the remainder coming from the local property taxpayer. The miracle of property tax reform eliminated the stability provided by local funding sources and consequently now subjects school funding to the instability of the state's revenue sources.
As a declining enrollment school system, we have had to make many cost-saving adjustments over the past several years. As a result, the margin we have available for making the type of expenditure reductions the Citizens' Checklist suggests is pretty minimal.
With this reduction in state tuition support, we will have over $440,000 less in calendar year 2010 in state funding than we would have received per the funding formula, $340,000 less than the projected state revenue estimate we were provided for use in preparing our 2010 budget and $150,000 less than we received in 2009.
In three places, within the letter, it suggests that taking into consideration the precepts and process of the Citizens' Checklist will facilitate cost reductions which "avoid or minimize any reduction in teaching staff," "reduce the cost of staff without affecting instruction," and "find adjustments that do not affect student learning."
It is tough enough that we must deal with this funding reduction but I find it particularly hard to swallow that this list tells us how we should go about reducing our expenditures to offset the reduction.
Most school systems in this area, regardless of whether they are declining enrollment districts or ones suffering from the funding inequities within the state's formula, have all had to make reductions in recent years.
In addition, although the funding shortfalll affects our 2010 revenues, we are already in the midst of the 2009-10 school year. As a result, given contractual obligations, many of the suggested reductions cannot be effected until the 2010-11 school year.
Thus for every $1 of the funding shortfall, we must make $2 in expenditure reductions. Given all of this, although not impossible, it is highly improbable that we will be able to make the necessary reductions without affecting the teaching staff, instruction and student learning. Sadly, this is not just a 2010 problem.
The state's revenues are not projected to improve before 2012 to 2013 at best. Also, we have been told this current situation will result in re-establishing the baseline for public education funding in the future. This means we can expect lower funding even after the state's revenues improve.
For this reason alone and its future impact we are involving our teachers' association as part of the process as we look to re-shape ourselves. Although I am sure to the State Board of Education, a school corporation is a school corporation and all of us can make the cuts suggested in the Citizens' Checklist.
However, for many of the school corporations in this area we are of the size that these reductions are personal.
The people affected will be the people we see in the grocery store, in church, local restaurants and many other places within the community. The sad reality is there will be people hurt in an already hurting communities.
Finally, regarding another state educational funding shortfall, despite "political promises" to fully fund the implementation of full-day kindergarten, three years later we are still $200,000-plus short of full funding.
