ISTA responds to education budget proposal by Department of Education
09/05/2014
ISTA appreciates Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz for unveiling the Indiana Department of Education’s budget request as it pertains to school funding formula increases over the next biennium as well as other targeted priorities.
“From what we can see, the request calls for about a 3% increase over the course of the two-year biennium,” noted ISTA President Teresa Meredith. “ISTA has a long history of supporting Hoosier public schools. At this time, we don’t believe the request goes far enough to provide the tools and resources necessary to improve student learning.”
“Our public schools serve more than one million Hoosier students each year and have been doing so under extremely tight fiscal circumstances, exacerbated by the inclusion of funding vouchers for private and religious schools and new charter schools and virtual charter schools,” said Meredith. With Indiana’s more than $2 billion budget surplus, an unemployment rate that is below the national average, and an inflation rate that is hovering around 2 percent, Meredith added, “we are asking Hoosier lawmakers to make deeper investments in K-12 education that benefit our children.”
“Superintendent Ritz’s additional focus on textbook and instructional materials assistance for parents is on target. Indiana’s budget line item for textbook assistance to cover the costs of these items for families in need has not increased one penny since 2007,” said Meredith.
Indiana’s benchmark for qualifying for textbook relief is the free- and reduced-price lunch guidelines. In 2007, the total number of students receiving lunch assistance in Indiana was 390,727.
By 2014, that number had skyrocketed to 492,230—not surprising since the “Great Recession” occurred in the intervening years. “First of all, that is almost one-half of the public school student enrollment and secondly, it represents an increase of about 25 percent,” Meredith noted. “The need is certainly obvious. When the state does not appropriately fund these important classroom resources, the funds to cover them must come from existing programs—which shortchanges all students.”
“ISTA looks forward to advocating for what our Hoosier children deserve and working through these budget issues as well as several other issues both with Superintendent Ritz and Indiana lawmakers when the General Assembly reconvenes in 2015,” said Meredith.