Area public schools have pretty much completed their 2014 budgets and are awaiting their review by the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance, which should come early next year.
Putting those spending plans together was, again, difficult as there just wasn't enough money available to do all that school officials want to do.
Which is why whenever those school officials watch state lawmakers essentially give away education dollars, they get pretty upset.
Last spring, the General Assembly approved a provision calling for the state to forgive Common School Fund loans made to charter schools, erasing $91.2 million of their debt to the state.
North Knox superintendent Darrel Bobe said the move went pretty much unnoticed.
“I don’t have a problem that the state decided to open up the Common School Fund to the charter schools, or I didn’t until this last legislative session,” he said.
“Somebody has to pay that bill, and who pays it is the taxpayers,” Bobe said “And even though we don’t have a charter school in Knox County, they didn’t take that into consideration on how they’re going to make that money up, and they’re causing further cuts in every school district in the state.”
Bobe said the money loaned to the schools came out of the General Fund, effecting all Indiana taxpayers.
“It seems like they’re going around and setting these programs up and changing the rules and regulations without thinking how we’re going to pay this back,” he said. “No one else in this county would have that privilege, if we wanted to borrow money we’d have to have proof we have a way to pay this back.
“Someone is paying that $92 million,” Bobe said. “And our community helps pay those dollars, and we don’t even have a charter school here.”
South Knox superintendent Tim Grove said he was never comfortable with the idea of opening the fund to charter schools in addition to the traditional public schools, and the loan forgiveness has only made it worse.
“Oh, this is ridiculous, it’s absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “They’re changing the rules as we go and they’re giving preference and advantage to the charter schools.
“In my opinion, it’s a pattern — the state does everything they can to make these charter schools succeed because there is such a stigma against public education,” Grove said. “Then all the other stuff they’ve talked about that’s wrong with education becomes castellated sand and it’ll wash away at the first wave.”
Grove said he simply wants all schools receiving state aid to be treated fair and equitably, so if the state forgives the $92 million charter school debt, then the public schools’ debt should also be forgiven.
“I don’t want any school to fail, but I especially don’t want to see the public schools, my school, to fail because the state is too concerned with helping the charter schools,” he said. “They should have to play be the same rules we do and then see how they can do.”
The money the charter schools aren't having to pay back is limiting resources for the future generations of educators and prohibiting a continual cycle of excelled learning in tomorrow’s students, grove said.
“I’m looking at a pretty significant deficit to start off next school year, and the money they’re forgiving is money of tomorrow’s future wasted,” he said. “But, there have been others before me, others much better than me, we all just plug along, we take the hits, we get up, brush ourselves off and move forward.
“The teachers, too, and they do that because we know the kids need it,” Grove said. “We make do with what we’ve got, we’ve got the good ol’ American spirit, can’t keep a good man down, so we just keep moving on, and providing our future with all we can possibly give them.”