While a proposal issued Monday by Indiana House Republicans would increase school and per-student funding statewide, such a proposal would actually cut funding to the Fayette County School Corporation.
The funding plan, released by House Republicans Monday, would increase funding by $469 million over the next two years for schools — 2.3 percent increases each year — in addition to $40 million more in grant funding for charter schools.
The plan was touted by Rep. Tim Brown, a Republican from Crawfordsville and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, as a way to narrow the divide in funding between faster-growing suburban school districts and those in rural and urban areas, which are experiencing declines in enrollment.
"I feel good about it," Brown told Tom Davies of the Associated Press Monday. "I feel good that we're able to give such large increases, that we made that a priority and that we'll be able to have a building block for the future."
The proposal would see an increase in per student funding of roughly 2.4 percent for the Fayette County School Corporation between fiscal years 2015 and 2017 —or $126 more per student — but a closer look at the numbers shows it would result in an estimated decrease in state funding to the corporation of approximately $23.9 million for fiscal year 2015 to about $23 million in fiscal year 2017, a drop of 0.3 percent.
Under the proposal, the corporation would also see its Title I funding — the federal aid funding which assists schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students receive extra educational assistance in order to meet state and local student performance standards — drop from approximately $906,000 in fiscal year 2015 to roughly $756,000 in fiscal year 2017, a estimated decrease of 9.1 percent.
Those areas aren't the only one the school corporation would see funding cut in, as the proposal would also, if it came to fruition, result in an estimated 3.3 percent cut in special education funding, and almost a $1.7 million decrease in funding from the state's complexity index.
The complexity index is a funding formula the state uses to provide additional funds to school districts statewide who have a higher number of disadvantaged students, and in recent years has taken in the percentage of the school corporation's students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
Roughly 62.1 percent of public school students — 2,334 — within the Fayette County School Corporation were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in 2014, according to statistics.
Russell Hodges, superintendent of the Fayette County School Corporation, said the corporation has spent time this week analyzing the proposed funding from the state but admitted that the current proposal would have an impact on FCSC schools.
"That's a hit," Hodges said of the proposal's estimated funding. "We are looking at some reductions based on this projection."
Hodges added that a debate over the state's complexity index, and how it will be figured for future school funding, played a role in the estimates as well.
The funding plan would see the complexity index for the FCSC drop from 0.3315 to 0.2614, due to a proposed change to the formula which would only take into account a school district's number of students receiving free lunches, not both free and reduced-price lunches.
Such as change would mean about 8.1 percent of FCSC students who received reduced-price lunches in 2014 would no longer be included in figuring the corporation's complexity index, a factor which would also impact several other urban school district's which face the same challenges as FCSC.
"This is a case where we do look more urban than rural, because it has to do with free lunch and it has to do with povery, and when you look at the percentage of kids we have on free lunch and free/reduced price lunch, it's a pretty significant number of kids, so the complexity index, when it was originally put in place, was to recognize that there may be additional supports that students who come from poverty need to be successful in the classroom," he said. "That's what it was designed to do, but there's been a coalition of schools ... that have really attacked the complexity index, so that's one of the reasons you're seeing quite a bit of change in the formulas when it relates to complexity."
Hodges also acknowledged that declining enrollment within the FCSC also contributes to the estimates in the House funding plan.
The House funding proposal estimates the FCSC will lose about 185 students off its average daily membership, or ADM, count over the next two years.
"We're in a declining enrollment situation, so that doesn't help at all," Hodges said. "But we'll keep working at it."
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