Dive Brief:
- Indiana could see state school funding increases of 2% and 1% over the next two years if the State Budget Committee accepts a proposal from Gov. Mike Pence.
- At an estimated cost of $41 million, the proposal would be expected to push an additional $1,500 per student at charter schools and remove the cap on per-student private school voucher funding.
- Lawmakers have until April to approve Pence's budget, which calls for total spending of $31 billion over the next two years.
Dive Insight:
Indiana legislators have been working to expand the state's voucher program for some time now, but they have recently made calls to use public dollars to physically expand these schools. Over 19,000 Indiana students attend a private school through the state's voucher program, and many of those schools are running out of space. Currently, the voucher program uses state funds to pay for salaries and operating costs at private schools that voucher recipients elect to attend, but in April, lawmakers began pondering if they could expand the focus of these public dollars. Pence's call for more funding for charter and voucher schools could very well be tied to this desire.
Indiana's voucher program started in 2011 to fill empty spots in the state's private schools, so the idea of now giving these schools even more public dollars is probably not going to sit well with many. There is a difference between filling empty spots and creating new spots, and it's easy to imagine critics arguing that instead of expanding private schools, the money should be used to improve public schools.
