School corporations face desperate times

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Unfortunately, Indiana's public schools are facing some desperate times and they must come up with creative ways to keep their schools financially above water.

If not, they may drown in the near future.

Ever since the state started funding a school corporation's General Fund (through sales and income taxes), bad things have happened. In the past, the General Fund was made up of mostly property taxes.

When the load shifted from property taxes to the state, the economy tanked. People haven't been spending as much money, meaning the state hasn't been taking in nearly enough to fund schools at their normal levels.

Eastern Howard Schools -- north of Indianapolis near Kokomo -- has decided to put up a billboard promoting its corporation in hopes of enticing students to transfer to its schools.

Tuition was dropped to $300 this school year, but tuition will be waived starting next school year if the building principal approves the transfer and the student enrolls before the official count date.

Schools receive a certain amount of money per student.

"We have to market our school corporation," Eastern Howard Superintendent Tracy Caddell told the Kokomo Tribune.

"We think the billboard is worth the cost because if only one student registers, we will have met the cost of the advertisement."

Bloomfield Superintendent Dan Sichting isn't surprised that Eastern Howard is putting up a billboard. He added that schools are being forced to come up with different ways to bring in and save money.

"I think we're in a position now that we're going to have to be awfully creative in how we fund our schools," Sichting said. "Another thing is, we're going to have to be awfully frugal in how we run our schools."

Students currently don't have to pay anything to transfer to Bloomfield, though it's different at each school. When the state took over the General Fund, it put together a calculation schools must follow to determine what the transfer rate is at the start of the school year. Schools do it again after the school year.

"It depends on the amount of expenses that each school has. For example, I know that Linton has a little bit of transfer tuition charges. That's just how it's calculated," Sichting explained.

It's important that your enrollment doesn't drastically decline each year.

"Basically now the amount of funding each school receives is based on the number of students. The only way you're going to receive more funding from year to year is if you have more students, or if your poverty rate goes up," Sichting said.

"It's really a scary time in our state right now because of the economy being so bad."

The amount Bloomfield receives from the state was slashed by $297,000 in January for the 2010 budget year.

"We've been told that this year we were cut, but it looks like the next year, 2010-2011, could be worse than 2010," Sichting said. "The year after that it could be even worse. That's why you're seeing some of the things you're seeing, like billboards. ... To be honest, in order to attract students into this area, marketing is something we all have to do, whether we like it or not. That's why we're updating our Web site."

The General Assembly does allow schools to up the property tax levy, and the amount that's increased will go to the school's General Fund. But that must be passed by an election referendum.

"Tuesday there were probably nine General Fund referendums or some kind of referendums. Five passed and four failed," Sichting explained.

"That's what you're going to start seeing. Basically, the state legislature has said, if you want local control of your school's funding, then fund them locally too. You're going to see more of those types of referendums."

Chris is the general manager/editor for the Greene County Daily World. He can be reached by telephone at 847-4487 or 1-800-947-4487 or by e-mail at cpruett79@hotmail.com .