Wednesday, February 19, 2025
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Directors: Vouchers Could Still Harm Public Schools

Local School Directors remain concerned the newly approved school voucher bill could create problems for public schools in the future.

Several local legislators said they changed their minds on the bill, after lawmakers prevented a loss in funding if students leave the system. Putnam County Director of Schools Corby King said the district appreciates the bill’s protections, but there are concerns about exactly how it will work. King said he is concerned that the district’s budget will still be negatively affected even if it is not losing funding.

“We’re not going to lose funding, but it might not be funded at the same level,” King said. “So we’re still trying to maintain the same staffing and the same programming but with less funds than we would have received. Even though we didn’t lose funds, it might not be as much as what we would have received had we had all of the students that we might lose.”

White County Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said the bill has a hold harmless clause protecting school budgets for the first year but funding will still be impacted by enrollment numbers after that. Dronebarger said the district’s expenditures will continue to rise regardless of how its revenues are affected.

“If we lose fifty students that’s not fifty students in one grade, it’s not two classrooms to get rid of, that’s fifty students across all different grades,” Dronebarger said. “Which means you still need the teacher for the remaining say eighteen or seventeen students that are still left in that classroom.”

Dronebarger said he thinks many legislators have their hearts in the right place and truly believe school vouchers can coexist with public education. Dronebarger said vouchers are promoted in the name of school choice but people like himself would say that school choice existed before, just without paying private schools with public tax dollars.

“I don’t know that initially it’ll have a tremendous effect initially in White County,” Dronebarger said. “But as it is set up to grow and expand in future years it could have an effect and certainly will have an effect on public schools across the state.”

King said it is difficult to say how the voucher system will play out over time across the state. King said the impact on public schools will be lessened if the state maintains its requirements that allow for five thousand new students to use the voucher program each year as long as seventy-five percent of vouchers are used.

“If they go by the way of other states and open this up universally it could have disastrous implications for us,” King said. “But it really just depends on how they move forward.”

King said he has reached out to the state to ask for details about how the legislation functions. King said he hopes to continue receiving the support and increased financial contributions that the state has provided in recent years.

“That’s what I’ve expressed with our legislators,” King said. “They’ve assured me they’ll continue to support public education so if there’s money where they can continue to support us and continue helping us move forward along with this other program, if that’s the compromise that we have then that’s the direction we’ll go.”

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