Local school officials are anticipating a few education-related bills in the upcoming legislative session. Plymouth School Superintendent Andy Hartley told the school board last week that he’s met with some legislators, and he offered board members some predictions.
He expects lawmakers to adjust the high school accountability model, to try to bring it in line with the new Graduation Pathways. “It’s not going to count students who graduate with a General Diploma, and it won’t designate them as an actual graduate in the accountability model,” Hartley said about the proposal. “It’s also requiring certain students to stay in a certain career pathway, as opposed to, perhaps, a student were to try something, it not be their strength, and want to try something else, we would be penalized for that, in that accountability model that we’re seeing right now.”
Hartley also anticipates a bill with language to hold educators harmless from ILEARN scores, when it comes to school accountability grades and teacher evaluations.
Additionally, he said an existing recommendation that school corporations not transfer more than 15 percent of their Education Fund money into the Operations Fund may become a requirement. “My worry for something like that would be, if we continue to lose dollars to property tax caps, the need for us to transfer more may exist,” Hartley said. “There are districts that have bigger property tax cap losses than we do, and I really worry for districts like that. I’ve had really good, open dialogue on some of that, and we’ll see where that lands.”
The Education Fund is mainly used to cover teacher salaries and gets its money from the state. The Operations Fund covers most other expenses with funding from property taxes. But the Education Fund leaves out several items that used to be funded with state money under the old funding system, essentially requiring school corporations to move some of it to Operations.
