Oops! House budget cuts IPS by $14M more than expected

Some Indiana school districts stand to lose millions of dollars more than what was stated in documents distributed to lawmakers and the media ahead of Tuesday's House vote approving a massive overhaul of state's school funding formula.

Indianapolis Public Schools would lose an additional $14 million during the next two years on top of the roughly $18 million loss previously disclosed. Fort Wayne Community Schools would lose an additional $5 million above the $10 million originally anticipated, school officials said.

The losses are higher primarily because a document that Indiana House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, distributed to lawmakers and the public last week relied on outdated data on free lunches. That data are used to calculate extra funding to school districts with significant numbers of low-income students.

The mistaken use of old data inflated the financial impact on some schools and downplayed it for others, such as IPS and Fort Wayne. When the updated data is used, funding increases for some schools and decreases for others.

"It concerns us that the data didn't paint an accurate picture," said Krista Stockman, a spokeswoman for Fort Wayne Schools. "If they had the accurate numbers, they may have felt differently when it came up for a vote."

Revelations about the mistake come as lawmakers plan to overhaul the state's school funding formula. The plan approved Tuesday by the Republican-controlled House would shift money away from urban school districts that are losing students and toward fast-growing suburban districts. The changes are part of a new $31 billion two-year state budget.

Brown, the lead budget-writer for House Republicans, said he believes the most recent data available was used to create a 124-page "School Formula Simulation" two weeks ago.

That document, prepared by the Legislative Services Agency, details the impact of the proposed funding changes on each school district in the state. It was used in arguments by House lawmakers from both parties during Tuesday's budget debate.

But the new free lunch data was available in January — at least two weeks before the document was created on Feb. 15.

IPS became aware of the use of outdated data on the day of the House vote.

"We understand that some of the information used in the House Republican school formula simulation may not have been the most recent data," said IPS spokeswoman Kristin Cutler. "We will continue to work with legislators to ensure that they have accurate information so that they may develop a school funding formula that fully meets the needs of the students of Indianapolis Public Schools and all public schools across the state."

The impact of the updated free lunch numbers hit IPS and Fort Wayne schools particularly hard because the percentage of students who qualify for free lunch in those districts fell from 2014 to 2015 – from 78.4 percent to 71.5 percent for IPS and from 61.8 percent to 57.8 percent for Fort Wayne.

School officials suspect those declining numbers have less to do with actual household income and more to do with the fact that those two districts began participating this school year in a federal program called Community Eligibility, which allows all students at participating schools to receive free lunch.

Parents are still supposed to fill out applications for other benefits such as free textbooks, but may be less inclined to do so without the immediate impact of a student not getting a meal.

"Parents just haven't got the hang of filling out the forms yet," Stockman said.

Rep. Greg Porter, the top Democrat on the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee, said the use of incorrect data that understated the already big financial impact on school districts in the state's two largest cities is a serious problem.

"I think the whole chamber should be very concerned about numbers that were not accurate," Porter, D-Indianapolis, said. "There's a shadow over the numbers they used — darn near an eclipse — so I'm very concerned."

The budget now moves to the Senate, where Republicans in that chamber will put their own stamp on it.

Call Star reporter Tony Cook at (317) 444-6081. Follow him on Twitter: @indystartony.