Following the recent approval of Senate Bill 1 in Indiana’s State House, schools will now be receiving less money, as property taxes, a big factor in how schools get money, are decreasing.
While this seems like a great idea because property taxes will decrease for homeowners, school districts will ultimately suffer as a result, leaving schools in the state of Indiana in a $1.9 billion deficit. We believe that property taxes should not decrease if it means that schools will lose much-needed money.
“We should not be reducing property taxes,” social studies teacher Nicholas Salemi said. “They might need to be reconfigured, but deriving less money from property taxes seems silly.”
At Warren, many of the teachers are up to date with the current issues being debated in the statehouse. One of those teachers is social studies teacher Randy Hudgins. Hudgins has informed himself of every detail of these issues. One of those details is that just because property taxes decrease does not mean property owners will save a ton of money.
“One of the things with the property tax caps was that, for a lot of individuals, they do not get a tremendous savings, but it was a campaign issue, so they wanted to make sure that they were able to check that off the list,” Hudgins said.
In the statehouse there were also mentions of private charter schools now being able to receive money from the state that public schools already receive. This not only would drive down the money that public schools receive, but it could also encourage parents to send their students to a private institution.
“I have pretty pointed thoughts on that one,” Hudgins said. “I at least originally wanted to provide that for those who are of low income or special education, but now it's expanded to anybody. I mean I don't know if anybody wants to have someone from a gated community get a voucher to go to a private school. That doesn't seem like a great use of the public's money.”
This brings a bit of concern into how the township will handle potential budget cuts. Principal Masimba Taylor said that, looking forward, Warren Township may be watching where their money goes in order to ensure they do not get into a deficit or any sort of sticky situation.
“We're in a good place,” Taylor said. “We have been financially smart and sound, so we are not working from a deficit or anything like that, but we are being very intentional about our spending and necessary purchases and just budgeting in general. We are paying close attention to the verbiage to ensure that we are making decisions that are in the best interest of students but also being mindful of any laws that may impact those decisions as well.”
Looking ahead to next year, it has been confirmed that there will not be hall monitors in the same way there were this year, but there will be new roles for those who may have held that role this school year.
“It's just the roles may look a bit different than it was,” Taylor said “But we have some positions that, just based on factors, enrollment, things like that, will dissolve. We're not losing teachers per se. Right now we have been blessed to have some smaller class sizes. So if we have a slight increase that really has nothing to do with the loss of teachers; more so it just with looking at making sense of the numbers.”
Despite rumors and political agendas, teachers do not feel like this bill is a knock on education rates.
“I think it is kind of a view that public schools or many different groups of people are trying to get into the amount of the state budget that K-12 education takes up, which is half the state's budget,” Hudgins said. “So that's a lot of money, and a lot of people are trying their hands on that. I fear with a lot of these bills, it is who is getting the money.”
Other teachers believe it is a more popular opinion that everyone is always after education rates to lower taxes.
“The same people who are going to be happy that taxes are being lowered are the same people mad about potholes,” Salemi said. “So you are going to complain that we’re not doing enough to fix potholes, but then the revenue used to do these things comes from property taxes.”