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School Funding Topic Of Discussion
Wednesday, November 20, 2019

(LAGRANGE) - Indiana’s general fund has grown faster than inflation since 2009, but public school funding has not.

That was one of the messages from Southwest Allen County Schools Superintendent Dr. Phil Downs as he spoke Monday night at Lakeland Jr/Sr High School.

Downs has spent countless hours drilling down into Indiana’s budget numbers and reached some conclusions that he shared Monday night.

Over the last ten years inflation grew at 16.6% but the State’s education budget grew by 13.3%.

Downs says the expansion of the voucher program has a real cost for every school district in Indiana. If you take the number of vouchers and multiply that by 4258, it produces a dollar amount that is being spent in your local economy. And there is also a loss because of the voucher program. If you add those two numbers you get either a positive or a negative impact in your community, because the voucher system is shifting dollars somewhere.

In LaGrange County that shift is a net loss of close to $900,000, since the only school that received vouchers, Howe Military, has closed.

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