The Gary Community School Corporation appears to have spent less on teachers in fiscal year 2024, but its superintendent maintains that teacher salaries were not "left in a hole."
Under Indiana law, school districts that get an increase in state tuition support can't decrease the amount they spend on full-time teachers. Gary's state tuition support increased by $3.1 million between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, but teacher expenditures decreased by $2.1 million, according to a notice sent to the district by the Indiana Department of Education.
But during last week's school board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Yvonne Stokes said that figure only looked at the education fund, and didn't include payments to teachers out of federal ESSER and Title I money. She also pointed out that the apparent decrease happened before she took over, when the Gary Community School Corporation was still under state control.
During the annual board of finance meeting, Chief Financial Officer Linda Zaborowski said the district used about $2 million of ESSER money for teacher bonuses, but didn't rely on it for salaries. That let Gary avoid a fiscal cliff that some other school corporations had to face when that money went away at the end of 2024.
"So we will not need to try to recoup some of that money or, you know, move those people into the education fund, because it was really [used for] projects," Zaborowski explained.
Overall, the Gary Community School Corporation is in a much stronger financial position than when the state takeover began — going from a fund balance of negative $536,006 in 2016 to a positive balance of almost $24 million in 2023. Zaborowski said the district's operating referendum has provided a lot of financial stability, making up more than nine-percent of the district's revenue in recent years.
She also noted that the amount of interest earned by its bank accounts more than doubled from 2023 to 2024 — to a total of almost $1.5 million. "This money will help support our students, our facilities, our teachers," Zaborowski said. "I just think this is a great thing."
Still, she believes they can do better and promised to continue working for the best possible yields.
