Local school officials are still waiting to see the full impact of the new state budget. "There's a lot of questions that still need to be answered," Lake Central School Superintendent Dr. Larry Veracco told the school board Monday.
He said an increase in state funding will be partly offset by declining enrollment, and a property tax cap would limit how much of its operating referendum the district could collect. Another provision could require Lake Central to share future referendum revenues with charter schools, but wouldn't require school districts in some other counties to do so.
"There are 26 counties out of 92 in Indiana that have charter schools — brick-and-mortar charter schools, but only four of the counties have to share their referendum proceeds," Veracco explained.
While the state is picking up the cost of textbooks, Veracco worries that it won't be as much money as the school used to collect from parents. "We're still looking for a list of what fees, what expenses can still be passed on to families: things like agenda books, PE uniforms, school IDs," Veracco told board members.
Still, he said he's grateful for significant increases in funding for students learning English and those with special needs. "That helps us a lot," he said, "because some schools don't have an [English Language Learners] program, such as ours, and so they don't deal with it. But when you do deal with it, there are significant expenses to help kids get up to speed on mastering the language."
Beyond the budget, Veracco is also concerned about new limits on school library materials. He said he's fine with keeping out materials that are obscene, but he doesn't want to exclude books with diverse characters.
"The guidance on what should be prohibited is still somewhat vague," Veracco noted. "What we will do for sure, as we head into the summer, we will be absolutely thorough on new titles, prior to placing them on the shelves."
He said the school corporation already pulled one book in the past year, due to a complaint — and raised the minimum grade level for another.
