Indiana lawmakers over-promised money for schools to teach students learning English by nearly $50 million

When Indiana’s legislature wrapped up the state budget in 2017, educators celebrated a record $32 million headed to support students learning English as a new language, including considerable bonuses for schools with the highest concentrations of those students.

But what school leaders didn’t immediately realize was that because of a calculation error, state lawmakers had not budgeted enough money to give the schools the extra dollars they were told to expect — it would have cost another $50 million to pay for the promised bonuses.

“It is a pretty significant difference,” said Kathy Friend, chief financial officer for Fort Wayne schools, which serves about 2,600 English-learners. “We didn’t realize it until after the allocation came out.”

The shortfall appears to have been due to a number of factors. First, more schools than expected applied for the funding to support students who need more intensive services. But the amounts the state promised to fund per student to schools with the largest shares of English-learners were also incorrectly calculated, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans told Chalkbeat. If the data error had been caught earlier, the staff member said, the numbers promised in the initial budget would more closely reflect the dollars schools ended up receiving.

“It was definitely not intentional,” said Rep. Bob Behning, a Republican from Indianapolis who chairs the House Education Committee, who said he didn’t realize there was an issue until schools approached him in the fall.

It’s not unusual for the state not to fund all of what they initially promised if, for example, enrollment spikes or revenue dips. When that happens, the law says, each district or charter school’s funding amount should be reduced proportionately. But because they were expecting larger bonuses than other districts, large urban public school districts and charter schools that tend to serve bigger shares of students learning English felt the deepest effects of the miscalculation.

Chalkbeat’s review of the funding data shows the state would have had to set aside about $80 million to meet the per-student expectations it set out in the 2017 budget, $47.5 million more than what lawmakers ended up budgeting. The original plan called for increased funding for students learning English to $250 and $300 per-student, depending on the year in question.

In addition to the base amount, districts and charter schools with higher percentages of students were supposed to get even more on top of that — upwards of $900 per student if they had between 5 percent and 18 percent of their population learning English, and upwards of $1,200 if it was more than 18 percent. In actuality, the schools got between $140 and $177 per-student in 2018 on top of the base, and $22 and $28 per-student extra for 2019.

Behning said lawmakers had an opportunity to backfill the dollars to schools with proportionately more English-learners, but they did not. Last year, a highly publicized shortfall in basic state aid to schools made a splash so big that lawmakers came together in a non-budget year to ensure it was filled, approving another $100 million to go to schools’ general funds.

Lawmakers decided not to bump up the funding for English language-learners because while the specifics of the calculations were based on incorrect data, the Senate spokeswoman said, $32 million was the correct total amount the state wanted to spend.

To be sure, all Indiana schools with English-learners received more money per-student from the state under the 2017 budget than in years prior. Friend said she and her colleagues were happy that lawmakers had upped the funding, recognizing the needs of districts like hers that have many students learning English.

The incorrect budget calculation would have given the district about $2 million more over the two years than the $1.5 million they received. But Friend said the difference in expected versus received dollars doesn’t mean the needs of Fort Wayne’s English-learners aren’t being met.

Rather, school leaders have to use more money from their overall state funding to provide the needed services, so across the board, there’s less to go around. Friend said the district spends $4.5 million on English-learners from its general fund. Some additional money comes from the federal government or local sources. Much of the English-learner-specific money the district gets from the state goes toward paying teachers and teaching assistants, with some also going to pay for instructional materials, interpreters used to communicate with parents, and teacher training.

“We aren’t going to make a choice for what we need to do for these students based on how much money we get,” Friend said. “We have to do what we have to do to serve them. What (the extra funding) does is it relieves the general fund for all the other non-ELL students.”

But, it’s also not a small sum, she said. In 2018, Friend said, the district thought it would receive three-quarters of a million dollars more than it did.

“You can’t sneeze at $756,000,” Friend said. “That’s a lot of money that just plays into the overall program or planning that we have as a district.”

In Marion County, several districts were affected, including Perry Township, which saw the biggest difference in actual vs. expected dollars of any district or charter school in the state. Chalkbeat’s analysis shows the district could have expected about $9 million under the incorrect formula. State data shows it received about $2.6 million. Indianapolis Public Schools, the state’s largest district, received about $2.8 million, more than $6 million less than anticipated.

State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick has called for more funding for English-learners next year, upping the current $300 per-student amount to $450 per-student. But in a year when lawmakers are already saying revenue is exceptionally tight, it’s not clear this funding will be a priority as it competes with teacher pay, preschool, and funding for the Department of Child Services.

Lawmakers have taken major steps to increase ELL funding in years past. After a Chalkbeat project showed how schools were increasingly trying to serve growing numbers of English-learners across the city, the legislature more than doubled funding in 2015 to about $21 million, up from $10 million in 2013. Since 2006, the total number of students learning English in Indiana schools has increased by 77 percent. Today, public schools enroll 47,672 students learning English as a new language.