Indiana schools chief Glenda Ritz seeks advice from feds on charter school cuts
A third of charter schools in Indiana saw big cuts in Title I poverty aid but were given no explanation for why the funding decreased.
State Superintendent Glenda Ritz announced Friday that she is seeking guidance from the U.S. Department of Education over how to handle steep funding cuts to charter schools that local policymakers say might violate federal law.
At issue is the charter schools’ share of federal poverty aid known as Title I funding. This year, a third of charter schools in the state saw large cuts in that pool of funding, throwing off budget projections and riling up school leaders who are confused about why the cuts were made, said Michelle McKeown, director of the Indiana Charter School Board.
“We just want transparency and consistency” around how the funds are doled out to schools, McKeown said.
The amount of federal poverty aid sent to school districts is largely determined by census data measurements of poverty in each county. When that data shows changes in the poverty levels, schools can get more or less aid.
“The Department is inquiring about the calculation of Title I funds for charter schools in light of an overall reduction of Title I dollars and a significant decrease in the Census Poverty Count for several charter schools,” said a news release from the Indiana Department of Education.
That doesn’t necessarily mean schools are dealing with less poverty — it might just be an issue with reporting. If families don’t complete the surveys and indicate their income, they don’t get counted.
But McKeown said the education department’s reasoning is confusing because charter schools don’t get census poverty counts.
“The U.S. Department of Education assigns a census poverty count to all (traditional public school districts),” she said. “They don’t do that for charter schools because charter schools don’t have a geographic boundary.”
Charter schools can enroll students from just about anywhere, space permitting, and their Title I funding relies on the traditional districts their kids come from, McKeown said.
For example, Avondale Meadows charter school on the city’s Eastside has 100 percent of its students coming from within IPS’ boundaries, she said. Once IPS gets its Title I funding handed down from the federal government through the Indiana Department of Education, a portion is redirected to Avondale Meadows for its students who qualify for that aid. That is generally based on the number of students whose families are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch.
But this year, the school saw a federal poverty aid drop of about $129,000, despite the fact that IPS received about $1.5 million more in federal aid, even while its enrollment dropped.
Avondale Meadows, McKeown said, had stable enrollment with between 75 and 80 percent of students coming from families that are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced-price lunch for the past two years.
Earlier this month, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported charter schools were seeing even steeper federal poverty aid cuts than their traditional public school counterparts, despite few changes to the population the schools serve.
On Monday, U.S. Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita sent a letter to Ritz asking for an explanation, saying the inequality in funding violates state and federal laws that aims to stabilize district and charter school Title I poverty funding from year to year.
“According to reports, charter schools in our state saw a $2.3 million dollar decline in Title I funds in FY2016,” the letter said. “At the same time, some traditional public school systems, like Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, received an additional $1.5 million in Title I funds despite a decline in enrollment.”
The U.S. Department of Education states that any “state education agency” (in this case, the Indiana Department of Education) cannot reduce the amount of Title I funding for a “local education agency” (a school district or individual charter school) by more than a certain percentage from the prior year.
These “hold harmless” rules attempt to keep schools from seeing shocks to their budgets that could compromise the schools’ staff and day-to-day operations. McKeown said 22 of the state’s 59 charter schools saw funding cuts that were more than what the “hold harmless” rules allow.
Going to the U.S. Department of Education might hopefully resolve the questions about federal law, McKeown said.
Carey Dahncke, director of the Christel House Academies charter school network, said Indiana schools chief Glenda Ritz seeks advice from feds on charter school cuts: