INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A deal on a new state budget slows down proposed funding cuts to some shrinking schools districts while providing a portion of the additional money that Republican Gov. Mike Pence sought for charter schools, legislative leaders said Tuesday.
Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma said the agreement reached with the Senate would keep overall school funding increases of 2.3 percent, or about $460 million, over the next two years. It would also phase in over three years a shift of money from many shrinking urban and rural school districts to those in growing suburban communities. A previous plan called for immediate cuts to more than a third of Indiana’s nearly 300 school districts in order to even out the spending, a move Democrats called devastating.
“We make significant progress on the gap between the highest and lowest spending schools, but we give a softer landing to some of the urban schools that felt that they were suffering too much of a loss,” Bosma said.
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