Two state lawmakers addressed some of the challenges facing local schools during Monday’s Oregon-Davis School Board meeting. Senator Mike Bohacek and Representative Jim Pressel had a good discussion with board members, according to O-D Superintendent Dr. Don Harman.
“It was just enlightening to talk to those two individuals but also understanding that they’re just a small piece of the big puzzle down in Indianapolis,” Harman says.
One of the main concerns was school funding. Last month, several thousand teachers gathered at the Statehouse during the General Assembly’s organization day to urge legislators to support education. Oregon-Davis in particular has seen major declines in its state funding, due, in part, to dropping enrollment.
Harman says Bohacek and Pressel noted some challenges with increasing the funding. “When we want to increase teacher pay, when we want to increase more funding to go to public education, the bottom line is to provide more funding, you need to generate more funding, and that is taxes,” Harman says.
But at the same time, Harman notes that legislators have to keep in mind how schools are actually using their funding. He says that while legislators often point out that almost half of the funding goes to administration rather than teachers, that figure can be misleading. “That administration includes our bus drivers, our support staff,” Harman explains. “And so when people say we just need to cut from administration, that’s cutting into your school districts’ support staff who are extremely important for every corporation. So I kind of made that point, and they understood that.”
Beyond that, Harman says Oregon-Davis officials discussed the issue of having two time zones in Indiana. “The time zone does affect Oregon-Davis, when we have school corporations that border us that are on the Eastern Time Zone,” he adds. School officials have cited the time zone issue as a challenge to student retention and recruitment efforts.
