Exact dates vary, but most Hoosier K-12 students will begin school in eight or nine weeks. Yet students and parents seriously considering private school vouchers as an option will have difficulty planning for the school year because rules on how the voucher system works are still being drafted.
Those parents and students – not to mention officials from both private and public schools – can do nothing but wait for instructions on where and how to apply for vouchers. Then after applying, there will be another wait to find out which students will get the vouchers.
They can all thank the Indiana General Assembly, which has long had a habit of passing laws without proper consideration of the practicalities of executing them and how people affected can plan for changes.
And the voucher law will be more difficult than many other laws.
Legislators did – rightly – limit vouchers to 7,500 students in 2011-12 and 15,000 in 2012-13.
That will help to alleviate the financial effect on public schools and provide something of a transition period before vouchers become unlimited in 2013-14. But it also means that in addition to planning for the voucher program – enough of a task as it is – the Indiana Department of Education must find a fair method of deciding which students get the limited number of vouchers.
Lawmakers did address this, partially, in the voucher law with this language: “If the number of applicants for enrollment in an eligible school under a choice scholarship (voucher) exceeds the number of choice scholarships available to the eligible school, the eligible school must draw at random in a public meeting the applications of applicants who are entitled to a choice scholarship from among the applicants who meet the requirements for admission to the eligible school.”
But it says nothing about how state education officials will decide how many choice scholarships will be available to each eligible school.
Will it be prorated based on the number of applications? Will it differ by city and county?
So parents are left to wonder: Will my child be accepted? Will that school have buses? If so, where will she be picked up? If not, how will I get her there? Parents know the list goes on.
Private school officials also need to plan. Will there be two more students this fall or 20? Will they be concentrated in certain grades? Will we need to hire new teachers?
Public school officials also will not know how many students they may lose this fall, affecting staffing and budgets.
This is nothing new for the General Assembly. In the years surrounding the turn of the millennium, lawmakers made numerous changes – some dramatic – in property taxes practically every year. Local officials had to make massive changes on the eve – or even in the middle – of the taxing process.
As a result, the due date for property tax bills changed annually. This despite the fact that one of the most despised elements of property tax bills at the time was their uncertainty due to wild fluctuations from year to year.
The majority of lawmakers didn’t show much empathy, either, for Hoosiers who rely on Planned Parenthood for some types of health care. Their bill defunding Planned Parenthood was deemed an emergency and took effect immediately.
Like the Planned Parenthood bill, the voucher law was a highly charged political issue that Republicans were eager to enact and take effect – no matter how hard the “take effect” part.
Whether or not you agree with vouchers, lawmakers could easily have waited a year for them to take effect, giving everyone time to plan properly.
