INDIANAPOLIS -As the 2025 legislative session draws nearer, longtime Democratic lawmaker Rep. Ed DeLaney is flagging funding concerns across all Indiana schools, public and private, and called for the next state budget to increase tuition support.
DeLaney, of Indianapolis, made public a new legislative analysis on Wednesday that showed the overall dollar amount spent on K-12 has grown each year but its share of the state budget has dropped.
For instance, tuition support for all school types has grown from $6.2 billion to $8.7 billion from 2011 to 2025.
Dollars sent to Hoosier schools accounted for 44.3% of the Indiana budget in the 2011 fiscal year and rose to 45.3% in 2013. Since then, however, schools’ budget share has declined to 39.8% and is expected to “remain flat” in Fiscal Year 2025, according to the fiscal analysis.
“As a legislator, I’m very frustrated,” DeLaney said during a Wednesday news briefing. “As an experienced lawyer, when I argue in favor of public education in the Statehouse, no one argues against it. In principle, no one says, ‘I’m against it. It’s not valuable. We don’t need it.’ They just don’t do it. And in fact, they’ve converted the money.”
DeLaney suggested budget writers should primarily focus on a new spending scheme that accounts for a teacher annual pay minimum boost to $60,000. He said that greater tuition support, generally, would also help schools depend less on referenda and property taxes — and ultimately bring much sought-after relief to homeowners.
Most importantly, DeLaney continued, student performance will improve, and high school graduates will be more likely to attend college.
The lawmaker said that a sea change will likely require leadership from Indiana’s next governor.
At ballot boxes next month, Hoosier voters will choose between Republican Sen. Mike Braun — who has suggested the state should restructure, rather than increase, its school spending plan — and Democratic challenger Jennifer McCormick, who formerly served as Indiana’s Secretary of Public Instruction and whose platform calls for additional funding for early education. Both Braun and McCormick have proposed statewide teacher pay raises.
Read more on this Casey Smith story for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, here.
